Over on the Holt board, a young Korean-American woman posted asking for legal advice for her uncle, who proposed that the woman’s parents adopt his young daughter. The girl’s mother had absconded, and her father thought that it would be better for her to grow up with an intact family in the US than with a single parent in Korea. Although she politely asked, “[P]lease no flames about her family sending her to us. Korean culture is a bit different,” she was flamed pretty hard with responses accusing her parents of being deceptive in trying to sneak an illegal immigrant into the country to get that superior American education. The poster noted that this was not the reason, and her father was a pastor who was eager to abide by the law, but responses continued to be critical. Obviously the idea of a competent parent placing an older child for an open adoption, motivated by a complex set of factors, rankled — as if there were “good adoption plans” and “bad adoption plans.”

Cultures are different. My paternal grandmother was raised in an orphanage, although she was not an orphan. Her father was alive, but her mother was dead, so he placed his daughter with nuns in Philadelphia — 45 miles from his home in Reading, before the days of quick highway travel. He was a businessman, a Greek immigrant who made trips back and forth to the old country, so he may not have been able to care for her consistently.

My grandmother did visit him periodically, though. He must not have been a very observant chaperone because during one of those visits, when she was 15, she met a 30-year-old man and became pregnant with his child. It wasn’t until after she delivered her daughter in the orphanage that she gave up the name of her seducer. State troopers were dispatched to Reading to pick up the man who would become my grandfather and offer him the choice between marriage and jail. They went on to have four more children together. I wonder what would have happened if she never told, though, or if he had fled — would they have raised her child in the orphanage along with her? Arranged for the baby’s adoption?

My other grandmother also experienced the death of her mother at a young age. After the funeral, her father took her and her younger sister to a photographer so their portrait could be sent to some cousins in Canada, who might be interested in adopting them. The cousins could only take one girl, the youngest, but my great-grandfather did not want the sisters to be split up. He remarried quickly, a formidable-looking battle-ax with a daughter of her own whom my great-aunt has characterized as an evil stepmother.

My father-in-law was born on a small island off the western coast of Ireland, near Galway. The island, reachable only by ferry to this day, was isolated, and sheep farming, fishing, and immigration were pretty much the only career paths. My father-in-law’s parents departed for America when he was young, leaving him in the care of an aunt. The aunt eventually emigrated with him to Liverpool, then to New York, where he was finally, at age 14, able to join his long-absent parents.

I’ve wondered whether it was jarring for him, suddenly reunited with strangers he was expected to call Mum and Da. I never had the opportunity to ask him. He died on Saturday, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Even when I first met him seven years ago, he was unable to carry on a conversation of that sort. Husband and his sisters and brother are not aware of any animosity my father-in-law carried for his parents, or even that he thought his situation was in any way unusual or remarkable.

Aitch met his grandfather once, thanks to my sister-in-law, but my father-in-law has never really met Aitch. We’re not sure what my father-in-law, a veteran who spent WWII in the Japanese theater, would have thought about having an Asian grandson. But they do have that odd thing in common — both were relinquished by their birth parents, presumably so all concerned could have a better life.