Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday.

To read the first installment, click here. The rest of the installments can be found here.

© 2006 All rights reserved

Melinda A. Warshaw 

Chapter Eight: California or Bust (continued from here) 

At thirteen, I was part actress playing the role of someone’s daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, a stripper, and would soon be adding the mythical California girl to the mix. We were headed to God’s country, the northern peninsula of California, the land of the infamous Carol Doda performing topless on Broadway in San Francisco, as well as Stanford University, SRI (Stanford Research Institute) the home of artificial intelligence, the Linear Excellerator, the hippies, the peaceniks, Silicon Valley, Linus Pauling, the computer and the Los Angeles-based Charles Manson family.

We finally pulled into the driveway of our new home in affluent Atherton to see a stunning, sprawling, modern, California ranch house made of old gray barn wood. We lived right across from the Shah of Iran’s hideous flamingo pink stucco palace. The new house was on one floor except for my room, which was up the stairs right over the kitchen. The rest of the bedrooms were on the other side of the house off the lanai. It was great for me even though my room was really for the help because Rob’s bedroom was now on the other side of the house.

We had a heated pool, a pool house, a lanai, and one acre in the back and one in front. I hoped there was enough room for a horse. The grounds were filled with olive, lemon, apricot trees and to my dismay there was no place for a horse. Mother was thrilled with the fragrant gardenia bushes, eucalyptus and acacia trees around the pool. She even had her very own Chinese gardener. Fresh flowers went into her Steuben glass vases in the prettiest floral arrangements, even in the powder room and of course all the Kroehler furniture and antiques were there too. The fragrance from the gardenias wafted through the air like perfume. I loved the heated pool and a room to myself away from Rob.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday. To read the first installment, click here. The rest of the  installments can be found here.

© 2006 All rights reserved

Melinda A. Warshaw 

CHAPTER EIGHT: California or Bust (continued from here)

The fire engine red 1959 Bonneville Pontiac convertible rolled down the driveway of our home as Mother took us on a long cross-country ride to what she called God’s country in the Bay area of Northern California. Reaching out of the car window I waved good-bye to our beautiful, empty house and watched my life fade to black. Even though I was losing my best friend, my beloved Joy Ella, the only person I could talk about Mama to or feel safe with, my flannel security blanket, my horse, my career as a horse trainer and professional competitive rider, and my future, it was supposed to be great because we had a pool and a beautiful house in sunny California to look forward to and no snow! I didn’t even notice we’d left the hot chocolate, snow ice cream we made every winter with fresh snow and vanilla extract, winter coats and gloves, sleds and skis, my formal riding habit, ballet slippers and pink toe shoes behind.

Snafu Suz has blogged for us in the past and after she “disappeared” from the face of the earth temporarily, I finally found her and voila, here is an update on her life and the adoption of her two children. 

Susan Metters (aka, Snafu Suz) is a 40-something writer, cancer survivor, and adoptive mom. She and her husband were in the process of adopting two children through the foster system [the last time she blogged for us]. First-time parents, they found themselves going from zero to sixty at lightning speed when they brought a 5-year old boy and an 8-year old girl into their lives. Admittedly, Susan is completely winging the mom thing and parenting by the seat of her pants. You can read about Susan’s life adventures by visiting her two Seattle PI blogs: Lemon Margaritas and Adoption Adventures. Her adoption blog can also be found at SeattleMomBlogs.com.

Zero to Sixty

I bet by now you've started thinking I've dropped off the face of the earth. I haven't, although my world has turned upside down.

After 5 months of waiting and wondering (which in the adoption world actually isn't that long), we found our children. We're parents! YIKES!

We first received info about them from our agency on July 14th; an 8-year old girl and 5-year old boy. (C'mon, admit it. You're relieved we didn't end up with 3 kids.) Their social worker had read our home study report and asked about us specifically, wanting to know if we might be interested. Their description sounded good (and as an added bonus their pictures were pretty cute), so we said yes, we were interested in more info. Our agency sent along a summary of their foster files.

