We Travel By Tube

The Internet is a magical place. There’s a website for almost anything. Have some bad photos that you inexplicably uploaded and now want to dump from your Facebook account but you just can’t accept denying them to the rest of the world? Www.deletedimages.com is just to place for that blurry shot of your toiletries. Having scaled Mount Everest, must you now place your standard atop the world “highest” website? Get yeself to http://worlds-highest-website.com/. So in preparation for next Friday’s meeting/lunch with Diane (Sam will not be in attendance), I logically began by trolling the tubes and tunnels of the web.

And, yes, information is out there. There are pages about questions what to ask birth parents in a closed adoption. Questions to ask birth parents you met through advertising, not an agency placement. Questions that adoptees have for their birth parents. Questions birth parents have about the people adopting their child.

(I should note here that all of these pages have one thing in common - they always refer to the birth mother, not the birth parents. Having the actual involvement, let alone knowledge and consent, of both birth parents, as we do, is such a rarity that it’s naturally assumed as doubtful.)

The consensus of these sites is that, during the first meeting, you keep things light. Everyone’s already nervous. Everyone’s already judging everyone else. You will question everything you do and say. Are they vegetarians that you just insulted by ordering the MeatMaster Supreme? Do they think we’ll think they’re uneducated or irresponsible? Are jokes appropriate? (I’m screwed if they’re not.) Keep it simple. Talk about what you know; don’t put on airs; don’t try to be who you think they want you to be. And listen to everything they have to say. You don’t have to become fast friends, but you must quickly establish some basic level of trust. It’s a remarkably odd meeting between complete strangers who are going to change each others lives.

So, next Friday, that’s what I’m going to try to do. I’m going to meet the birth mother of my child, and I’m going start learning about her. And I’m going to try to break through my own personal social ineptitude to let her know something about me. Because that’s what the Internet has advised me to do.

Hopefully, I'll remember not to order the shrimp.