Ithaka by Sarah Saffian

Bastard Book Review:
Ithaka:
A Daughter's Memoir of Being Found

by Sarah Saffian
Basic Books, 1998

Reviewed by Shea Grimm

(This feature appeared in the Spring 1999 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Not yet out of my teens, I began attending, and shortly thereafter facilitating, adoption search and support groups. Tiring quickly of the group therapy pity-party atmosphere, I moved on to the more interesting work of searching, including working doggedly on my own search for my birthparents. Eventually my frustrations and experiences would lead me to the adoption reform movement, but long story short, there are a million search and reunion stories in the naked city, and I've heard just about every one. Suicidal adoptee meets crack-addicted birthmother, trailer-trash adoptee finds wealthy Medina software millionaire birthfather, degreed professional upper-middle class adoptee discovers she was the product of rape, and so on, ad nauseam. So it was with a distinct lack of enthusiasm that I picked up "Ithaka", author Sarah Saffian's memoir of a twenty-something adoptee found by her birthparents. I had seen Saffian as a guest on a talk show, appearing ostensibly as a "compromise" between the show's other guests, open records activist and Measure 58 author Helen Hill, and anti-open records NCFA shill Carol Sandusky. Yet Saffian appeared instead to solidly support an adoptee's right to their personal documents, and I found myself impressed with her, no small task for a guest on a daytime talk show. I promptly ordered the book from Amazon, and despite some misfires, found myself pleasantly surprised.

The book begins with Saffian receiving a morning phone call from a woman who announces she believes she is Saffian's birthmother. Having only considered searching for her birthparents in passing, the 24-year old Saffian is shocked. Nonetheless, the initial conversation seems to go well. But after hanging up and going on to work, Saffian finds herself unable to function, a state she remains in pretty much for the next three years, a period during which she declines to meet her birthparents in person.

Let's make no mistake, a lot of readers are going to wonder just what the hell was wrong with the author, and why didn't she just get on with it already. Raised in an admittedly privileged atmosphere, surrounded by love, Saffian seems to score big with her birthparents as well, the two of whom ended up marrying each other and going on to lead successful, wellrounded, happy lives. No crack-addicts here, no incest, no abuse. What accounts for the tailspin? Well, for those who are willing to listen, Ithaka (named for Odysseus's home and the land he must journey back to in Homer's "The Odyssey") provides answers.

Saffian's adoptive mother dies when she is only six. Her father remarries a few years later, to a woman Saffian considers equally to be a mother, and who by all accounts raised and loved her well. Her relationship with her father is one nearly all readers will envy. She recounts her "chosen baby" story, as told to her by her adoptive father, with fondness, but seems to realize the absurdity of it nonetheless. Saffian is riddled with insecurity and issues of control. She seems utterly incapable of dealing with her birthparents' entry into her life, only sporadically returning their letters, insisting they do not call her (a request they honor), often angrily challenging their decision to search for her, and then lapsing again into months of silence. At several points in the book, she visits a variety of therapists, most of whom provide no insight. Long after the reader has figured it out, Saffian announces that she realizes the root of the problem. She had felt abandoned by her birthmother, and again by the death of her adoptive mother, but as long as her birthparents had remained abstract, she had never felt anger towards them. It was only upon them becoming real people with voices did the anger in Sarah Saffian arise, and as she felt increasingly angry she felt increasingly out-of-control and alone.

A journalist, degreed and credentialed, Saffian's writing style is polished, if a bit stylized. Ithaka often reads like a personal journal, complete with the author's occasional forays into writing poetry about people she sees on the subway and recording her strange dreams, and even a "return to the womb" chapter that I could have done without. However long passages of indulgent self-evaluation are thankfully limited, and in many places the book reads like a novel, letting the reader draw their own conclusions and impressions of the people it chronicles. Saffian isn't afraid to be a less than likable personality in the book, and I appreciated that. The book contains the full text of many of the letters between the author and her birthparents, providing a rich and complex cast of "characters". I don't know to what extent Saffian realizes how much she and her birthfather are like. They are both similarly self-involved, at times ridiculously so, which unfortunately causes a number of almost comical misfires in their burgeoning relationship.

In an attempt to gain some control over the experience, at her birthfather's urging, Saffian traces the route she would have taken as a searching adoptee. She contacts Louise Wise, the New York agency through which she was relinquished. She will speak to two social workers at the agency over the next few years, will be denied access to her file even though her birthparents have found her, and will even go through the (all-too-common) experience of being told non-identifying information is being sent, only to have it never arrive. Saffian looks through the NYC Birth index and finds her birthname, and even attends a search and support group, only to be horrified (and rightfully so) with the bizarre atmosphere.

The most poignant and certainly best-written portion of the book juxtaposes Saffian's own experience getting pregnant and having an abortion, with her birthmother's letters describing conceiving and then relinquishing her. It is through these passages that Saffian seems to reach an enviable point of self-awareness, and an understanding of what it means to have choices.

After nearly three years of exchanging letters and more than a few false starts, Saffian decides she's ready to meet her birthparents and siblings. After the years of hand-wringing during which the author even seems to rather seriously contemplate suicide, the reunion itself is jarringly anticlimactic, for both author and reader. My own reunion nearly mirrored Saffian's, although there was only one birthparent standing in the airport as I stepped off the plane, and we nervously looked through albums alone at her coffee table instead of surrounded by siblings. Many adoptees report similar "letdowns" following a reunion, particularly after long searches. Unfortunately, the book ends here, and rather abruptly, although Saffian notes she visits her birthparents again just over a year later. Retrospection is lacking, but perhaps Saffian wants us to take the closing lines of C.P Cavafy's poem "Ithaka" to heart. "And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not defrauded you. With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience, you must surely have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."

Relatively free of the schmaltz and smugness at "beating the system" that characterizes many adoptee/birthparent reunion memoirs, and refreshingly well written, "Ithaka" comes with a strong recommendation.

Saffian has recently been seen on the adoption reform scene, attending an American Adoption Congress conference. We hope Ms. Saffian will continue to speak out in favor of unconditional access to records for adult adoptees.

Order Ithaka online from Amazon.com

(This feature appeared in the Spring 1999 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)