Not for the Likes of Us: The Story of Luke's Adoption and Then Some

Not For The Likes Of Us

The Story Of Luke’s Adoption And Then Some

Irene Kay

AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

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© 2010 Irene Kay. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 9/15/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4520-5431-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2191-4 (ebook)

Contents

Chapter 1:

You did it the easy (?) way then

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

What? He can’t be British? Are you sure? I never heard of such a thing!

Chapter 4.

It’s not like having your own, is it?

Chapter 5.

Once is not enough

Chapter 1

It’s not for the likes of us, I never heard of such a thing, or even What’ll the neighbours think?

Chapter 2 :

The blitz kid.

Chapter 3 :

I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since the Second World War.

Chapter 1

Bohemian Rhapsody

Chapter 2

‘Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?

Chapter 3

The Chip Butty Times.

Chapter 4

Tony – Someday he’ll come along (maybe)

Chapter 1

BC – Before Cancer

Chapter 2

What’s up d’Oc?

Chapter 3

The unthinkable…………the double whammy.

Chapter 4

Reconstruction of breast and life.

Chapter 5

AC – After Cancer

Epilogue

Luke’s Story....

BOOK 1

ALWAYS AND FOREVER

Chapter 1:

You did it the easy (?) way then

Adopt. To bring (a person) into a specific relationship especially to take (another’s child) as one’s own child. That’s the dictionary definition of the word adopt; the operative words being ‘as one’s own child’.

Being an adoptive parent is to be one of a minority group; adopt and raise a third world child and you are virtually on your own in society. Adopting a baby should be a relatively easy process. It isn’t. Adopting a third world child should be difficult but, for us, it wasn’t and that is exactly what we did thirty four years ago.

We adopted a Brazilian baby in 1976 because it had become obvious that we had no chance within the system in England. The ‘swinging sixties’, with the advent of the contraceptive pill and a relaxing of attitudes towards single motherhood, had substantially reduced the number of babies available for adoption and, thus, the adoption vetting process became more severe but not necessarily less likely to make mistakes.

I had always wanted to have children, indeed I had never imagined myself without them. However, in the early 60s when most young women of my generation were busy looking for engagement rings, I had sought the bohemia of my life and gone to Paris and lived with a French family as their Au Pair. This was something quite outrageous and unusual for a working-class girl and my mother came out with her two most favourite expressions, what’ll the neighbours think and what’ll the family think? However, I was twenty-six and had not been offered one engagement ring and I took off to Paris for some fun.

Paris in the 60s was paradise. Always having been a fan of God’s own music, namely jazz, I found my utopia in the jazz clubs of the Left Bank. The literature of the day was predominantly that of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Francoise Sagan. Students, usually with both hair and loosely-knit sweaters down to the knees, talked endlessly about existentialism and tried to fathom out what it meant. Paris, at that time, was less sophisticated than London, its renaissance after the Second World War only just beginning. Nevertheless, it was ‘swinging’ and, for me, the most beautiful city in the world. So it was that I forgot about my body clock ticking away in my late twenties and I did not marry until 1968 when I was almost thirty-three. It was in 1962 that I met a handsome Frenchman, Olivier Durand, in a Left Bank jazz club and we eventually married. Although Olivier was a very competent jazz musician playing both guitar and clarinet he was certainly no existentialist and he had never had hair or sweater down to his knees. In fact, his background was of the French landed gentry whose antecedents had barely escaped the guillotine in 1789; a far cry from my own very working-class origins. He was certainly not expected to marry a docker’s daughter.

In 1966 Olivier, by profession an electronics engineer, was offered a job with an American company with an agency in London and we left Paris. I wasn’t too happy about leaving since, by that time, I had a working-permit and a very well-paid job as a secretary/documentalist in a pipeline construction company just outside of Paris. However, I loved him, he was my man and I had vowed to follow him to the ends of the earth. I still didn’t have an engagement ring but in 1968 he put a wedding ring on my finger and I was a respectable married woman living in Kingston in Surrey. Inevitably, I eventually wanted a family and, being in excellent health, I foresaw no problems. However, I never conceived and so began the distressing road of sub-fertility, of taking my temperature every morning to ascertain whether or not I was ovulating; I was. The next step was a sperm count for my husband; no problem there. This was followed by hospitalisation and the blowing of one of my fallopian tubes. All to no avail; I was approaching what was then, for the adoption procedure in Britain, the dreaded benchmark of thirty-six years and we still had no children. All sorts of thoughts go through the head in these situations. Should I have thought about having children earlier instead of living the bohemian life? Would sex with a different man have produced a different result? What does become painfully obvious is that, in the event of sub-fertility treatment, you need plenty of time and, inevitably, these problems only become obvious when time is running out and desperation is setting in.

At this time, we knew two couples who, without too many problems had adopted and taken what some would see as the ‘easy route’ to parenthood. Guided by them we took the first steps towards becoming adoptive parents in England. I had no qualms about adoption; I have never seen adopted children as being in any way second best. Adoption is no second best option, it is simply another way of becoming a parent if lying on your back and conceiving whilst also enjoying sex with someone that you love doesn’t work for you.

