Child of Choice

Part 1: The Discovery

I am an adoptee.  In my case, it was later in life -- I was just shy of my 32^nd birthday -- and purely by chance that I learned of it; with the who, when, why and how of it all arriving in dribs and drabs over a period of ten or more years.  When I first made the discovery many friends asked me some variant of the question “so, are you going to try and find out who your real family is?”  That question always bothered me; I would tell anyone who asked that as far as I was concerned, I already knew who my “real” family was; the mother and father who loved and cared for me; the many cousins and aunts and uncles with whom I’d shared Easter and Christmas and birthdays, trips down the shore and up to the lake, and long Sunday dinners at grandma and grandpa’s house that began in the afternoon and lasted until well after dark.  So in every case here when I talk about “my parents,” or “my mother” or “my father” I mean the people who raised me and loved me – Mike and Vickie, the only mom and dad that matter to me.

I have to say at the outset that it was mostly curiosity, coupled with a vague desire to give my birth mother some closure that motivated me to search for my biological parents.  After all, I wasn’t some adolescent, confused about my identity to begin with, fantasizing about how much different (and better) my angst-ridden teenage life would be with my “real” parents, who would certainly let me stay out later or have a TV in my room or not bug me about the length of my hair.  I was a 32-year-old married man with a baby and a house and the beginnings of a career in the theatre. And, at the point where this story properly begins, I was also an orphan.

My mother, who had been widowed ever since 1962, died herself in 1985 after a long illness.  Despite repeated attempts over time to convince her to sell her house and come up to New England to be near me and my wife, she remained what I used to call one of the “diehards;” a dwindling group of neighbors who had clung to home, parish church and each other in spite of the urban decay that was slowly creeping in on them.  Her house had been broken into on a few occasions; she had even chased off a would-be burglar, whom she discovered one day standing in her kitchen.  Neither the increase in crime nor the rapid, sad decline of the condition of many other houses in the neighborhood dissuaded her from staying; she argued that uprooting herself, leaving her home – the house she had lived in for years with her father and brothers even before marrying my father -- and everything and everyone she knew, would be far worse for her than staying where she was.  Which is precisely what she did, up until only a few days before she died, stubborn to the last. 

About two weeks after her funeral I made a trip back to this house that was no longer my home to begin the process of sorting through her life and packing up her possessions to take back with me; I had also arranged to meet a real estate agent who would put the house on the market.  What I saw when I unlocked the door and walked in showed just how much, and how quickly, my childhood world had changed.  The house was ransacked; in the brief interval that had passed from the day I said goodbye to her for the last time, looters had torn out all the metal piping (copper and iron; you can get a lot of money for scrap metal) and all the radiators. They had also stolen some of the smaller articles of furniture, and had flung old clothing and other possessions everywhere. A half-empty bottle of rotgut wine sat perched on the stove in the kitchen; interior doors were torn off their hinges and windows broken.  I called the police, who came right away and were very sympathetic but who could actually do very little to help me, except to promise to keep an eye on the place, while the real estate man offered to make the arrangements to secure the property from further damage until I could sell it.  I spent the rest of that day salvaging what I could and packing it into my truck, and returned home to my wife and infant daughter. 

In the weeks that followed I began the process of paying her last bills and settling her modest estate. This was somewhat complicated by the fact that many of my mother’s important documents, like the only copy of her will, and her insurance papers, were missing; they had been in a small, locked strongbox that she kept in a bedroom closet.  Not surprisingly, given the state of most everything else in the house, this strongbox was nowhere to be found and I presumed it stolen.  About a month or so after the funeral a large manila envelope arrived in the mail; it was addressed to my mother and had been forwarded to me.  The note inside was from a woman I knew to have been one of my mother’s friends who lived just around the block; she had recently found a bunch of papers and documents with my mother’s name on them dumped in a corner of a vacant lot that bordered her house, so she thought to pack them up and mail them to the old address with the expectation that they would (as they did) find their way to me.  It was clear that whoever stole them realized they were of no monetary value, and so just flung them away. 

