I  WANTED my son to become the kind of person who appreciates the beauty of the world around him, so I smiled when, at 6, he asked to borrow my camera in case he saw “something beautiful.”

We were taking a walk in the woods outside Boston, and following behind him I was surprised by how much he moved like his father. We spent that afternoon showing each other icicles and hollow trees, breaking frozen patterns in the river ice, inching too close to the water to get a better view of the bridge above.

When we arrived home, Ben said that the reason he wanted to go for a walk was to spend time with me. It had been three months since I last saw him. I smiled sheepishly and stepped into the living room, where the woman who had adopted him six years earlier sat reading the newspaper.

I spent the evening chatting with her while avoiding direct interaction with Ben for fear I’d show too much affection, or too little. Open adoption is an awkward choreography; I am offered a place at the table, but I am not sure where to sit. I don’t know how to be any kind of mother, much less one who surrendered her child but is back to help build a Lego castle.

It is a far cry from the moment he was born, when my 23-year-old body seemed to know exactly what to do, when I suddenly and surprisingly wanted nothing more than to admire him nursing at my breast. When, after a drugless labor, my surging hormones helped me to forget that I was a college student, that I lived in Cincinnati, that I was passionate about architecture. During those days I was roused by the slightest sound of his lips smacking, innocent newborn desire that offered my deepest fulfillment.

In the months before I gave birth, when my boyfriend and I were just getting to know the couple we had chosen, I was able to comprehend the coming exchange only on the most theoretical of levels, but it seemed like gentle math: Girl with child she can’t keep plus woman who wants but can’t have child; balance the equation, and both parties become whole again.

During those months, my son’s mother, Holly, observed that birth mothers have to accomplish in one day the monumental task of letting go that most parents have 18 years to figure out. Days after his birth, when I struggled with letting go, Holly sat with me and cried — for the children she never got to have, for the fact the adoption would bring her joy while causing me pain, and out of fear that she had already grown to love a child I might not give her.

I decided to let her take him for a night, to see if I could handle it. She drove him to Dayton, Ohio, where she was staying with family, then called and asked: “Do you want him back? I’ll bring him right now.”

Meanwhile, the men in our lives stood by and hoped for the best. My boyfriend supported the adoption, and though we had broken up, he was there to help me through my pregnancy. We had met in architecture school, never suspecting that two years later we would be forever joined as birth parents, composing 111 questions to ask strangers about the most intimate details of their lives.

We had a list of qualities we wanted in a couple — basically ourselves, 10 years older. But when we met the couple we would choose, our list fell by the wayside, replaced by an overwhelming intuition that we could trust them.

I signed the papers on a hot August day in 2000, sitting at a large conference table with my sister, my son’s adoptive parents and agents from Catholic Social Services. I’d sat there several times before but hadn’t yet been able to say the words to relinquish all rights to my son. Each time I was left alone to think and, hours later, was sent home with him.

My ex was not there; the birth had made me a different person, and we couldn’t pretend that our losses would be the same. My sister had come from China, where she was teaching; she promised that if I kept him, she would move home and help. Her face was glazed in tears, but she stared intently at me as I prepared to sign the papers, as if to assure herself I knew what I was doing.

My pen rested at the intersection of two vastly different futures, and I struggled to see into the distance of each. It did not seem that a gesture as small as scribbling my name had the power to set me down one path while turning the other, its entire landscape, to dust. It was such a small gesture, but it was the first sketch of my life without a son.

One of the exercises I was given in adoption counseling was to envision the hours immediately after the adoption. What would I do after signing the papers? Pick up the towels that had been tossed in the corner when my water broke? Pack up the extra blankets I’d been given by the hospital workers who touched my shoulder and prayed aloud that I would find the courage to keep my son?

I had spent my entire life without a child, but I was newly born that night, too, and my old self disappeared. I could no longer imagine how a mother could give up a child and live. Adoption was not simple math; a new mother cannot know the value of the thing she subtracts. It is only through time — when my son turned 4, and I was 27; when he turned 6, and I was 29; when he turns 10 this year, and I am 33, and ready for children — that I begin to understand the magnitude of what I lost, and that it is growing.

