Published Monday July 27th, 2009 at 11:16am
What reaction might an adult adoptee have whencontacted by her birth mother? Shock, perhaps, joy or resentment,depending on the person's feelings about having been adopted. ForMedina High School alumna Kate St. Vincent Vogl, author of Lost & Found: A Memoir of Mothers, the reaction was gratitude.
Vogl,a 30-year-old married mother of an infant, had known she was adoptedsince she was 8, when her older sister burst into the house from atussle with the neighborhood ruffian who had spilled the beans. Heradoptive family was loving and prosperous, and she writes that it''drives [her] crazy, that assumption'' that all adoptees embark onfrantic searches for their birthparents. ''I never had that drivingdesire,'' Vogl says.
Butwhen her phone rang in March 1995, her ''real'' mother had been dead ofcancer for only four months. Val, the woman who called, knew Vogl'sdate and place of birth, and background information about her parents.Vogl learned that Val had eight sisters and two brothers, and that herbirth father had been killed in a motorcycle accident.
Voglwrites with grace and intelligence about her conflicted feelings,wanting to thank Val for her decision, loyalty to her adoptive mother,hesitance about distressing her widowed father. When a birthdayapproaches, she makes a point of telling Val to forgo sending her acard or gift, but later she takes part in her half brother's wedding,having enlarged her family almost unawares.
There is no such thing as a typical adoption story. Lost & Found is personal, but its value can be recognized by anyone whose family has included an adoption. Lost & Found (292 pages, softcover) costs $14.95 from http://www.northstarpress.com. Vogl now lives in Minnesota.