I was grateful to have them; so much so that I sat down right away and wrote a note to the woman to express my thanks.  When it was done, stamped and mailed, I turned my attention back to the bundle, which included, to my relief, the missing insurance papers and the sole copy of her will, along with a several other documents.  One particular bit of paper caught my eye; it was obviously a legal document, old and worn.  On the front it read: “In the Matter of an Adoption by Michael G. Dell’Orto and Victoria R. Dell’Orto."

Now, I have to pause here to provide a bit of background – two things, actually.  The first is that my parents had often made reference to a “little Italian girl” they had tried to adopt from the old country; this illusory sister was usually brought up on those occasions in my early childhood when I asked why I didn’t have a sibling.  The second was an odd encounter I had when I was about 12 years old.  My mother and I were visiting an aunt who lived in what was then a very rural part of New Jersey.  One afternoon, we were all walking through a picked-over field of cherry tomatoes that bordered her property, along with the neighbor whose field it was.  As I ran ahead in the company of my aunt’s dogs, I caught bits and snatches of the grown-ups’ conversation. At one point, as we were heading back to the house, the neighbor had remarked to my mother “He’s gotten so big – it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?  I remember when you got him.”  It struck me, at the time – young as I was – that this was an awfully odd phrase to use.  Limited though my knowledge of the world most certainly was at that age, I knew that married people “had a child,” or “gave birth to a child,” or something like that.  “Getting” a child sounded a lot like a transaction, as if I had been bought like a bag of plastic Army men in the toy aisle at the 5 & 10.

I stewed about this for the rest of that day; some weeks later I finally got up the courage to ask my mother if I had been adopted.  You would have thought I had asked her if she had murdered my grandparents with an axe; she began to shout at me (as only she could; my mother was possessed of a particularly colorful vocabulary that I’m certain would have embarrassed a Marine drill sergeant), and told me that I was crazy and where did I get such a stupid idea, etc., etc.  Being no fool, I let the matter drop.

Now, some 20 years on after that incident, and confronted with a piece of paper with the word “Adoption” and my parents’ names clearly printed on it, interestingly enough the first thing that went through my head was that I now had confirmation regarding this sister from Italy that never was.  I opened it carefully, so as not to tear the fragile paper.  I began to read, slowly; and one phrase practically leapt off the page and grabbed me by the arm:  “a male child born May 12, 1953; who shall henceforth be named Michael G. Dell’Orto, Jr . . .” I sat for a minute and just laughed.  “Well, that would be me, wouldn’t it,” I thought.   Then I called my wife at her office, and told her that I had something I needed to read to her.  She actually dropped the handset onto the floor before I was done.

The next few days were taken up with phone calls to old neighbors and especially aunts and uncles.  The account that emerged from these conversations was a surprise, but also not surprising.  It became clear that I was the only person involved in this story who hadn’t been aware I was adopted.  Everyone knew.  My aunts, uncles and cousins never brought it up because they assumed that I had been told at some point; the same could be said for some of my mother’s friends and many of my teachers (both grade and high school).  I spoke about it to my mother’s best friend, a woman who lived two doors down from us in Jersey City, and she told me an interesting tale.  All “the girls” were having coffee one day in her house; those few women in the room who knew that I didn’t know about my birth had remarked to my mother that, now that I was getting married and might, at some point sooner or later, have children, wouldn’t it be a wise idea to let me in on the secret?  My mother’s reaction was pretty much the equal to the one she’d had when I’d asked her about my origin all those years before; she swore up and down and told them in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want me to know.  And that, as far as she was concerned, was that.

I’m pretty sure that no one would ever have brought it up to me had I not come across the adoption papers.  As I said, a lot of people in my family just assumed that I already knew, and I would have had very little (if any) reason to remain in contact with my mother’s old friends as I got older and they, inevitably, died off.   Given the circumstances it is certainly possible that the whole business never would have come to light – the papers in that strongbox could just as easily have been tossed in a trash bin and hauled off to the dump, instead of thrown into a vacant lot.  I suppose I should be grateful that the thieves were inconsiderate enough to be litterers as well. 

