I’ve owned The Cradle by Patrick Somerville for a few months. I’ve been reading it for over a month, something that is quite unusual for me. The back of the book talked about a missing cradle, family, the war in Iraq and a “surprising journey into the heart of marriage, parenthood, and what it means to be a family.” Emphasis mine. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize that as code-speak for “this book is about adoption,” but I missed it.

Until a few pages in when the main character, Matthew, starts talking about having been in foster care.

I put the book down for a few days. If this isn’t evidence that adoption as a subject follows me around, I don’t know what is. I didn’t purchase this book. I didn’t seek this book out. I hadn’t heard of this book. It was given to me in a box of books. And, if we’re honest, I liked the cover. So, I started reading it. And there it was. Adoption. Figures.

A few days later, I picked it back up. And put it down. And picked it back up. And read a huge chunk of it. And then physically threw it across the room. And picked it back up. And then accidentally left it in the truck for a few days. Days turned into a week. I grabbed it when we got out of the truck yesterday, resigning myself to finishing it last night.

I cried.

I cry at coffee commercials. And movies and television shows and when my kids say “I miss you, Mommy” on the phone. I’m a crier. So, it’s not monumental that the book made me cry; it’s unsurprising at best. But I cried.

There are two stories within in the book: one of a family starting out and another of a family in which the mother is an acclaimed children’s writer, trying to get back into poetry. She, of course, is the birth mother of the father in the other family. The story talks about how she wrote 72 poems while she was pregnant and then stopped writing poetry for a very long time. I’m familiar with that notion, how poetry suddenly takes on a different form, one that is too heavy to carry for awhile. Our stories differ in that Munchkin’s birth father was not killed in Vietnam, but I related to the feeling. Too much.

In the other line of the story, another child is found to be a half-sibling of the wife in the family starting out. He is, at best, “unwanted” by those who are caring for him. A discussion arises and revolves around the “what is best” line of thought. In this particular case, it was obviously the best choice for him to go home with the young father-to-be, to have the boy live with his half-sister, to be adopted by a family that legitimately cared and wanted him. But the line of questioning, the “what is best” question, always hits me in that place I try to ignore.

“So I want your word then,” Matt said. “your word that when all the papers come, you’ll sign them and you’ll send them back. It costs you nothing., You and I both know it’s the best thing that could happen.”

“Is it?” asked Darren. “For who? I also question your use of the word best.”

“I don’t,” Matt said.

Later, the letter is given to the birth mother by the boy in question above. That’s a long and involved story, one worth reading. As you might guess, the letter is what really got to me. The letter hit me in such a way, was written in a way that I had not previous seen in all of my adoption fiction reading. Was it because it was written by a man about a man searching for his birth mother? I don’t know. But, oh, I cried at these few lines.

If you’re that kind of person then I’m writing to say I’m here, and I’m okay, and it’s okay, what you did, I have lived an okay life.

My wife’s name is Marissa. Our new boy’s name is Chris. He is seven pounds, nine ounces and he is seven hours old. He has expressed an interest in knowing you in the future.

The Munchkin was seven pounds, nine ounces.

The book itself has holes. I don’t know what happened to the birth mother’s parented son, off to war. This irks me. The story of the cradle itself, however, is really quite interesting and almost makes up for that large gaping hole of irk.

I wouldn’t have read the book had I known that it was about adoption. I’ve been on adoption overload as of lately in all of my usual fictional outlets. I use fiction to escape from the realities of my life. To be thrown into a tumultuous story full of triggering adoption speak, a few stereotypes and some emotional baggage — without warning — was not exactly a walk in the park for me. But I’m glad I read it. It has nothing to do with my story, though I found myself relating to some of the discussions, the emotions, the general feelings that accompany this life. Talk of repression had me nodding my head. The description of various moments and feelings. Perhaps they really are universal.

In the end, this book didn’t change my life. It didn’t enlighten me as to anything within my own adoption journey. What it did do, however, was bring me out of my adoption-fiction funk. Adoption can be written in a non-overly-cliched way. There are still fresh ideas out there for how to tackle the subject. It’s not all about the stereotypes and baby-stealing and mean adoptive parents and court battles. Somerville wrote in an essay in 2009 about the book that he originally started the plot for the book with the idea of a “person looking for something.” I didn’t know I was looking for this book either.

I’m glad I found it.