[blindkid] To Adoptive Parents

[Carrie Gilmer]

Hi,

 

I wanted to share from a sibling's perspective. I really felt and agree with
Sally's point about "real mom". I have one brother and one sister, I am the
oldest. I have always considered them both "real" siblings.

I never think of them ever as one more real than the other. We adopted my
sister when I was nine. I can remember going to the agency to pick her up.
She was two months old. The only difference was she got two "birthdays"; the
day she was born to the world, and the day she was born to us. I never felt
jealous about that and the recognition of the day she was born to us was
little more than that, just recognition. She on the other hand has "played"
the two birthdays for all she could get out of them-smile. Her born to the
world birthday is considered a national holiday with taking off work, and
her born to us a state holiday with taking off early-smile.

 

We shared a bedroom the first couple of years and I can remember getting up
in the middle of the night to pat her little diapered butt. The adoption
agency gave us a book about a family searching for just the right child. I
remember reading that to her. It was never a secret she was adopted, it was
a celebrated way to enlarge our family-birth and adoption were seen as
equivalent "entries" into our family-just two different paths to the same
thing.

 

This was in the late sixties. My parents were told that her birth mother had
used alcohol and morphine during the pregnancy. She had a lazy eye and was
nearly blind in one eye when she came to us. She had eye surgery at age 11
months. With her glasses she corrects to 20/20. Without them she is 20/800.
When she was small sometimes she took her glasses off and I recall her
sitting with her face on the TV or into a book. This memory is what caused
me to think my own son had vision problems when he was a toddler as he
displayed the same behaviors. She took her glasses off and on so much my mom
used to pay neighborhood kids 10 cents for finding them. Some made a small
fortune-smile. It was never hidden about her birth mother's drug use. When
she went into kindergarten the school told my parents she was retarded. No
one knew much about fetal alcohol syndrome then.  My parents refused to
"label" her and insisted on mainstreaming. 

 

When she was in her twenties she got curious about her birth mother.
Eventually we found records on where she was born and her birth name was
"Feather". We all had a great laugh about that "hippie" name. Her real name
is Leah. The mother had never told the father and did not want to be
contacted. That was enough to satisfy her curiosity. She is real to all of
us, when we joke about family "genetics" she is included-as by osmosis and
growing up in our family she has been as influenced by the environment to
display family similarities. On the other hand she is Italian and Finnish
and we always gave her knowledge and pride about those cultures and blended
them with our genetic-based cultures. In genealogy, our great great
grandparents-our family tree includes her, and she includes ours as hers. 

 

Birth realness is really only skin deep, and that is not really very deep at
all. 

 

Warm Regards,

 

Carrie Gilmer, President

National Organization of Parents of Blind Children

A Division of the National Federation of the Blind

NFB National Center: 410-659-9314

Home Phone: 763-784-8590

carrie.gilmer at gmail.com

www.nfb.org/nopbc