I have recently come across a story published at www.walesonline.co.uk (and by many news agencies around the world) of a man who, at eighteen months old, was adopted by a coal merchant and his wife in the Welsh county of Carmarthenshire in the U.K.
Known locally as “Keith The Coal”, Keith Williams, 64, began working for his adoptive family’s business when he was fourteen years old. After leaving school at fifteen, delivering fifty kilo sacks of coal to several hundred houses every week would be his bread and butter for much of his working life. After twenty years Keith says “I’m suffering now because of it. I’ve got chronic back issues”.
On turning thirteen, his parents told him that they had adopted him from a children’s home six miles away after they had tried unsuccessfully for ten years to conceive. The delivery man spent most of his life in the dark over an amazing family secret- that he was in fact the son of a sultan who lived thousands of miles away. Life could have been so different for Keith as a member of the Malaysian Royal Family and heir to the throne occupied by the thirty-fifth Sultan of Perak. Instead of living in a modest two-bedroomed bungalow built by his adoptive parents, Keith could have been next in line to move into an amazing hilltop palace topped by golden domes.
Reflecting on hearing of his adoption Keith says “ I didn’t think much about it”. It is this comment that resonates very strongly with me. This story, in my opinion, highlights how some decisions are made which profoundly affect our lives but over which we have absolutely no control. Just as Keith couldn’t control his being adopted, millions of others live with twists of fate beyond their influence.
But where do we draw the line between what we can and can’t influence? For example, what if, as children, we experience a parental divorce or separation in our family? Could we have made different choices that would have influenced our parent’s decisions? Keith was a baby with no say but other young people are more mature with a will and an opinion.
In Keith’s mind, he is and always will be “Keith The Coal”, son to a coal merchant and housewife. He says “ I am who I am and that’s it”. It makes me ponder the physical and psychological implications of Keith’s story. Having been adopted so young he never questions who his parents are in his heart- they’re his adoptive parents. But for millions of people divorce causes the stability of our own very identity to be questioned. Who we are is a combination of emotional, psychological and physical factors. Is it more difficult to uproot established relationships (and the perceptions of Life inherent within) than it is for people like Keith who are confronted with a new reality only after so many years of formative experiences?
Surely Keith’s sense of self and place in the world is more indelible that that of a young person experiencing a family break-up. Is adoption less traumatic than the experience of divorce further down the line when bonds have become stronger and more developed? In my opinion, this seems the case for Keith. However, adoption must also be traumatic for some when they find they feel short-changed.
As Max Ehrmann says in his Desiderata “…no doubt the universe is unfolding
as it should”
I’m D.B.G (Dan Barnaby Goddard), a writer and recording artist based on Dartmoor in the West of the U.K. My songs are musical poems reflecting things I have seen and felt throughout my life and I’m always on the lookout for stories which reaffirm my trust in humanity and the human spirit.
In this Buzz column I seek out instances to fill in the spaces left by an increasingly corporate world, commenting on the unpredictable and heart warming gems which are created as the wheels of power keep turning round.
