Year of Mistaken Discoveries by Eileen Cook Page A

Instead a few things were stuffed in the back, including a letter from the adoption organization saying that Lisa no longer wished to do regular updates.
    Mom took a deep breath and then came to sit next to me on the bed. “I don’t really know for sure. I spoke to our adoption coordinator. She said it isn’t uncommon. It can be hard for the birth parent. When Lisa stopped communication, she would have been in college. That can be a difficult time.”
    “So, she got too busy to bother with me.”
    “What? No. That’s not what I’m saying. I just mean she might have felt that she needed to focus on what was ahead of her instead of the past. By that time she knew how much we loved you. Maybe she could rest a bit easier knowing you had a family. She might have felt that she didn’t need to stay involved.”
    I wondered if she’d made the decision to cut off contact with me because she found it too painful, or because keeping in touch was one more thing on her to-do list and it wasn’t worth the hassle.
    “What’s gotten you interested in all this? Is it what happened with Nora?”
    “Sort of.” I bit my lower lip. I’d wanted more time to figure out how I was going to tell my parents about my plan. I wanted to have it organized so they’d be impressed, but I ended up spitting it out. “I’m going to make looking for my birth mom my senior project. I’ll talk about how I’m doing it to honor what Nora started.”
    I hadn’t expected my mom to leap into the air and declare me a genius, but I also hadn’t thought she’d say what she did.
    “Absolutely not.”

chapter twelve
    Tip #2: No matter how much people around you will tell you that adoption is a gift and how the whole process is full of rainbows and unicorns, the truth is it makes people uncomfortable. As soon as you tell people you’re looking for your birth mom they’ll start telling you why it’s a bad idea. What they really mean is they think it’s a bad idea. What you think doesn’t matter so much to them.
    —Field Guide to Finding Your Family
    M y adoption had never been a secret. It wasn’t like my parents sprang the news on me when I was thirteen. I always knew. It wasn’t something we talked about very often, but there was a big photo in the hall of me as a baby with them with the saying “Family Is Made, Not Born” on the frame. When some kid teased me about being adopted in secondgrade, there was a moment when I was pretty sure my dad was going to go all Chuck Norris on his ass.
    Along the side of my right hand was a raised scar. I was about seven when I got it. My mom had made her famous lasagna. She took it out of the oven and placed the red ceramic baking dish on a rack on the counter to cool. “Don’t touch,” she told me. “It’s hot!” When she turned away to answer the phone, I reached out and touched the pan. I knew better, but it was somehow irresistible. I can’t remember if I thought I would steal a bit of the crusty cheese at the side, or if I just wanted to see how hot it really was, but it was explosively hot. My skin had seared to the side of the dish. I yanked it away, but it was already blistered. Instead of telling my mom, I’d run off to my room and hid. I’d been convinced that if she knew what I had done, they would take me back. I would be in an orphanage with a giant stamp on my file that read TOUCHED HOT DISH AFTER BEING TOLD NOT TO. Who would want a kid who couldn’t follow simple directions? If you can’t get the hot-dish thing right, it’s just a matter of time until you start stealing from the liquor cabinet and taking up recreational drug use. I made myself a vow that I would never give my parents another reason to wish they could give me back. I would be exactly the kid that they had always wanted. I hadn’t been perfect, but I’d been as close as I could be. However, my decision to look for my birth mom clearly didn’t fit with my mom’s idea of her ideal child.
    “You can’t stop