Adoption stories on Lafitte Corridor hike
I’ve been very curious about adoption stories: ever since we were in contract with a black woman to adopt a black child, we began reading a lot about transracial adoption.
Adoption also happens to come up a lot in my conversations these days – go figure.
This morning walking along the Lafitte Corridor, I was speaking to a woman I just met about adoption and she said she was adopted. I said what was the experience for you – and she said she didn’t know she was adopted till she was 18 because that was the style back then. But that she never cared to find her biological parents as her parents were the ones who raised her and she didn’t need to know.
She told me the story of having sat with her dying mother for three years and how she quit her job to care for her mother. She said it was easy to do because she has this indelible memory of being seven years old and having a high fever and her mother on one side of the bed and her father on the other and her mom telling him, you have to go and get her medicine now.
That meant in the four feet of snow outside and going over to what was then considered a bad neighborhood, he had to go find medicine. He came back with Formula 44. She wound up in the hospital the next day, but she said she will never forget that he was willing to risk his life to save her.