Now we didn't think much of it right then. We'd gotten to that point with other children several times and they didn't pan out for various reasons. So having a social worker interested in us and getting to read a foster summary didn't necessarily mean anything would come of it.

But then we read their summaries. There wasn't anything that jumped out at us as something we couldn't (or weren't willing) to deal with. They sounded like good kids who had been dealt a bad hand. And with a bit of curious wonderment we looked at each other. Could these be our kids?

We called our agency and said we were still interested, and from there things started accelerating much more quickly than expected. We talked to their social worker and then their current foster mom, and before we knew it we were driving 3-hours from home to meet them.

Janine and John are the parents of  beautiful and adorable Isabella, whom they adopted from Guatemala as an infant. This time they are adopting from the U.S. foster care system, and Janine has been generous enough to agree to share her journey with us.

It only took me 3 years to forget enough about how hard adoption is to make me ready to start down this road again. Everything worth having comes at a price, and I know that the child that is out there waiting for us will bless us immensely and it will be totally worth all the heartache. The adoption journey has many highs along the way but I'm also trying to prepare for the lows we will face as well.

Deciding where to adopt from was a very hard process for me. We really want to go back to Guatemala after seeing the conditions there and all the suffering children. Their program is still closed though and even if it were not there is the expense hurdle that I'm not sure we could jump again. Then we started thinking...there are children here who need homes too so why not us?

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday.

© 2006 All rights reserved

Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Seven: Family Traditions (continued from here)

I knew he had hidden a Playboy magazine under his bed because I snuck into his room and looked at it. Even so I was afraid to tell on him because if he ever told Mother what I had done or was doing I thought I might die or be sent away to God knows where. I was his accomplice and helped him catch a feel so he would leave me alone.

“Come into my room and get into bed with me. I want to show you something I learned from Tod,” he asked me one night where Mother and Father were at a party and Joy Ella was way up in the attic and Darin was asleep.

Our Guestblogger today isMelinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday.

© 2006 All rights reserved

Melinda A. Warshaw 

Chapter Seven: Family Tradition (continued from here)

Christmas was the time I could really get Father’s attention. I could match Father with my depth of thought but could never really tell him what I really wanted to discuss which was adoption my secret and favorite subject. Mother always drank too much, got jealous and interrupted our discussions. Existentialism didn’t quite go deep enough for my questions as an adoptee. I never discussed being adopted with him because he made me act like his own daughter even though deep down we both knew it was a charade. He also was convinced that Man is born evil. Rob was a testament to that I thought.

I didn’t know for sure that Father was a womanizer and an alcoholic playboy until after Mother died. Her best friend told me about him. Our family had such an amazing façade of normalcy. The image that comes to mind is one of a blind person wearing bifocals. Denial was just a way of life for all of us.

When Mother drank she became mean and said insensitive things to hurt my feelings. I never really allowed her to get close to me then though I was in awe of her. Her personality would change from sweet and caring to angry and mean when she drank. She was too critical, and I didn’t altogether trust or understand her. She thought I was too sensitive.

Hi, my name is Tyler, and I’m 12. I came home two months ago from foster care. I am adopted with my Dad. These are my feelings on adoption.

I was feeling a little scared at first like any kid would be. Yes moving from foster care is scary. Yeah, you get used to legal documents for everything, but then you don’t because its adoption, no more paperwork. I’m still in the adjustment period but I’m getting use to LA. I’m used to hearing a lot of bad things about the city of LA. Like downtown gangs and drug dealers, but our city isn’t like that at all. It’s very quiet, I mean If you go to a nearby city there’s some parts anybody would want to avoid but others that are fine. Yeah, it is scary with an adoption, so if any kids are reading this you are not the only one. Trust me millions of kids have been adopted and yes it is scary that is my conclusion. So far adoption has been hard and easy, but my Dad and brothers have dealt with it, and helped to put it behind us. I think adoption can be a wonderful thing, but you need to be matched up with the right family.

