Adopted Mum Quotes

Bonnie and her mum are both members of Amnesty International," said Abigail. "Of course they are," murmured Madeline. This must be how Jennifer Aniston feels, thought Madeline, whenever she hears about Angelina and Brad adopting another orphan or two.

(on the word "fuck") 'Oh, come on, Mum,' I sighed at her protest. 'It's just an old Anglo-Saxon word for the female organ which has been adopted by an inherently misogynist language as a negative epithet. It's the same as "fuck", it basically means the same as copulate, but the latter is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because copulate has its roots in Latin and Latin reminds us that we are a sophisticated, learned species, not the rutting animals that these prehistoric grunts would have us appear to be, and isn't that really the issue here? We don't want to admit that we are essentially animals? We want to distinguish ourselves from the fauna with grand conceits and elaborate language; become angels worthy of salvation, not dumb creatures consigned to an earthly, terminal end. It's just a word, Mum; a sound meaning a thing; and your disgust is just denial of a greater horror: that our consciousness is not an indication of our specialness but the terrifying key to knowing how truly insignificant we are.' She told me to got fuck myself.

Oliver, we’ve got something to tell you,” Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad green mangler. Unlike the doctor, when Dad says we, he means we because Mum is omnipotent. “Who’s dead?” I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg. “No one’s dead.” “You’re getting a divorce?” “Oliver.” “Mum’s preggers?” “No, we—” “I’m adopted.” “Oliver! Please, shit up!

As specimens go, they always get excited about me. I'm a good one. A show-stopper. I'm the kind of kid they'll still enquire about ten years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending. Tick, tick, tick. I lure them in to being with. Cultivate my specimen face. They like that. Do-gooders are vomit-worthy. Damaged goods are dangerous. The ones that are in it cos the thought it would be a step up from an office job are tedious. The ones who've been in too long lose it. The ones who think they've got the Jesus touch are fucking insane. The I can save you brigade are particularly radioactive. They think if you just inhale some of their middle-classism, then you'll be saved.

We all walked down the street together, looking like a sort of pick-and-mix adopted family: dad, disabled mum, and two differently mixed-race kids. Madonna would have been so proud of us.

I can’t blame all this for my drinking—I can’t blame my parents or my childhood, an abusive uncle or some terrible tragedy. It’s my fault. I was a drinker anyway—I’ve always liked to drink. But I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. And then I went from being a drinker to being a drunk, and there’s nothing more boring than that. I’m better now, about the children thing; I’ve got better since I’ve been on my own. I’ve had to. I’ve read books and articles, I’ve realized that I must come to terms with it. There are strategies, there is hope. If I straightened myself out and sobered up, there’s a possibility that I could adopt. And I’m not thirty-four yet—it isn’t over. I am better than I was a few years ago, when I used to abandon my trolley and leave the supermarket if the place was packed with mums and kids; I wouldn’t have been able to come to a park like this, to sit near the playground and watch chubby toddlers rolling down the slide. There were times, at my lowest, when the hunger was at its worst, when I thought I was going to lose my mind.

My mum all those years ago sensed a child who had been adopted was also a child who could feel terribly hurt. And no matter how much she loved me, no matter how much my dad loved me, there is still a windy place right at the core of my heart. The windy place is like Wuthering Heights, out on open moors, rugged and wild and free and lonely. The wind rages and batters at the trees. I struggle against the windy place. I sometimes even forget it. But there it is. I am partly defeated by it. You think adoption is a story which has an end. But the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending.

Waternish Estate was sold to a Dutchman in the 1960s when Bad-tempered Donald died. In turn, the Dutchman sold a part of the estate to the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. Donovan was the first of the British musicians to adopt the flower-power image. He is most famous for the psychedelically fabulous smash hits “Sunshine Superman,” “Season of the Witch” and “The Fat Angel,” and for being the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for the possession of marijuana. Donovan has a history of being deeply groovy and of being most often confused with Bob Dylan, which reportedly annoys Donovan quite a lot. “Sometime in the early seventies, Bob Dylan bought part of the estate,” Mum tells me. “But he put a water bed on the second floor of the house for whatever it is these hippies get up to, and it came crashing through the ceiling.” “Not Bob Dylan,” I say. “Donovan.” “Who?” Mum says.

