Grocery Cart Kisses

I missed them. The Grocery Cart Kisses.... You know the scene you can see several times at the grocery store on any given afternoon. You stop in to the market on a crowded Saturday for apples, paper towels and hot dog buns; or a make a quick stop in after work for pasta, salad and french bread and you see it.

A mother finishes paying for her food and then scoops her child up from the front of the cart and delivers a kiss to her child's sweet, chubby cheek. I believe that those kisses are part of the daily dose of affection manifesting the love that helps to center a child in his or her sense of being and well being.

I missed giving all of those grocery shopping kisses. So many of them. I am still horrified and angry that I was not deemed worthy enough to raise my own child and that some social worker was allowed to choose who would raise my precious child.

Sometimes it just hits me like a freight train when I allow myself to really, really think about another woman raising my child. A woman about whom I really know very little. My adult child keeps us all very separate. I believe that is the coping mechanism which allows him keep all of his parents in his life.

A few years ago, I was standing in line behind a woman at the grocery store. The woman behind me was talking to her and I was caught in a cross fire of adoption conversation. The woman behind asked of the woman in front of me how her newly adopted child was adjusting.

She actually asked, " Is the child affectionate to you.? " Excuuuuse me, unenlightened woman!!!!???"....I felt like wringing her neck.

This poor baby had just been stripped of her country, heritage, language and family and had been brought across the ocean to her brand new and "better" life to live with complete strangers. And now she was expected to be "affectionate?"

So much wrong is with adoption.......

Having a bad adoption day.