Bettina is a licensed foster parent in Maryland who recently received her first foster care placement, a teenage girl with anger management problems. Bettina became very frustrated at the lack of empathy and assistance from her licensing agency. The foster child became so unstable that the placement had to end abruptly. Bettina is a 36-year-old mother of an 18-year-old daughter who is away at college. She was a teen mother and I did not want her daughter to become pregnant early and alter her education path. As her daughter prepared for college, Bettina started the foster care training and was excited to welcome children and sibling groups of all ages into her home. She was especially focused on teen girls to help them nurture positive self-esteem and body image concepts.

I was up until 3 AM after this dramatic event, searching the internet for someone who had a similar experience so I would have some sense of direction. I was not getting any support or feedback from the agency and finally found Adoption Under One Roof.

I am new to the foster care system and I am already having a hard time getting assistance with my foster child. I have a teenage foster child who has been in my home almost 3 months. She is diagnosed with ADHD but her behaviors are more consistent with Bi-Polar disorder. Her worker is unresponsive or slow in getting back to me about my concerns. I have even gone to her supervisor and still received no assistance.

Melanie Recoy was taken into the witness protection program at the age of two weeks after giving key testimony in the RICO trial of a prominent organized crime leader. Adopted by a mid-western couple unaware of her background, she has evaded those seeking to collect on the million dollar contract on her life. She blogs as Addie Pray at According To Addie.

Suckers. They are all over. Folks that will fall for anything. You know why they will fall for anything? Because they want to. They are looking for answers. If they think someone has the answers, they'll give themselves up like the homecoming queen on prom night.

All you have to do is tell them what they want to hear. It's simple. They will believe anything. It just is a matter of figuring out what it is that they want. Rain, an end to the heartbreak of psoriasis, a cure for the common cold, a new lover, to know your future, immortality, or a domestic paradise here on Earth, whatever. If the folks want it there's always going to be someone who promises to deliver.

But how do they keep this up? Nobody can deliver these things without a doubt. Won't the folks demand results at some point? Nope, they won't. It's easy to keep up this suspension of disbelief. You just have to convince the rubes that they are not quite there yet. This involves never admitting that you are wrong and limiting your marks exposure to reality.

Take for example the 1800's preacher William Miller. He convinced his flock that the world be ending on April 3rd, 1843. He also convinced his followers that they would have first pick on the good seats in heaven if they were wearing an accession robe, which he conveniently sold. When in April the world went on, he simply moved the date up to July 7th. When again in July nothing happened, he moved the date to March of the next year. Even more people showed up. a thunderstorm broke out at the hour of Miller's prophecy, dousing and ruining everybody's accession robes, but not ending the world. They bought more robes for the rain date of October 22. One man bought robes for his cows saying that, "it was a long trip and the kids would need milk". When the final promised event didn't happen, most of the flock simply ditched Miller and became what we now know as the Seventh Day Adventist. History has not told us what became of the cows.

Really. Look it up.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday.

© 2006 All rights reserved

Melinda A. Warshaw 

CHAPTER SEVEN: Family Tradition (continued from here)

It was Father’s job to put the colored lights on the giant Fraser Fir tree each year which had to be perfectly symmetrical for Mother. He played carols for us on the Hammond organ and then later the accordion while puffing on one of his expensive Cuban cigars every Christmas Eve. The faraway look in his eyes was brought on by too much bourbon and his family’s childhood memories during the holidays. Mother decorated our living room fireplace mantel with freshly cut pine garlands, huge pine cones, ornaments and the antique crèche filled with real hay and placed a fragrant della robia wreath filled with seed pods, fruit and nuts on the front door.

“Bob, where is the frankincense and myrrh for the Wise Men?” asked Mother.

“I don’t have any this year. Why don’t you use some oregano and sage Dear?” Father suggested jokingly.

“What is frank…incense and myrrh?” I asked Mother but she ignored my question and muttered, “How could she know?” to Father for some reason.

“Children your father will arrange the tree lights on the tree, and I will put the hand blown glass ornaments from Germany that your Aunt Dorothy gave us on the branches. Bob, put the tree topper on the tree top,” she instructed.

“How odd, this ornament is shaped like the spike on a Prussian officer’s helmet?” Mother said as she nervously handed it to Father while gulping her cocktail in the other hand, ignoring my question.