Anthurium

Honor your father and your mother…

Exodus 20:12

I recently finished reading Caledonia: An Ancient Strife by Michael Phillips.  It is the sequel to the Legend of the Celtic Stone, which I am now reading.  This fiction based in fact series chronicles the ancient strife between England and Scotland, and the issue of Scottish independence which refused to die.  I was fascinated by Caledonia, because I believe that I am of Scottish descent.  You might think: “Um…you believe you are of Scottish descent? Why don’t you know?”   A simple answer - because I am adopted.

I was born in the spring of 1948 [in the boom years after World War II], at the Eva M. Harris Maternity & Rest Home in Phoenix, Arizona. [The rates at the home were $3.50 and $5.00 per day, no extra for the baby.]  Two days later, I was adopted by a young couple for whom I was their third adopted child and only daughter.  From my earliest remembrances, I have known that I was adopted, but my mother was reluctant to talk about my birth parents.  In fact, I knew nothing about the circumstances of my adoption until I was twenty-seven years old.  At that time, my complex allergies were really giving me a run for my money, and my husband thought it might be helpful to contact my birth parents and get a medical history.  One evening when we were sitting around the kitchen table at my parents’ home, he asked about them.

My mother melted into a heap of wailing misery.  To her, that simple question meant that  I was rejecting my adoptive parents.  She and I had never been close; my protestations of affection and love fell on deaf ears.  Finally my father made her go get the little box in which she kept the adoption materials.  When she returned, the first words out of her mouth were: birth parents giving up a child for adoption never give their correct names, so don’t think you will find out anything from the names on that piece of paper in your hand.  I barely heard her.  Instead, I stared at two names:  Ross and Corbett. 

Ross, or Rose, from the word ros, is a Highland clan dating from 1160 under King Malcolm.  Corbett or Corbet are surnames of the Clan Ross.  If I am the child of a Ross and a Corbett, I am, indeed, of Scottish descent.