'Without a map' by Meredith Hall
The topic of adoption pops up more frequently in my life at the moment. Friends who were adopted still feel that hole of rejection in their 50s or 70s,. Friends who, pregnant as a teenager in the late 50s or 60s, were forced to give up their babies: no support, no benefits. A heart breaking story remains in my mind: titled ‘legal kidnapping’, written by a woman who was forced to give up her baby, about her despair and how the forced adoption affected her for the rest of her life.
“Without a map” by Meredith Hall is such a story. The author is a well loved, well behaved good girl, firmly embedded in the loving family (mother, brother, sister, the father re-married) and the tight church community. Things change when she becomes a teenager – the mother loosens the tight control, the daughter ends up pregnant at 16. A phonecall and she’s an outcast; kicked out of her home, shipped off to her father’s house. Unwelcome, hidden away. Out of sight, without support or even the most basic human comfort, the baby is whisked away and not talked about again while she returns to high school.
The book accompanies the author through the lonely pregnancy and through the chaotic life that follows. The story is told in segments, flashbacks, events and situations that are not resolved. Life is not reported sequentially; scenes flick from one reality into another, without transition. It’s a bit disjointed, leaves the reader to fill the gap – how did she get from here to there? These questions are not answered. Yet, I didn’t mind – for me it was enough to know that, a survivor, she obviously survived and got out of seemingly disastrous situations. Boyfriends are named, appear and disappear without emotions or explanations.
The reader witnesses how the abandonment during pregnancy affects her relationship to her parents. The struggle to reconcile the obvious love with the equally obvious abandonment and betrayal.
Interspersed with the personal story are snippets of American reality. Brief paragraphs, in italics, remind the reader of the reality of those years.
“1970. We drop 125,000 tons of napalm on Vietnam.
We drop 8.4 million gallons of Agent Orange on Vietnam.
Anti-draft and anti-war and civil rights demonstrations flare. …”
Sometimes the author is in amongst the demonstrations, other times she’s an observer. These snippets ground the story in its time. A time before the pill, a time when babies born out of wedlock were bastards, a time when there was no single parent benefit or any other support.
Adoptions in America are not eternally closed as in New Zealand. In America adopted children have the right to find out about their birth parents once they are 21. A reconnection is facilitated and monitored by social services.
I loved the book and highly recommend reading it!