WHAT WOULD SHE THINK?

First of all I’d like to make one thing quite clear so there is no confusion.  This blog by no means questions who my mother and father is.  My parents are the two people who adopted me in 1983 and raised me till I was old enough to venture out on my own.  They are and will forever be my parents.  Our family is very blessed because my parents were able to adopt three children when they were unable to have children of their own, while three Colombian babies were privileged to all the amenities of the American suburban lifestyle- amenities I could only imagine would have been just a dream in South America at the time.  

Since I was young and old enough to understand what adoption meant I couldn’t help but wonder who my birth parents were.  As I got older and I enhanced my questioning abilities I started pondering the “why” questions instead of just “who’s.”  Why was I given up for adoption was the ultimate question.  In fact, it is still something I hit my head on every now and again.  It was assumed that due to the nature and poverty of the country my mother could not support me.  And it was left at that until recent years when I began to think this may have been a way to protect me from some evil truth; a truth that even my adopted parents aren’t aware of. 

People in the past have criticized me for having such thoughts and how sensitive the subject must be for my adopted parents.  While I sympathize on their beliefs, I refuse to have my feelings dismissed.  Has it ever occurred to anyone that I have no idea who brought me into this world?  It’s like the story of a stork that dropped infant me on my parents stoop one day.  In this case the stork was a commercial jetliner.  Not knowing who actually birthed me is a tremendous void that I wish I could move on from, but I just can’t.  I don’t know what it’s like to have a biological connection to another human being and I fear I may never know.

 The only information I have is that I was born Alberto Martinez Ferrucho (allegedly named by the foster home I came from) and the woman who birthed me was Gloria Ferrucho.  I had three older siblings.  That’s it.

That’s it?  I have many other things I want to know.  Were my siblings adopted?  What is my health history?  Where do I get my features from?  Is Gloria still alive?  Am I allowed to find her?  Was I an “oops” baby?  Oh, by the way, I was a bastard child.  I know I’m going to Hell for thinking of the possibility that perhaps my birth mother could have been a word that rhymes with “chore.”

But I’ve been obsessed lately on what she would think of her little boy now if she knew of things that were going on in my life.  For instance, I know Colombia is predominantly a Catholic territory.  Would she forsake me for being gay?  Or worse, forsake me for being HIV positive?  Would she be the type that thinks I deserve to get AIDS because I’m gay?  Not that I am looking for any type of love from her, but I want to know if she has any regrets for letting me go?  As a mother would she beat herself up for not being there for me?  Or would she not care at all? 

Should the day ever come that I meet this woman the only thing I could tell her is that she has nothing to be upset about.  Because of her, I was raised by the two most beautiful people in the world- my mother and father of Long Island, New York.  I have a college education and a brother and a sister (who are also from Colombia.)  As far as my health is concerned, I’d tell her that I am in the hands of some of the best doctors and I am healthy as a horse projected to live a normal life span.

Perhaps in my head this is just a way for me to see if she would have any connection to the boy she gave up for adoption- or if there is this stranger out there who thinks about me from time to time.  It’s a closure that I’ll probably never receive.  “Is it important?” people ask me.  Yes, for me it is.