A Million Books Except The Ones I Need

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the name “Books-A-Million”, my mind immediately thinks of a book store that has at least a million books in it at the bare minimum.

Ever since I read “The Primal Wound”, I’ve wanted to get my hands on all the books surrounding adoption topics. Books-a-Million was my first choice.

Lord knows there’s no “Adoption” section in BAM, (or any book stores I know of for that matter,) so I first looked where my instincts told me to go; The section with all of the books about families and babies. After triple checking the books in the rows of that section and finding only one book regarding preparing to adopt a child, I thought “Do it Sara. You don’t know where else to look in here. Ask one of the nice workers for help.” (Anyone who knows me well knows that asking for help isn’t my strong suit.)

I walked over to one of the women working and (keeping my voice down) asked, “Do you know where the books are that are written by adoptees or pertain to the topics around adoptees and self-help?”

She looked at me rather blankly and said “Hmm, if we have any they’d be over here.” She leads us over to the section I just came from and she begins looking. (And I stand there pretending to look too like I haven’t already done a thorough investigation of their inventory.)

The woman looks and looks and says “Let me see if I can get someone to help.” She begins scanning for another worker. She sees someone and the person she sees is not close to us by any means. She calls the other workers name and is now talking loudly enough not only for the other worker to hear, but also for people to start turning their heads. “Do we have any books on how to adopt a child?” (In my head I’m thinking no, I’m pretty well versed about the process of adoption.)

The other woman is now explaining in a loud voice back for her to look in the family and baby section, and I am trying to politely insert my voice to explain that’s not what I was looking for.

The women bends down and grabs the book on how to prepare for adopting a child and picks it up and says “This is the only one we have but I can check online to see if we have any others on adopting a child that we can order for you.”

I thank her and tell her that isn’t what I’m looking for. She asks “Well what specifically is it you’re looking for?”

“Books written (I emphasize the written but not rudely,) by adoptees or adoptee self-help books.”

This time she’s looking like what I’m saying isn’t even registering. I begin feeling like a martian. At this point I’m not sure if what I’m saying only sounds like English to me and the actual noises coming out of my mouth sound like Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.

I finally say “I’m the one who is adopted. I’m looking for a book written by someone like me, or a book that can help me.”

There weren’t even crickets, just another blank stare from the worker... Like greetings earthlings, I’m Sara and I need knowledge on why I am the way I am.

She finally says “Oh, we definitely don’t have any here.” “We might have some online.”

I followed her over to her computer and pulled out my list of “adoptee must reads” and by the grace of God, one thing went right in that store and I did end up ordering a book by an adoptee. Who knew going to BAM would be such an event?

This experience made me want to encourage every adoptee I encounter to write. How beautiful and helpful would it be to have a decent size section of adoptee memoirs and self-help books in book stores and libraries?