A Peek into the Brain of an Adopted Kid. 10 Things I Used to Think.

If only we could tap into adopted kids’ brains and hear what they are thinking, both in their conscious and subconscious minds. It would be so much easier to tend to their anxieties and fears if we knew specifically what they were. I know this is true, of course, for all children, but children who lost their mothers are especially tricky nuts to crack. (Speaking as a nut who still isn’t entirely cracked.)

My childhood house was built in the 1860s, and the basement was dark and creepy, but that’s where the washer and dryer were. When I had to do laundry, I would run down the stairs, throw in the clothes and soap, and run back up before whatever terrible thing down there came out of the dark and tried to kill me.

I had a basement like this in my brain, too. When you lose your mother at birth, your brain builds basements to hold the terror and grief and fury.

My dad said the other day that he remembers me as a happy kid. I remember being loud and silly, but I also remember a fairly consistent feeling of fear. For this post, I tried to remember what was floating around in my head when I was in elementary school:

  1. I want my mother all to myself. She runs around, never has much time. I wonder if she is mad at me for some reason. I wonder what I did. I wonder how I can make her happier.

  2. I want a new pair of jeans but I am afraid to ask for the money. My parents have already given me so much. I’m such a drain on them. The scary thing is that it’s not nearly enough. What is wrong with me? Why do my friends get everything they need? Why do I feel like I’ll never have what I need? Maybe I should just go to The Country Store and steal a pair of Levi’s. I’m a bad kid, but everyone thinks I’m good.

  3. I am so hungry. I will make chocolate chip cookies before dinner so I can eat the batter and not have to worry if there will be enough food.

  4. Why doesn’t Hope like me? What makes me different from the other girls?

  5. I wish the door to my bedroom had a lock. I hate it that my brother can just come in and touch my stuff. Nothing’s really mine, and no one seems to care.

  6. I wonder if I get the kitchen floor really clean, Mom will notice and be happy.

  7. I hate school. Mrs. Lyddy is scary. She scolds everyone. I think I am getting a fever. Maybe I should stay home tomorrow.

  8. I wish I could have a dog. Something to love that was all mine.

  9. I wonder if they know I steal their quarters when I babysit. What would happen if they found out? What would Mom and Dad say? They would be so disappointed in me. Maybe I’d have to kill myself. My friends don’t steal. Why do I? What else could I take?

  10. I’m in so much trouble. I don’t even know why.

As a child (and, still, now) I needed so much cradling, so much physical contact. When magnets pull towards each other, under a microscope it looks like each one bristles with tiny hairs. I imagine that when I was separated from my first mother, my skin was like the skin of a magnet pulling toward another, only my fibers were never met, never were clicked quiet, and so, I think, one of the best things my parents could have done for me as a young person would have been to made an effort to, perhaps at bedtime, treat me like an even younger person, and hold me, rock me, rub my back, soothe my skin with a warm hand. I was like a body on fire, and gentle, mindful touch was like water.

My mother was always physically awkward with me. I needed contact, but she needed her newspaper, her cigarettes. I don’t think her parents had caressed her much, and so touch wasn’t a big part of her vocabulary. She liked to talk to me, at me, but that wasn’t the same.

I needed touch.

Maybe when we are babies and we are magnets for our mothers, our skin calms on contact, becomes itself, sort of the way the skin on Jello gets thicker and more sturdy with time, and then the baby becomes a little girl, a little boy, then a man, a woman, and their skin is no longer something that cries out for the mother. It is something else. Something completely different. Something free.

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A Bathtub Full of Money