Advantages Of Bastardom

Sometimes being adopted has it’s advantages.  I can think of several things being adopted has helped me get out of.

In small towns some families are associated with others. These families are known to be close to each other for a variety of reasons, generations of friendships, business dealings, a marriage between children.

My adoptive family is close to the D family.  We attend each others family weddings, anniversary celebrations, baby showers, and finally funerals.  We always speak to each other when we meet in public, and know that we can count on each other for a reference or a second to a nomination.   For the most part everybody seems to like everybody else.  We have known each other since childhood.  It’s a good thing. We help each other out.

My job brought me into close proximity to the matriarch of the D family several years ago.  I hadn’t known her well before, her daughter was married to my cousin, we had met, but hadn’t seen each other often.  Now that she was shopping at my store several days a week, we gave each other updates on family members and discussed community events.  I liked her, she reminded me of older members of my own family.

Mrs. D was very much a woman of her generation.  She had married her husband right after he came home from World War II.  She had contributed 4 children to the baby boom and worked with her husband on their farm.  She had also joined every club and service organization known to man.

Women of her generation made huge contributions to small communities.   Through their clubs they held charity drives for every disorder and disease one could name, sold paper poppies to build veteran’s hospitals, and put a good winter coat on every kid that ever needed one.  The extension  clubs they founded built playgrounds in parks and beautified town squares all over America.  If a family lost everything in a fire, these ladies collected a complete household of  pots, pans, clothing, furniture, and appliances, in 24 hours flat.

The energy that we put into our careers, they put out into their communities.  As it became the norm for women to work full time, membership in these clubs dwindled.  Many of these organizations don’t exist anymore, people just don’t have the time.

The surviving clubs do make efforts to get younger people involved.  I suppose that’s why Mrs. d asked me to join the Daughters Of The American Revolution.  Among those in Mrs. D’s circle the DAR was seen as the most prestigious of organizations, better even than the Eastern Star.  Not only did you have to be asked to join, you had to have the right heritage.  They didn’t let just anybody in.

To join the DAR you have to prove, through genealogical research, that you are a descendant of someone who fought in the revolutionary war.  Adoptees are not eligible for membership.

I know that Mrs. D was well aware that I was adopted.  There is an entry in my baby book noting that she sent my mother a gift when she received my adoption announcement.

When Mrs. D brought up nominating me for the DAR, I didn’t know what to say.  I wasn’t aware of the adoptee exception at the time, but I knew I didn’t want to join the DAR.  I said something about thinking about it, and mentioned how busy I was, hoping the subject wouldn’t come up again.

I didn’t want to join the DAR because Eleanor Roosevelt had resigned her membership back in the 1930’s.  When the DAR refused to allow African American singer Marian Anderson to perform in their auditorium, Eleanor had helped arrange for her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial instead.  I figured if they weren’t good enough for Eleanor Roosevelt, they weren’t good enough for me.

I do wonder what Eleanor Roosevelt, and Marian Anderson, for that matter, would have thought of the adoptee rights movement, but that’s another post.

I didn’t want to insult Mrs. D, I’m sure she thought she was doing a good thing by nominating me for the DAR, but I just couldn’t join.  She kept asking me about it, and I kept hemming and hawing.  Finally one day she came into the store with a couple of other women. She introduced them as fellow members of the DAR.  They were there to check me out, and possibly twist my arm.  I was cornered.

I shook their hands and listened to their pitch.  When they got to the part about heritage, I pulled out the only thing that I had and asked innocently if it was a problem that I was adopted.  The look on their faces was absolutely priceless.  They did some hemming and hawing.  Finally Mrs. D said that she had forgot all about my adoption.  I told them it was alright, and that I understood.  They took their leave very politely and quickly after that.

Mrs. D never mentioned the DAR again.

So being adopted does have some advantages.  But what does that say about being adopted?

Melanie Recoy blogs about first ladies, clubs, adoption, and bumble bees at According To Addie.