The Girl with Three Birthdays:
I met Patti Eddington years ago at a Springfed Arts Writers’ Conference where her grace and enthusiasm drew me in. I couldn’t wait to read her adoption memoir, The Girl with Three Birthdays: An Adopted Daughter’s Memoir of Tiaras, Tough Truths, and Tall Tales, published by SheWrites Press. It did not disappoint.
As I wrote in a short review, “Her honesty is captivating and courageous. What she reveals about her biological family and her adoptive family is both heartbreaking and wondrous. Knowledge and empathy is everything.”
But as a writer, I had questions for her! So I asked.
A universal story
Linda: Did you think of your personal adoption story as being something universal that other adoptees would relate to?
Patti: I’m not sure I ever did. I am always careful to remember that my story is just one story and not representative of any one else. I had a happy childhood with wonderful, loving parents and I recognize that while that is the narrative we all hope for with adoption, it is not always the case. While I finally came to an understanding of the internal struggles I may have had all along when I was older, so many people deal with them at a far earlier age. I think The Girl . . . works better as a message to unlikely parents everywhere, whether through age or fertility struggles or difficulties finding their family. That was my larger hope.
The struggle
Linda: I sense a struggle between your desire to be respectful of your adoptive parents and your journalistic desire to know every detail. Can you tell us about that?
Patti: That’s very insightful. I was born on the cusp of 1960 — October or November of 1959, take your pick — so I was raised in the 60s and was a teenager in the 70s. My parents were in their 50s by the time I was in school, having tried for 17 years to start a family. They were of the Greatest Generation — Mom was born in 1916 and Dad in 1919 — and there seemed to be a huge disconnect between the way they were raising me and the way a lot of younger parents were raising my peers. I grew up in a “children should be seen and not heard,” household. There was a lot of love, but my folks were very strict.
Especially after I visited the court and received my adoption records, I did experience a great deal of “should I be spilling these secrets?” But, yes, I was a journalist all my career and I actually got my “right to know” viewpoint from my mother and ultimately decided this was a story I wanted to tell.
That said, there was a time after I received my records that I had decided I couldn’t go forward, there was something they contained that I didn’t want the world to know. Then my cousin found a tiny slip of paper that explained that difficult information, and I was able to move forward.
Dealing with difficult revelations
Linda: Through the ups and downs, the shocks and revelations of your journey, you show an overriding sense of empathy for everyone involved in your story. Talk about how that served you.
Patti: As you read in my book, my mother used to tell me “You’re so tenderhearted,” and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. My father had a gentle, understanding nature and always tried to be fair. Of course there will always be a huge “nature vs nurture” question; I simply will never know where some aspects of my personality came from.
But as a journalist I was trained to see both sides and I tried very hard for many years to develop that aspect of my personality. With two exceptions — an elementary school teacher and my aunt’s boyfriend — I don’t think there are any villains in my story.
My biological mother lost custody of her five children to the court for neglect, but everything I learned about her life seems tough and sad. I’m not excusing it, but it sounds like she never had much of a shot at a good life. Mostly, my empathy probability stems from the realization that I am often FAR too human myself. A little grace is important. Everyone has struggles and far and away, I had the most lovely life.
About The Girl with Three Birthdays:
The brief “Report of Investigation” contained inside the thin, manila envelope that landed in Patti Eddington’s mailbox after almost six decades locked in a courthouse vault looked unassuming—but the adoption document unleashed a heartbreaking, emotional tempest and led her to question everything she ever believed about her beloved parents and her childhood, and use her journalistic skills to go digging for the truth.
“. . . a highly readable personal account that’s full of twists and turns . . . a consistently engaging read.” ~Kirkus Review
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About the author:
Patti Eddington is a newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing the famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance. Then fate, and a DNA test, led her to a story she felt compelled to tell. Today, the mid-century modern design enthusiast and dance fitness teacher enjoys being dragged on walks by her ridiculous three-legged dog, David, reading with her Siamese cat Symon Francis O’Toole on her lap and watching the egrets and bald eagles from her deck on a beautiful bayou in Spring Lake, Michigan.
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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel In the Context of Love
Picture book Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Latest poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker
Connect with Linda: LinkTree