It came as quite a shock to me that the adoption societies, whilst not discounting us totally felt that, at our ages and with our own small house in Kingston and a business which we had started and were running ourselves, we already had enough and shouldn’t be asking for more. In fact, a lady who was the head of an adoption agency in London actually asked that question! She seemed to take the view that we wanted a child simply as an acquisition and she got us out of her office by saying that, if I came back with letters from a gynaecologist confirming that it was unlikely that I would ever have children, she would consider our application. She didn’t even give us an application form. She knew, without doubt, that I was running out of time and she need never bother with us again. When we left her smart office, Olivier said to me, We have no chance. He was right. I could only wonder why such an insensitive woman could be in such a position.

However, we had our own way of beating the system. Two of our very best friends, a young Frenchman Robert, whom we had met when we were living in Paris and his Brazilian wife, Racquel, were at that time living in Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Robert was a talented painter and sculptor who had had considerable success in the three years that they had been living in Belo Horizonte. In 1975, they spent six months in Europe and stayed with us in Kingston for two weeks. It was during this time that Racquel said to me, If you cannot get a baby in England, why don’t you get one in Brazil? Hundreds of babies die every day in Sao Paulo alone and there is always a need for adoptive parents who can support and love them. I replied, You go ahead and set it up hardly believing that it was possible.

Three months’ later I received a letter from Racquel telling me that she had located a Social Worker, a mulatto named Ruth Garcia, who dealt with babies and children from the ‘interior’ (another word for the jungle) and who were, usually for reasons of poverty within their families, available for adoption. Even then I didn’t hold my breath; these were the sort of things that happen to other people and were not the likes of me. It’s a good job I didn’t hold my breath because it was over a year before we heard anything more.

In the course of our own import/export business, we sometimes had to entertain overseas suppliers. We had been doing just that for five days at the end of September 1976. An extended visit of a Japanese supplier and his wife had left us both exhausted. I had had a particularly hard time since the wife spoke almost no English and I had been doing the tourist bit around London with her whilst Olivier took care of the business of being the British agent to the Japanese company.

They finally left after a difficult week’s visit and we were going upstairs to bed when the telephone rang at 1.00am early on Friday morning. Olivier answered the telephone and it was Robert ‘phoning from Belo Horizonte in Brazil. All I could hear was Olivier speaking in French and saying un petit garcon? Quel age? Je ne sais pas. This translated means, a little boy? How old? I don’t know. When he came off the ‘phone he said that there was three-day-old baby available for adoption. The following day the telephone rang again, this time it was Racquel. She said, Irene, I am picking up your baby tomorrow, when can you get here? She rang again, this time on Sunday evening. She said, Irene, your baby is here, he is beautiful, when are you coming? I was able to tell her that I was flying out from Gatwick the following evening.

It should be mentioned that Robert and Racquel had by that time two children themselves. Their daughter Helène, was four and André their son just nine months’ old. They would have been less than human if the thought had not crossed their minds that I might have had second thoughts and not gone at all and they would have an instant third child. I must admit, I was nervous but there were never any second thoughts.

Olivier drove me to Gatwick airport on the evening of 28th September 1976 and I flew over Sugar Loaf Mountain and the Corcovado at about 6.00am the following morning. Will I ever forget that beautiful sight? A short internal flight took me on to Belo Horizonte on the afternoon of the 29th. It was the day before my 41st birthday and I was on my way to becoming an instant mother.

Chapter 2.

Robert and Racquel picked me up at Belo Horizonte airport and on the journey back to their home Racquel didn’t stop telling me that the baby was very small because he had been born prematurely. This, however, did not prepare me for my first sight of Luke. My first impression was that he was indeed very small, very ugly and much darker skinned that I had imagined since Racquel had insisted that he was ‘branca’ or white. He weighed only 2.2 kilos and, had he been born in an English hospital, would doubtless have been in intensive care until his weight increased. He was ugly because his face was very squashed. The left side almost didn’t exist; he appeared to have no cheekbone on that side. That side of his face started at the ear and followed a straight line down to his chin and he had only half a mouth. He had no forehead, his hair, which was thick and dark, started at the level of his eyes and his nose hooked downwards. I couldn’t see his eyes, he was sleeping at the time. My first thought was that I had travelled a very long way for this tiny scrap of humanity.

Racquel had employed a nurse to come in every morning to change and feed Luke and set him up for the day after which Racquel had taken over until my arrival. I had very little idea of what to do, it was over thirty years since my sister had been born and feeding and changing methods had drastically changed since then. However, when I discovered how much the nurse was charging, I soon learnt.

The following afternoon, although I was suffering from jet lag, Racquel and I went into town for an appointment with a paediatrician. He said that Luke was indeed very small and, therefore, should be fed little but often for the first few weeks. ‘Little’ meant 27 centilitres of milk and ‘often’ meant that amount eight times per day. This worked out at just over 2 litres of milk per day. He put Luke onto a towel on a long leather bench and pulled the towel violently from two opposing corners. Luke jumped; reflexes okay. He listened to his heart, that was okay. He pronounced Luke to be small but otherwise in excellent health and I, by then, knew that he took his milk