As we pulled up at the big school gates, I saw tears rolling down my dad’s face. I felt confused as to what part of nature or love thought this was a good idea. My instinct certainly didn’t; but what did I know? I was only eight. So I embarked on this mission called boarding school. And how do you prepare for that one? In truth, I found it really hard; there were some great moments like building dens in the snow in winter, or getting chosen for the tennis team, or earning a naval button, but on the whole it was a survival exercise in learning to cope. Coping with fear was the big one. The fear of being left and the fear of being bullied--both of which were very real. What I learned was that I couldn’t manage either of those things very well on my own. It wasn’t anything to do with the school itself, in fact the headmaster and teachers were almost invariably kind, well-meaning and good people, but that sadly didn’t make surviving it much easier. I was learning very young that if I were to survive this place then I had to find some coping mechanisms. My way was to behave badly, and learn to scrap, as a way to avoid bullies wanting to target me. It was also a way to avoid thinking about home. But not thinking about home is hard when all you want is to be at home. I missed my mum and dad terribly, and on the occasional night where I felt this worst, I remember trying to muffle my tears in my pillow while the rest of the dormitory slept. In fact I was not alone in doing this. Almost everyone cried, but we all learned to hide it, and those who didn’t were the ones who got bullied. As a kid, you can only cry so much before you run out of tears and learn to get tough. I meet lots of folks nowadays who say how great boarding school is as a way of toughening kids up. That feels a bit back-to-front to me. I was much tougher before school. I had learned to love the outdoors and to understand the wild, and how to push myself. When I hit school, suddenly all I felt was fear. Fear forces you to look tough on the outside but makes you weak on the inside. This was the opposite of all I had ever known as a kid growing up. I had been shown by my dad that it was good to be fun, cozy, homely--but then as tough as boots when needed. At prep school I was unlearning this lesson and adopting new ways to survive. And age eight, I didn’t always pick them so well.

Do you want to learn Tagalog?” I asked, surprised. I had had no idea Shla had an interest in foreign languages. “I just… people try to speak to me in Tagalog, sometimes.” “Oh,” was all I managed. Outside the church my mum and I had frequented, the only other language people had tried to speak to me was Slow English. “Yeah, I just… I don’t know. I had to choose a language and it was a reason, and then it seemed useful for the competitions… Like, half the word that doesn’t speak English speaks Spanish. But…” She swallowed, glancing up. “I don’t want it. It’s not what I want and I… I’m a little angry, because the only reason Tagalog is anything like Spanish in the first place is that Spanish people decided to take over. And then, I don’t know, the English did too, and I’m English, right? But…” She gestured at herself. “I’m not.” “You are,” I promised her. “And you are not,” I added. It was equally true and in this, at least, I knew just what she felt. By leaving my country I had damned myself to never being home again, eternally in exile, even if I were to return to Ethiopia I would never just be Ethiopian. Shla had never left, but being adopted had left her with a feeling of loss, like she had lost the thread of her own existence, her own history. In the end, she was standing at the border, unable to declare her loyalty to any one country, or, it seemed, any one language. “But now you can’t drop it, you need to get your GSCEs.

Jacinta and I shared a doll. I don’t know where it came from, but it wasn’t from a shop because by the time we adopted her, she was missing her shoes and socks. We named her Grace. She had long, curly hair until Jacinta cut it short and I cut it even shorter. We scribbled nonsense on her body with felt tips and tried to rub it off with cotton balls soaked in nail varnish. We fought over her so hard, Jacinta at one end, me at the other, we pulled her head clean off and agreed to play separately with the two parts of her until Mum found a way to reattach the decapitated head, saying, “You can forget about a hamster.

Ron looked uncomfortable, probably having some sort of flashback to third year when Crookshanks had gone after his—well, Peter. “What are you going to feed it?” Draco stroked a finger down the center of Algieba’s face. She shut her eyes and leaned into his touch and—for all that she might have been the kneazle’s adopted mum, Draco was her daddy and clearly her favorite. “Say Algieba, how do you feel about ginger for dinner?

The atmosphere inside was terrible. Brenda stared into the distance whenever I was around her and hardly spoke to me. Little Jim passed me in the hall “you shouldn’t have done that” he said without malice. Was he scared too? Why was everyone scared? What didn’t I know? I walked into the kitchen “Hi Brenda, what should I do now I’m late for tea?” I asked her honestly. “You can do whatever you choose Tracie” she said staring through the kitchen window. It kind of reminded me of my first memory of mum. I was shocked she sounded like she really didn’t care. She wasn’t even fake caring any more she just plain didn’t give a shit. “Thanks” I said and walked towards the living room where Caroline and Rita were sat. Rita got up and walked past me to go to bed. “What’s going on?” I said to Caroline. “We didn’t know where you were” she said shaking her head at me. Did nobody get it?

Macclesfield was like a wound I couldn't stop picking. I didn't know if I'd ever heal or if my constant pulling at the scab would leave me open to infection but I did know I had to keep doing it. I had to find out what lay beneath each layer of skin even if it meant that I felt more and more pain. It could have been another form of self harm or it could have been a part of my journey I just had to make. Either way I was compelled to continue. Could I get Jodie and Jonathon back? Could I see them playing again? Would Courtney accept me into her family? Perhaps I'd belong there until I got my family back together? Okay so I couldn't grow up with Alan as I'd liked but I could try and fit in with Clive and Phil. The thought hurt, I could easily turn to crime but how would that help with the social services?

I wasn't going to school. I'd made the decision somewhere between him threatening to kill me and him trying to replace mum. I couldn't pinpoint the logic but I knew it had to be done. I was different and if he hit Cass I'd kill him.