All of this begs the question as to why my mother was so adamant about the whole business; a number of people, including my mother’s friends, several of my aunts, and one of my best friends from high school (who had also been my mother’s lawyer), have weighed in on the subject, and the consensus is that it was a mix of things; a little pride, a lot of fear.  One aunt told me she had been afraid that, if I knew, I somehow would not think of her as my mother any more, or I would be upset, or embarrassed, or not want to have anything to do with her and go off searching for my “real” mother.  I was also told that some of my father’s family, especially my grandparents, were not thrilled about bringing a “stranger” into the fold, at least not initially (once I showed up, however, their resistance faded, if the photos of infant me with my grandparents are any indicator – I was an adorable baby, if I have to say so myself).  This was complicated by the issue of “fault;” yet another aunt  (my father came from a very large family, eleven in all -- six girls and five boys) told me that my mother allowed her in-laws to think that it was she who could not have children, when all of his siblings knew that it was my father who had been irreparably damaged by the malaria he contracted (and its subsequent treatment) while he was in Burma during WW II.

So now, here I was, married and with a child, already fully possessed of an identity and a family history that was, as far as I was concerned, the only history and identity I needed.  Learning that I was not technically a blood relative to any of these people – mother, father, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents – was (and I know this is going to sound odd) largely irrelevant to me.   They didn’t suddenly cease being my family because of this; these were the people who loved me, cared for me, educated me.   Outside of the fact that I owed a certain measure of gratitude to two strangers for bringing me into being (never forgetting that I was an accident, not a choice), I felt no connection – or, rather, I felt no need for connection with them.

As I said at the beginning, two impulses motivated the search I eventually conducted.  First, the idea that there could be a really interesting story behind all this was intriguing enough in itself; it appealed to my sense of theatre.  Second, the reading I’d done indicated that, in general, birth mothers of this era (since all information about the subsequent adoption of  a child in those days was kept strictly under wraps by the state, private agencies, attorneys and the like) tended to agonize for years over their decision to surrender a child; wondering if the child was healthy, happy, well cared-for.  I thought, if nothing else, to tell whomever this woman was (if I could find her, if she wanted to be found, and if she was even still alive – three very big “ifs”) that I was grateful for what she had done.  So I knew that at some point I would attempt to locate one or both of my birth parents.  But there was never any sense of urgency to it.  In fact, I waited almost eight years before I began.  

The Good Sisters

My wife and I have known each other now for going on 50 years, ever since we met in 1^st grade -- September, 1959, at St. Aedan’s School in Jersey City.  We were in the same class, all eight years, taught by the same nuns; we (and all our classmates) went to church together – Mass at 9:00 AM without fail every Sunday, Mass every morning before school began on First Fridays, and every day of the months of October and May (Mary’s months) -- First Communion and Confirmation together; we were even partners on line at our 8^th grade graduation.

This has gone a long way, I think, in creating and sustaining the bond that holds us together.  I suppose if someone were to ask me what I believed to be the key to a successful marriage (35 years and counting), one component would certainly be the sheer depth of our common background – our collective memory and experiences; we grew up in the same neighborhood, knew all the same people, did many of the same things, and shared many of the same expectations and aspirations about life.  And one of the things that we -- and many other Catholics of our generation shared – is our experience of the nuns.

Nowadays, too many people get their images of nuns either from people like playwright Chris Durang, whose Sr. Mary Ignatius is a twisted and vindictive woman, warped by a "faith" that sees only sin and evil in human nature; or (worse yet, for a whole host of reasons, in my opinion), the "wacky" denizens of Dan Goggins' Nunsense musicals.   Because of the steep decline in vocations over the last 20 years or so, even kids in Catholic schools today will only rarely encounter a nun as a teacher. 

I spent the first six months of my life in a Catholic orphanage, cared for by the Sisters of Charity; and my whole educational life in the Catholic schools, each of the first eight years of which solely (with one exception in 5^th grade) under the tutelage of a Sister of St. Dominic.  I suppose that, having spent what psychologists now know to be the most formative phase of an infant's life under the daily care of nuns, I am perhaps subliminally predisposed to see the whole of religious women in a positive light. Notwithstanding, I have to say that the women who taught me, as well as the many nuns I have come into contact with over the course of my adult life -- with only a very few exceptions -- were (and are) sweet, dear women who I remember fondly as teachers and exemplars, and who loved me wholeheartedly and taught me well.  I even remember most of their names – Sr. Dolorosa, Sr. Patricia Mary, Sr. Ferdinand, Sr. Anthony Marie, Sr. Agnesine, Sr. Leonard Marie, Sr. Maureen James, Sr. Maria. 

