Children love, love, LOVE to hear stories about themselves. They love being told again and again how they inspired their mother to binge on chocolate covered pickles or dirt or
chalk or toe nails or… whatever other weird thing the pregnancy that brought them into the world inspired. Children crave infamous tales of themselves: the mid-night dash to the hospital to have her, how he looked like a hairy little old man when he first came out, the intensity of his scream or the ooo’s and ahhh’s of the nurses over how beautiful a newborn she was when she graced the world with her presence.

These are nouveau-traditional campfire tales to be told upon request or as a comfort. Legends of first steps, first hair-cut, first this, first that, first the other then follow and are the bitsy treasures, along with pieces of colored string, smooth stones, butterfly wings that are kept in a child’s treasure chest, both physical and metaphysical… “There are no locks on the sto-o-ry box, the sto-o-ry box, the sto-o-ry box!” (Does anyone else remember the Magic Garden? Sigh. Nostalgia.)

You were a child once … do you remember? What were the stories your parents and/or old auntie and/or grandparents told you about your early, pre-memory years? You will probably recognize the stories I am referring to as some of those same tales that horrified and embarrassed you as soon as you hit puberty … or it hit you.

As we all know and discuss endlessly, one of the biggest differences between adoptees and non-adoptees is information. Times, luckily, are changing and the dark days of completely secretive adoptions are slowly winding their way down to story status in and of themselves. Even in closed domestic adoptions, there is a better sense of the need to provide as much information as possible about birth parents/early life for the child being adopted… and that’s great. But there are still many cases where information is sadly lacking, a fact that really shouldn’t be ignored.

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