We Brits say sorry all the time. It rolls off the tongue even when we don't really take it to heart. At tennis we apologise for winning a point when the ball hits the net and rolls over - we win the point and we are certainly not sorry that luck was on our side. It is a clear advantage to catch the top of the net and I just wish I could do this more often. We even say sorry when someone else bumps into us when they did the bumping - ridiculous!
However, I did feel that Kier Starmer put his heart behind the apology for 185,000 forced adoptions over three decades since WWll. His words were powerful and very human. It is sad that many of those mothers have taken their guilt to the grave and will not here this. I just hope that this apology means that it will never happen again because that is what a true, "sorry" means. As a mother I can't imagine the heartache of having your very own baby ripped out of your arms and taken away forever. As for the parents who subsequently adopt, how much did they know of the circumstances that their new baby came through? Society was ultimately complicit in the way it refused to support unmarried mothers.
I have a friend who was forced to adopt their baby. At 15 she was locked in a room when she was in labour and told only to ring the bell for help when she thought she was going to die. Punishment dished out for being unmarried at the time, but no such equivalent for the father. Our society then, as it now is still, in many ways misogynistic. My thoughts have been with her through this week.
I will never know whether my mother chose the path of adopting me or whether she was coerced into giving me away. I realise now that something inside me always knew that I was not a good fit for the family I was adopted into. This was as much about me as it was my parents. I describe my life up to the point I met my birth mother as being a square peg in a round hole. Incredibly, I now know I am part of a much larger cohort of people from that era but that doesn't lessen the experience I had growing up. I felt different - odd.
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| My granddaughter has had her first photo of school so I have put my first photo up. A different ere, a different style! |
Our football team was close to being beaten by Ghana this week. That would have been a difficult outcome for England to come to terms with. Playing our next game against Mexico at high altitude on their home soil has many excuses already built in and if or when they lose, I believe they will be forgiven much more readily than if the score line against Ghana had sent us home. The match will be played while I am sound asleep. I will wake up to the news of whether we will be heading for Florida or Heathrow and then for me, it will be just another day. I know we are no longer in the top league but we did invent the game that has been adopted by the whole world - even though some people pronounce football as soccer - and that is good enough for me.
As for all the Americans who apologise for the words and actions of their glorious leader who has made the two hundred and fiftieth birthday all about him. I hear you and I sympathise. Will he be put on Mount Rushmore like all great presidents? Mmmm. There's a thought.
