To think back at all is to fall quickly, almost instinctively, on two names - Colin, the name of my adoptive father, and Maureen, the name of my adoptive mother - and on the significant word 'adopted', which has the weight of a name. Appended to this little trio of terms, like an intake of breath at the end of a short annoucement, is the nameless presence of the 'birth mother', as she's mostly called by adoption experts: the first mother, that's to say, also the eternal mother-in-waiting. But you wouldn't - I wouldn't - really want to say 'my mother' about either of these mothers, even though I do. Then there's adoption. 'My adoption'? It sounds like an affliction, or a misfortune, though it was far from being either.

LRB 31 March 2005 | PDF Download