The comfort is seeing my son with his family, whom I can no longer imagine him or myself without. He is an earnest child who seems to kick hard to keep his chin above water in the world, but his mother has a certain lack of sympathy that is good for him. When he wants to retreat into his own head, she pulls him back into the refuge of his family and makes him smile. I am ever astounded that I was able to see in her something that would still feel so right so many years later.

The greatest proof of her commitment to openness is that she talks about me when I’m not there. When my son was a baby, I was surprised that he always remembered me, even after long stretches when I couldn’t visit. When he was 7 and we were playing a computer game, he told me his password was “Cincinnati” because his mother had told him he was born there. I know that Holly represents me to my son in my absence and always encourages him to love me.

Holly jokes that with open adoption, at least you know what the birth mother is doing, that she’s busy at school and not conceiving a plot to steal her child back. It’s not so with closed adoptions; the birth mother is powerfully absent. But an open process forces an adoptive parent to confront the pain that adoption is built on. And openness for Holly does not mean merely letting the birth mother know about her child; it means cultivating a real love between birth parents and child. This requires exceptional commitment, which may be why some open adoptions become closed in the end. 

I LOVE Holly for sharing such things with me, sentiments that show she is devoted to our relationship — and not because it is easy for her. And I have told her that a pivotal point in my grief was the moment I was able to say aloud that I wanted my son back, though I knew it was impossible — when I realized that his adoption had been both my greatest accomplishment and deepest regret.

And we continually redefine this relationship. I hide certain exchanges, like the time he was 4 and crawled into my arms and said, “Amy, pretend I’m your baby.”

I made sure no one was looking before I indulged his request, my entire body shuddering at the chance to hold him so close for the first time since birth. I suspect Holly knows about these moments, and when I visit she tries to help by sending me off with my son for walks in the woods, where we can freely explore my place in his life.

When I returned home to New York after my visit, I looked at the pictures Ben had taken with my camera: fragments of arms and legs, blurry close-ups of leaves caught in ice, too many spinning forest skies. Evidence to me that although he has his father’s distinctive gait, he shares my need to grasp and hold on to beautiful things, to document and to somehow preserve them forever — things he can’t possibly keep.  

She was 20 days old when she came to me, the first sunshine in my life, a beautiful baby who gives me so much joy of being her mother. Very early I started to ask her:” Do you know what mum and dad did to you?” And she would say: “adopted” I wanted to make sure this word is not strange for her. The day came and I told her the meaning of it. I said to her, you are very special child, some kids have only one mother, you have two, your birth mother had already three children and she was not able to keep you. She made me happy giving me the opportunity to be your mother. I showed her the pic of her mum and she was surprised, she thought her mother would look like me. People could not say she is adopted, several times people would say she looks like me and that makes her happy.

Mother’s day came and she cried. She told me she wants to know more about her connections but she doesn’t want to hurt me. I said to her it is ok, she has the right to know where she comes from, I would not be different than her and I promised her I would find out where her mother is. I gave her the pics of her family.

But as always a story has a sad side too…her father (my ex) and grandparents are against it, they don’t want to talk about it. If was possible they wouldn’t tell her that she is adopted but the family is well know so one day she would find out anyway. If they find out that she wants to know more and that I am helping her, they would make our life hell.

People think different…I think we all have the right to know the truth, our bond is very strong and I am not afraid of it, she knows how much I love her and I am there for her.

The only thing what comes in my mind is should I tell her everything, she should she knows that her mother wanted to make a abortion or that she actually wanted to leave her in the hospital or somewhere else until she met me??? I don’t want to hurt her with that, she still young to handle this kind of emotions…I am not adopted, I don’t know. I just hope I am doing the right thing…

(Story – birth mother, posted on January 31th, 2010, 11:49 a.m.)

My long-lost son was living down the road for 44 years!

After being forced to give up her baby boy for adoption, Margaret Wilson was tormented by her loss for over 40 years. Then she discovered he was living just a few miles away..

Margaret Wilson has spent nearly all her life haunted by the past.

As a pregnant teenager in the mid-60s, she was devastated at having to give up her baby son for adoption.

“I never stopped thinking about Stephen after my family forced me to hand him over to social services,” says Margaret, now 64, from Fife.

“He was whisked away from me the instant he was born, in December 1964, in the mother and baby home where I was staying. I will never forget his screams as he was carried out.”

