Sometimes my blog entries feel really forced, just a way to make myself write regularly. Occasionally I’ll get inspired by something and will be amazed at my own brilliance. But rarely does my inspiration come in the mail.
Yesterday I got a catalogue from ?Adoptionshop.com?. I don’t know how the catalogue people tracked me down. Erik thinks there’s an entirely harmless explanation relating to the fact that in the course of writing my recent play, I did some surfing of adoption related sites. But I know this is just the kind of ruse these people want me to believe.
It’s far more likely that I’ve been under surveillance and added to a secret national database of adoptees, based on the primary criteria of having low self-esteem and intimacy issues. And a dark sense of humor.
Anyway, the catalogue claims to offer ‘charming and unique gift ideas for adoptees, birth mothers and adoptive parents’. Its recommendation of the month is a new CD called -:
Do you have a little love to share?
14 beautiful songs celebrate the shared love that is at the center of adoption. This collection of original words and music by Janice Kapp Perry and Joy Saunders Lundberg will touch the hearts of every member of the adoption community.
Touching indeed. The first half dozen or so tracks have suitably nauseating titles like How Do I Say Thank You and Lullaby to a Newborn, but later the songwriting duo starts to express their darker side.
Track 9: I gave you more (so you’d better be grateful)
Track 11: My Designated Daddy (because the other one buggered off)
But this one is my absolute favorite and it requires no snarky comment from me in parenthesis.
Track 15: Nobody Wanted Me
I think this is absolutely bloody brilliant, getting to absolute the core of adoption. None of this ‘we chose you, you’re so special, you came from mummy’s heart’ bollocks. I haven’t heard the song, though it’s on my wish list for this Christmas, but I?m imagining it as a hard punkish rant, with Nobody Wanted Me delivered in a Johnny Rotten God Save the Queen style.
I like to picture Perry and Lundberg recording this as a joke at the end of a long day in the studio, never intending it to be released. Like an adoptee, it should probably have been left and forgotten, along with other titles such as the birth mother’s musical number:
– Farewell, adieu, auf wiedersehn, see ya later
But the little treasures don’t end there. The catalogue also features adoption related books. There’s the Complete Idiot?s Guide to Adoption, which brings a warmth to my heart knowing that even the dumbest infertile people can adopt. And if you’re smart but just broke, then there’s
Yes! You Can Afford Adoption.
?No other book tells you how to make adoption fit within your financial abilities?.
Chapter 1: How to get the best deal on your used baby.
There’s also books for children to help them understand who they are and where they came from:
‘A is for Adoption’
B is for Bastard
Ok, one final featured item.
The Adoption = Love bracelets
‘The colors of the bracelets are marbled together so each bracelet has its own unique characteristic.
AND:
Each bracelet comes individually wrapped in its own cellophane bag’
Because you know when you?re adopted you become grateful for the smallest of pleasures. I remember as a child that I used to dream of cellophane bags. If the bag happened to hold just a single item, well my heart would soar right out of my body.
Thanks Adoptionshop.com