Oral History by: Eve

  



I decided to interview my Grandmother about adopting two young boys that I now call my uncles. These two boys came from a family of more than a dozen children, each one experiencing extreme neglect and abuse. It was 1973, one was eight and the other ten. They had been removed from their home and placed in the foster care system after a horrific accident involving one of the other siblings.

My grandmother came from a catholic family, and she grew up in the fifties so having a husband, and a large family were important to her. By the time she was 23, she had three children less than three years apart. The third pregnancy was the hardest. The doctor told her that having another child could be very dangerous and possibly cause her death. She took his advice without question, but she knew she wanted more children.

Seven years later when the kids were a little older, and my grandfather had worked his way into a well paying job, they were ready to adopt. My grandmother said she wanted to ease her children into the idea of adding to the family, so they decided to take in these two boys on a temporary basis. This would allow them to see how it would all work.

My grand parents thought they had prepared for their arrival. The social worker told them not to be surprised by anything. My grandmother said, “ I made the beds, got new sheets, and toothbrushes. I cleaned out drawers for them. I was trying to make them feel as much a part of the family as I could, but when we sat down to have dinner, I realized I didn’t have enough kitchen chairs.” That was just the beginning.

Later when it was time for bed the oldest boy said to my grandmother, “ What are we supposed to call you anyway?” She hadn’t thought of that one either.

She replied, “ What do you want to call me?”

He said, “How ‘bout ma’.”

She then told them both she didn’t like when people said ma’ but they could call her mom if they wanted. My grand mother has always been a stickler for proper grammar. I guess she was even then.

A few months into their stay it was beginning to get cold outside. One day, my grandmother came into the kitchen to find the two boys fighting under the kitchen table. When she got them to come out and tell her what was going on she discovered they were fighting over the heating vent. She informed them of the other vents in other rooms of the house and she told me, “ They ran around the house, laughing out loud like idiots trying to find all the heating vents.” She paused and said “ Then I realized they didn’t have heat. They had never had heat. I guess that’s what they meant by don’t be surprised.”

The struggles continued. The two boys had come from the same family, but the abuse they endured manifested in them in completely different ways. The older one was very strong willed, manipulative, and kind of an alpha male. The younger one was the exact opposite. He was so introverted and traumatized; he had made up his own language. His older brother had to translate for him. Eventually these problems were worked out but it took a lot of time and patients on the part of my grandparents.

Eventually the boy’s parents were stripped of their rights and they came up for adoption. My grandparents had no doubts about adopting them right away. The process was quick and easy because the boys were old enough to decide weather or not they wanted to be adopted.

A few years later another family in the neighborhood adopted a baby. This was a big deal for them because they had waited a number of years for a newborn to adopt. My grand parents and their five teenage children went to the neighbor’s house to celebrate the new arrival. Later that night when they returned home the five kids started joking about how ugly the baby was. This banter continued for a few minutes until my grandfather joined the conversation. He informed the kids that all babies were ugly, and then went on to describe how when they were born, each one of his biological kids was ugly in there own special way.

After he finished, the younger of the two adopted boys asked, “What did I look like Dad?”

It was amazing. He had only been with his new family for three years. Did he forget where he came from? My grandmother believes he was so traumatized that he blocked out all of his past. “His only good memories were with us,” She said.

Without missing a beat, my grandfather looked right at him, laughed and said, “Oh my God! You were just as ugly as the rest of 'em.”