Margaret was 19 and had been with Stephen’s father for two years when she became pregnant.

“That’s when our relationship broke down and I was forced to deal with my pregnancy alone,” she says. “My grandmother had brought me up and she wouldn’t let me keep the baby. The shame was too much for her.”

Although Margaret begged her gran to reconsider, she refused. “I was so distraught, I had no fight left in me,” she says. “If I chose to keep the baby I’d be homeless and alone – no start for a child.”

So she agreed to make the biggest sacrifice imaginable and went through her pregnancy dreading the moment she would have to give up her newborn for adoption. When she handed him over, she was crushed.

“I heard him cry and felt such hurt that he was going. I couldn’t bear to look at his face as he was taken because I knew it would haunt me for ever."

“I stayed in the mother and baby home for days afterwards and I knew Stephen was still there while a foster family was being found for him."

“Through the corridors next to the bathrooms was the nursery. Every time I went for my bath, I heard babies crying and knew one of them was my son. It broke my heart and, every time, I had to stop myself barging into the nursery to find him.”

In the years that followed, Margaret struggled to cope.

“I felt such a huge void,” she says.“ I suffered from post-natal depression, was suicidal and had to go on Valium on and off for years to deal with the heartache. Birthdays and Christmases were the worst. I thought about his first day at school, wondered whether he’d gone to university, had children of his own. I questioned whether he ever thought about me, too. It was pure torment.

“When I met my second partner, Rob, 35 years ago, he was supportive and loving, and never judged me. He helped me face up to life again.”

The couple, who married in 1989, never had children. “I just don’t think it was meant to be,” she says.“ I was sure another child might just be a replacement for Stephen and I could never really be comfortable with giving birth to his siblings.

“In my head I had named him David – I had no idea his adoptive parents had named him Stephen – and I talked about him every day in a vain hope we might be reunited.”

But Margaret had nearly lost all hope that her son would try to find her – until a surprise phone call in August this year asking her to confirm her name and date of birth.

“I assumed it was a canvassing company trying to sell me a kitchen or double-glazing and put the phone down.”

But days later, a letter arrived and Margaret opened it to read the words: “My name is Stephen and I think you’re my mum...”

“My heart felt like it would burst with joy,” she says. “I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t stop crying. For the first time in 44 years, I was crying tears of happiness. “When my hands stopped shaking I rang Stephen but it went to answer phone. Nervously, I left a message: ‘Hello Stephen, this is your mum here. I have just received your letter.’ Calling myself Mum for the first time felt strange but wonderful!” That evening, the phone rang and Margaret finally heard her son’s voice for the first time. “We chatted for hours and I couldn’t stop smiling,” she says.

Then Stephen told her he’d been living a few miles down the road from her for 42 years!

“We could’ve passed each other on the street,” says Margaret. “He also used to play football on playing fields near to my house. I’d seen boys playing there every week for years. I could’ve been watching my own son play!

(Story from a woman, posted on January 28th, 2010, 5:48 p.m.)

Modern Love - Dear Birth Mother, Please Hit ‘Reply’

 I DIDN’T plan on seeing my birth mother again. I had already had the dramatic face-to-face reunion. I knew where she lived, understood the broad strokes of her family history, the details of my birth and the secrets she kept from her other children, including my existence. Yet after a couple of years of clandestine contact, she decided our relationship could not work, we parted ways, and in the eight years since I have done my best to accept her choice.

But when I sat down at the computer one night several months ago, I wanted to escape from the minutiae of my day. That morning I had managed to drag the garbage out to the end of my driveway, drop off my daughter at day care, and get to work on time. In the afternoon, I had peeled the slugs off the recycling bin without throwing up, made banana bread, folded laundry and braided my daughter’s hair with an almost straight part. When 8 o’clock finally came, I read her a bedtime story, kissed her softly and turned out the light.

 As I walked from her room, I wanted some mindless distraction. Too exhausted even for television, I went to my computer and opened Facebook.

On Facebook, I can breeze through my past and present life. I can discover that Christine from seventh grade made a salad with roasted shallots for dinner. I get byte-size daily affirmations from my old co-worker Monica. I learn that my poet friend Florine plays Rage Against the Machine to drown out her noisy neighbor.

