Birthdays

Tomorrow I will celebrate my birthday. As I contemplate my life thus far, I have also been thinking about my actual birth day. Today as I pulled weeds from our backyard, I thought about the privilege I have in knowing the details of my birth. It is not a luxury most of my children can claim.

Whenever my children have a birthday, they ask me questions about their birth. They want to know what time they were born. They want to know what day of the week they were born on. Together we imagine what things might have been like for their birth and their birth mother. For one of my children, I know everything about her birth. For two of my children, I know a few bits and pieces of their birth story. For three of my children I know absolutely nothing. Until recently I didn’t even know the true birth date for them (we recently were blessed to find out what one of our children’s actual birth date is, and are waiting for news on another child). At this point, we do not know anything about our two Haitian girls’ birth stories. It is something that we may never know.

Birthdays for children adopted from other countries can be tricky, as very often, adoptive parents do not even know what their child’s true birth date is. Knowing more than the date of birth is rare.

In some countries, knowing birth dates is not of as much importance as it is to people in other countries. When children are orphaned or abandoned, they often come to orphanages without such information. When this happens, ages must be guessed and birth dates estimated.

I wish it weren’t this way. It saddens me that such basic information about oneself is often not known. For my own children, we try not to dwell on this negative aspect of their adoption. Instead, we celebrate on the dates we’ve been given. We celebrate the child’s place in this world and in our family. We often talk about the day we met them and how proud we are to have them in our lives. The birthday child is relieved of their chores for the day, and they get to choose what we eat for dinner and what we have for dessert. My husband and I try to be extra sensitive to their feelings on their special day, as they are usually thinking of their birth mother and the circumstances of their birth and adoption. And that is all we can do.

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