The anger is building

I haven't yet called the attorney's office / adoption agency - that is planned for later in the week. However, I am, as usual, increasingly angry about the lack of response. It occurred to me the other day that my son has long been old enough to write thank-you notes for the gifts I send, gifts I agonize over increasingly since I get no feedback and have no idea whether he likes them. Don't you think upper class folks in one of the richest communities in America who send their kids to private schools and tell me, when they do bother to write, how they "think of me often", would teach their son how to write a short thank-you note? Don't you think he has been trained how to thank other people who give him gifts?

I hate writing to M because this anger always, always happens as I desperately hope for a response. I bitterly start thinking of how I am just not going to bother anymore, but then I don't want to give the impression that I've "moved on".

At Christmas, assuming I still haven't heard anything or gotten the promised picture, (ha! sucker that I am for even thinking one might show up, even after a reminder), I think I'll send a gift to just my son. There will be no card, no letter, no gifts for the rest of the family. That seems to be a good compromise - so he, who means so much to me, is still acknowledged and remembered. This seems especially important right now because my therapist (who I'm not seeing anymore) said that adolesence is the time when adoptees generally start to sort through their feelings on being adopted and are more sensitive about it.

The letter writing to M and the note writing to him will stop because I'm not putting myself out there anymore since I really feel like they're laughing at me.