If I feel like reaching out, I’ll click to indicate I like Sue’s news feed or write a supportive snippet to Julie, who has been sick. In this virtual community, I feel connected. There is a controlled menu of options from which I can choose to successfully communicate. Maybe that is why, after downing the rest of my beer, I typed in my birth mother’s name and pressed return.

Technology had already failed us. Ten years ago, before our first meeting in an airport terminal, we each wrote a solitary letter to the other. I spent hours on mine, trying to write the perfect introduction. It exhausted me. In her letter to me, my birthmother suggested e-mail.

I had gotten my first e-mail account only months before, which I accessed at home by dial-up. E-mail was still a novelty that I hadn’t used for any real purpose. Already, though, I appreciated how e-mail was less intimate than the phone, which she and I had used only once, the first time we connected. Her voice in my small Brooklyn apartment felt too real and too close so soon. E-mail felt like the trifecta of simplicity, familiarity and expediency.

E-mail also seemed like the perfect medium for our covert operation, which she was hiding from her other children. It was a private world where we could build our relationship without outside pressure. But my birth mother did not have her own account. So she gave me her husband’s work e-mail address. And I did not realize how awkward this would be until I sent my first message, briefly reminding her husband who I was and then trying to arrange the airport meeting: “Could you ask her if 11:15 in Terminal B baggage works O.K.?” Unlike letters with their built-in lag time, e-mail made me expect an immediate response. After I returned from work each night, I dialed up every 10 minutes to check. I waited  and waited. There was nothing for an entire week. I e-mailed her husband once more, explaining again who I was and asking: “Did you get my first e-mail? Will she be able to do 11:15 in Terminal B, by baggage?” Two days later — only a few days before she and I were to meet — I finally got this from her in return: “Sorry, I guess this e-mail thing is not as good as I thought since we don’t have e-mail at home and my husband has a million things to do at work. See you Thursday at 11:15.”

Our airport meeting was strained by awkward pauses and unasked questions. Still, I thought there were signs our relationship would work. She took me to her house nearby, introduced me to her husband while her children were away and told me family stories. When I left, she said she would write a letter soon. I had faith we would figure it out.

It took six weeks for that letter to arrive, during which I screamed, cried and swore her off. I had a thousand conversations with her in my mind about the past. By the time I got her kind note about how great I had turned out, I was way ahead of her. Real time was not fast enough to keep up with all I had lost.

*Kerry Herlihy, a writer in southern Maine, is working on a memoir about her adoption and motherhood.

(Story, 36-40 year old woman/posted on January 23th, 2010 at 10:02 p.m.)

(Story, 41-45 year old man/posted on January 16th, 2010 at 6:00 p.m.)

I was adopted at birth and have never met my natural parents. However, I know the basic circumstances around my adoption from information passed down through the adoption agency involved.

It seems that both my natural parents were married although not to each other and that I was the product of a one night stand at either a Christmas or New Year's party which took place at a local hotel. I even know which hotel it was! Apparently my natural mother's husband left her as a result of the affair and her getting pregnant with me, and she gave me up for adoption. She had two daughters from her marriage so I have two half-sisters somewhere. I know my natural mother was from the UK and my natural father from America but don't know his name because my mother didn't add his details to my birth certificate.

My adoptive parents adopted me because they were told they couldn't have children. They planned on adopting a boy first and then a girl a little bit later on. In the meantime, though, my adoptive mother became pregnant despite doctors' assertions that she couldn't and, as a result, I have a younger sister who is the natural child of my adoptive parents. My adoptive family has been very good to me and I feel lucky to have been afforded a good life with them.

Being adopted has raised a few issues for me over the years. Firstly, I have never felt I've known exactly who I am and where I belong and it feels strange that I don't know more about my roots. I have at times been tempted to search for my natural parents but, for various reasons, have never gone through with it. Secondly, I have always felt like the 'odd one out' in some sense, particularly as my sister is the natural child of my adoptive parents. When I was younger I didn't get on very well with my mother and I often wondered whether the fact I was adopted had something to do with it. That seems silly now but at the time it did play on my mind.

Looking back, the issues I have had relating to adoption over the years have been far outweighed by the benefits. I love my family dearly and I feel very lucky to have been adopted by such caring and supportive people.