When I was a little girl I would ask my mother if anyone could ever take me away from her. She would go to her bedroom to retrieve a folded set of papers and hand them to me with great patience and gentleness.
'Do you know what those papers say, Mary?' I looked up at her with my big, dark brooding eyes. 'They say they that no one, not ever, can take you away from me and Daddy. It means you belong to us forever.'
There was a feeling of impermanence in me that was terrifying. I came back frequently with the same question and she always gave the same explanation.
It has been 52 years since I was adopted and 48 years since I became an American citizen. As I celebrate Thanksgiving, I think of my birth mother, my parents, my grandparents, my children and the person who gave me the gift of my own family.
Were it not for my birth mother, I would not be here today. Her decision to have me was courageous. She was a poor girl from Greece, a child really, at 16. No one knows exactly the circumstances of my birth, but we do know she traveled from a small northern village to give birth alone in Athens. She quickly returned home.
She put me up for adoption as I spent my first year of life in a public foundling home. I was among dozens of infants left for others to take. No one knows how she felt or what she may have considered her options. No one knows if she cared for me at all, but she did the right thing, that is for sure. She had no means of support and no one around her who was supportive. She decided that someone else could give me a better life. Her decision led me to the people who would take me from Greece to American parents. They could not have children of their own.
She saved my life by giving me the chance for another.
Those American parents could not afford a trip to Greece in the '50s. The man who would be my father was on strike from the steel mill in Gary, Ind. My future parents asked the people who would become my grandparents to bring a baby home for them.
In that crowded orphanage, where there were two babies to a crib, my grandparents walked up one aisle and down another, searching for someone perhaps who looked like them. As they scrutinized and whispered and gently rubbed dozens of tiny, little hands, they kept noticing one head, my head, bobbing up from the depths of a crib.
I was picking myself up, stubby arms extended, watching, recording their every move. They said to the wet nurses and attendants who showed them around, that they didn't care what sex I was; I was the baby they wanted and I was the baby they would take. I did resemble my future mother, and as my grandmother would later say, 'I chose them.'
Indeed. I chose them.
They were the arms that, for the first time, would never let me go.
I was baptized in Greece because that was one prerequisite for my ticket out of the country. We boarded an ocean liner for America, stopping in Lisbon before venturing across the open sea to New York City. In Queens I met my mother, who was with a new aunt and my uncle, her brother. From there we flew to Chicago, where I met my new Dad. My mother always said, 'You went right to him the minute we got off the plane as if you had always known him.'
In Gary, Ind., I joined a big, fat Greek family on both sides: godparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. While a party was raging outside my bedroom to welcome the new baby from Greece I slept, perhaps like never before. I had parents, a family and a bed of my own. Dreams could come true in this new life.
My parents have told me they came in the room often that first night. Dad said he wanted to make sure I was breathing and just to watch me sleep. I was his girl growing up. We lived and died to the White Sox together. He showed me how to throw a ball and drive a car. He taught me that a sense of humor would go a long way in this life. We took long drives on Sunday morning, just my Dad and me, and on Saturdays we would go down to the mill to pick up his check. Even though he died, seven years ago, I swear sometimes I can still hear the sound of his voice.
I still have my mom, a healthy vibrant woman at 80. As we both age, we have forged something wonderful and close. We talk about the life we've known and the people we have loved. We are both grateful people, who find the good in life. We share a belief in not making excuses for our mistakes and our choices, which are life's baggage we've packed all on our own.
My grandparents are long dead, but I was their daughter, too. More than a granddaughter; they felt responsible. They found me. They brought me home. They were very much a part of my life and taught me to love Greece and my heritage. My heart hurts when I think of their faces.
My family gave me an identity and a healthy sense of myself. They made me strong by reminding me all these years that I was wanted and loved. How lucky was I?
Even when I came out as a lesbian, something my family knew for years, they thought I was the same person I ever was. I was only more of me. That was the extent of any shock over the revelation. I came out because I met someone I wanted to spend my life with. She was a Greek woman with children. They touched my heart the minute I met them.
Never in a million years would I have believed that I could have a life as full as the one I have. I met someone, who 16 years later, I still have a huge crush on. I was able to raise two children with whom I have shared and given everything. They are my pride and joy. I was able to marry their mom in the great and progressive state of Massachusetts, and the day after Thanksgiving, oh yes, the adoptee will become the adopter. On Nov. 23, 2007, we become a family in the eyes of the law. On Nov. 23, 2007, my mom has two more grandchildren and my big extended Greek family just got a little bit bigger.
Fran has given me the best, the biggest, the most precious gift of all and that is her children to share with me, to entrust with me. At eighteen, Harrison and Nick have chosen me, too.
How do you thank anyone enough for all that?
When the judge hands us those papers, I know that deep inside me, I'll be that little girl from Greece with my big dark, brooding eyes, hearing my mother's question: 'Do you know what those papers say, Mary?'
Do I know what those papers say? They say they that no one, not ever, can take us away from each other. It means we belong to each other. Forever. A family.
Mary Cardaras is department chair of Digital Media & Communications at The New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass. She teaches journalism at Northeastern University and is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations and Public Policy at the same institution in Boston.
