What Is It About Superheroes

My friend, Ande who writes LINK>The Adoption Files wants to explore the topic of adoption and superhero origin stories. Not being familiar with comic book history, I’ll leave it to others but her question intrigued me and led me down a rabbit hole of sorts via google.

Here is a list – Superman (we used to have a costume Superman shirt with the big S for my son Simeon), Spider-Man, Supergirl, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Loki, Black Widow, Perhaps the strangest is the Ninja Turtles (these crime-fighting turtle superheroes. Donatello, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo are adopted – as baby turtles – by a Japanese rat who discovers they are dripping with a strange ooze before they mutate into human-like turtles. The history of these unique superheroes is about as complex as adoption itself. They’re being raised by a single dad who isn’t even the same species as they are.)

Finally, Iron Man (Tony Stark – my maternal grandmother’s family name !! Yay), So I’ll take Iron Man – Superhero Tony Stark is adopted. Many kids love to dress up as the iconic Marvel superhero, but may not know about his complex family history. Tony’s brother, Arno, is the biological son of Howard and Maria Stark. As Tony later learned, the Starks adopted him as a cover after Arno’s health deteriorated as a baby. The identities of Tony’s birth parents were not revealed for many years. Tony’s birth mother, British Radio DJ Amanda Armstrong, was finally revealed to fans in 2016. The following issue revealed that his birth father was a SHIELD agent code-named Jude. Jude turned out to be a Hydra mole, forcing Amanda to place her baby for adoption.

My list comes from Adoptions with Love – LINK>9 Adopted Superheroes by Nancy Rosenhaus. Which confirms my suspicion that adoptive parents love to take their kids to see these movies as an affirmation of their own personal hero status. I don’t mean to be cruel or cynical but too many stories to confirm that kind of behavior causes me to say this.

Salon had a good article about what appeals to us in these personas titled LINK>We are all superheroes! by Robin S Rosenberg. So, I’ll finish this blog off with a few words about superheroes from that article.

A superhero is challenged by a moral dilemma, physical trial, or both. The superhero triumphs, sometimes learning and growing in the process. The stories generally follow the standard basic plots with which we are familiar. In fact, we may know the form of the story arc even before the story begins. This is especially true of origin stories, which form the bread and butter of superhero films and typically conform to some version of the hero’s journey in which the protagonist is, after some challenges and setbacks, transformed and dedicates his or her life to an altruistic purpose.

People generally enjoy simpler stories more than complex ones. We may prefer our superhero stories to be relatively simple. Their predictable, formulaic tales can also be reassuring: We can allow ourselves to become anxious on behalf of the story’s characters because we know that all will turn out right in the end. A story’s tension is cathartic. We don’t have to worry about getting too devastated.

Good fiction, and good storytelling of any kind, allows us to become immersed in someone else’s world and in doing so provides us with both an escape and emotional engagement. We can lose ourselves and temporarily forget our worries and woes, fears and foes. We also get drawn in to the characters’ world and issues. Stories’ core themes of right versus wrong, personal choice, sacrifice for the greater good, finding purpose and meaning, resonate. I will add – with good reason in a complicated world.

Glad I Was

1997 with my adoptee parents, apologies for the blurry quality

With Thanksgiving on my mind, I was remembering an email from my mom in which she told me she had to stop doing a family tree on Ancestry because it just wasn’t “real.” Both of my parents were adopted. Then, she added “glad I was” but that never really seemed genuine to me and the more I’ve learned about adoption and the trauma of separating a baby from its mother, the more I doubt she sincerely was grateful that it had happened, yet that was the reality and there was no way to change that. In a weird way though, I learned to be grateful that both of my parents had been adopted because otherwise, I would not exist and I am grateful for the life I have lived.

Learning my parents’ origin stories (they both died clueless), which was also my own ancestors’ stories brought with it a deep sense of gratitude for me, that I had not been given up for adoption when my mom discovered she was pregnant with me. By the ways of that time in history (early 1950s), she should have been sent away to have and give me up, only to return to her high school in time to graduate (she was a junior at the time of my conception and birth). The photo I have at the top of my blog are the pictures I now have of each of my original grandmothers holding one or the other of my parents as infants.

I continue to be grateful that I grew up with the parents who conceived me and then raised me throughout my childhood. I’ve heard many adoptees say that having biological, genetic children of their own made them fully aware of what being adopted had taken from them. At least, my parents had each other. I do continue to credit my dad’s adoptive parents with preserving me in our family. They were also a source of financial support for my parents during my earliest years. First, giving them space in their own home and me a dresser drawer bassinet. Then, an apartment in their multi-family building until my dad had saved up enough and was earning enough working shifts (and sometimes two shifts in a row) at an oil refinery to buy a house for our family.

In 2014, I experienced the last Thanksgiving with my parents. I knew their health was declining but I still expected to have yet another Thanksgiving with them in 2015. However, my mother passed away in late September and my father only 4 months later. They had been high school sweethearts and had been married over 50 years. My dad just didn’t find life worth continuing on with after his wife died. I knew that in the days after her death but then he sucked it up and tried. One morning, he simply didn’t wake up. He died peacefully with a bit of a smile on his face. I think he must have seen my mom waiting for him to join her.

Tapping Into The Origin Story

My Origin Story. Certainly, discovering that has been true for me as I learned about my adopted parents origins and meeting biological, genetically related family for the first time at well over 60 years old. Learning this became more real than anything else that I had previously believed about my life. And this had indeed changed my focus as far as writing goes.

Before I chose to be born of these parents, I must have known they were both adoptees and that they had been separated from the parents who conceived them. This then really is my origin story. This became the north star of my day, constantly pulling me and allowing me to bring this eternal something into time.

I know not all attempts at a reunion for people impacted by adoption turn into happily ever after stories. Mine didn’t really. I mean it didn’t turn into relationships with a lot of substance but they were real ones – after living a deception really – all my life.

If you embark on this quest, you will see there are these little, tiny moments along the course of your lifetime that have allowed you to see beyond the story you could not know before. It impresses upon you all the time and encroaches upon your awareness. It is the real reality and while these may seem like little tiny moments, they are not really little. Fall in love with these moments. Yes, a part of you will probably be nervous about how you will be received. That’s not the truth of what your quest is really about, even if it seems that way. These moments of touching your origin story, will guide your steps, your thoughts, your conversations, your deeds and you will bring into everything you are doing, this love, beauty and intelligence that is seeking to move you to your goal.

Notice when suddenly, grace appears.

I was always interested in knowing where my parents actually did come from. Then, one day, my cousin called to tell me that she had obtained her father’s (my uncle, my mom’s brother) adoption file. This was something I had long wanted to do regarding my mom, who had been denied her own adoption file when she was seeking that. Now, I knew that it was possible.

So, suddenly, something happens and the wall is gone and regardless of how it actually turns out okay you are still here, okay, and still alive with a wholeness you lacked before. It was that moment when I knew that I had achieved this goal.

If you embark on this journey, you will have to do something but an energy will also be pulling you forward. You will find that the obstacles, hindrances, and the obstructions you thought were there, actually have no power over you. With persistence and determination, you will get where you are hoping to go.

The vision of becoming whole becomes more real than the circumstances you knew before you began. I know. I didn’t expect that to happen to me but it did. While I still love the people who played the role of grandparents in my life until they died, when I think of “my” grandparents now, I think of those people (and the people they came from and the people who have come from them) as my “real” family. Even if I lack that lifetime of experiences with them.