Marylee MacDonald - Surrender

Copyright 2020 by Marylee MacDonald.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests and volume discounts, write to the publisher, Grand Canyon Press, 233 E. Southern, #27733, Tempe, AZ 85285.

www.grandcanyonpress.com

Publishers Note: This memoir reflects the authors life faithfully rendered to the best of her ability. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of others.

Cover Design: Marylee MacDonald

Names: MacDonald, Marylee, author.

Title: Surrender : a memoir of nature, nurture, and love / Marylee MacDonald.

Description: First edition. | Tempe, AZ : Grand Canyon Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: ISBN: 978-1-951479-29-9 (Paperback) | 978-1-951479-30-5 (Ebook - ePIB) | 978-1-951479-31-2 (Ebook - Adobe PDF) | 978-1-951479-32-9 (Ebook - EPUB) | 978-1-951479-33-6 (Ebook - iBook) | 978-1-951479-34-3 (Ebook - Mobipocket) | 978-1-951479-35-0 (Downloadable audio file)

Subjects: LCSH: Adoptees--United States--Biography. | Unmarried mothers--United States--Biography. | Autobiography--Women authors. | Adoption--Psychological aspects. | Birth parents--United States--Identification. | Adopted children--United States--Identification. | Nature and nurture. | Dysfunctional families. | Adult children of dysfunctional families. | Mothers and daughters. | Man-woman relationships. | Interpersonal relationships. | Resilience (Personality trait) | Self-actualization (Psychology) | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC: HV874.82.M33 S87 2020 | DDC: 362.734/092--dc23

For John and Michelle

Whole societies have an astonishing ability to deny the pastnot really forgotten, but maintaining a public culture that seems to have forgotten.... These forms of knowing shade into the archetypal open secret: known by all but knowingly not known.

STANLEY COHEN, author of States of Denial:

Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering

Part I

Nature vs. Nurture

This studio photograph was taken in 1969. Pictured left to right are Bobby MacDonald, John and Marylee MacDonald, Teddy MacDonald, and Jackie MacDonald.

John Michael, the couples youngest, was born seven months after his fathers death.

Chapter 1

The House of Shrouded Mirrors

W hen I was sixteen and not yet wise enough to know what it meant to have a child and lose him, I surrendered my firstborn son. He was adopted. For the years of his youth, he was my ghost child. On good days I imagined him biking to the library or knocking helmets in a Pop Warner game. On bad days I pictured him dying and in need of a bone marrow transplant. I had never held him, not even as a newborn, and I had only briefly seen his face. Two years after his birth, I married his father, and we had four more children, full siblings to my absent child. When he turned twenty-one, I searched for him.

Back in 1962, when a mother surrendered a child, she signed a waiver that stripped her of her legal right to know anything more about her baby. She could not know his name or even whether he had been adopted. And yet, as an adoptee myself, I knew firsthand the difficulties of assembling an identity without the crucial, and missing, pieces that came from DNA.

From an early age, I knew I did not fit with the family that had adopted me. There was something inside me, trying to come out. I didnt know what it was, but growing up, I sensed my parents watching and waiting for the real me to emerge.

Why did I suspect that inside lurked a more authentic self? The little jokes they told. The innuendos that I did not then understand. All of these had to do with my genetic heritage. Rather than confirm my feeling of belonging to them, my adoptive familys speculative asides hinted at the oppositethat I was not