My mother continued to be active in the parish church and school long after I’d graduated, gone off to college and grad school, and gotten married.  One upshot of this was that all sorts of random people from my childhood knew my business, and in great detail.  I had a conversation with my mother one day, not long after my wife became pregnant with our first child.  She mentioned that she had been speaking to our 8^th Grade nun, Sr. Maria (who had of course already known, through my mother, that two of her erstwhile pupils had married), and told her of our good news.  I asked her to tell Sister that we both sent our best; and that, I thought, would be that.  


About eight weeks later a large box showed up in the mail in care of us both.  My first assumption was that it came from my mother, but when I  looked at the return address the name on the package was Sr. Maria’s.  I tore open the box, and found inside, folded carefully in tissue paper, a lovely, hand-knitted baby blanket, with a note in Sister’s neat, spidery hand assuring us of her love and prayers for us and the baby to come.  We wrapped our infant daughter in that blanket when we brought her home from the hospital, and we’ve kept it ever since, stored away in a chest, should the baby it swaddled ever have need of it for a child of her own.   There are a lot of reasons why women are not choosing the convent as a vocation; many of those reasons apply as well to men considering the priesthood.  Modern life presents many more options, especially for young women, than were available to them when I was a child; and very few young men and women will have grown up with the kind of day-to-day interaction with religious of all kinds –priests, brothers or sisters – that my wife and I encountered in our youth, and that might serve as an exemplar or role model for them to follow.  I do not know what this bodes for religious life in the Catholic Church, or what changes in attitude or established practice will have to occur to see any kind of renaissance in vocations; but I do know that a world without these wonderful women, working to help children, and the poor, and the sick, living their lives prayerfully and joyfully, is diminished by their absence.

Home Is A Journey

We begin this journey with a photograph. A young couple stands smiling into the camera, their somewhat formal dress (at least by our standards) a contrast to their location, which appears to be a few steps off a hiking trail.  He wears a long-sleeved shirt tucked into his trousers, replete with sleeve garters and a stiff collar, a watch chain dangling from his belt.  She is wearing a long, voluminous skirt and a crisp shirtwaist, with a high choker collar set off by a small cameo.  The young man holds what looks to be a straw hat in one hand, down at his side, while she has a Sunday-best wide-brimmed great mass of fabric perched almost jauntily on her head.  I love her smile in this picture.  It isn’t a formal smile, full of teeth and false gaiety, but a sly, knowing smile, as if she had some wonderful secret.  He’s got more of an open, boyish grin on his face, and even though she’s some four years younger that smile makes her look the older and wiser of the two. 

Here is what I know: It is the late summer or early fall of 1903; his name is Fred, and he is twenty-three, her name is Amelia, and she is nineteen, and they have just gotten engaged.  They will wed on December 17^th, the same day that the Wright Brothers make their first flight from Kill Devil Hill at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  Their marriage will span almost seventy years, during which they will raise four children and live a life that was, by all accounts of those who knew them, remarkably unremarkable – full of both pain and pleasure, joy and disappointment; certainly never perfect but one of care, and hard work, and love. In 1914, Fred will come to work for Mrs. Marjorie Moors as caretaker, gardener and general handyman.  Her grand house, which had belonged to her parents, the Devlins, sits in the old colonial center of the town, hard by the church and the vestiges of the town common.  Just across the road from the field at the back of her house is the other place that Mrs. Moors owns, the house in which Fred and Amelia will settle themselves; the house that will shelter them and their family over the next fifty-eight years.

A house, in many ways, is only a shell that nurtures and protects the home that is created within its walls; but the home that is created therein can, in its own way, sustain – plaster and lath, wood and stone – the house that envelops it. There is a gentle irony here, in that this house, which was their home for almost as long as a human lifetime, never actually belonged to them.  It is a testament to the real significance of what they fashioned here that Mrs. Moors was moved to make provision in her will for them such that, at her death [in 1966], they could continue to live in the house, comfortably and free of worry, for the rest of their lives; which was only right and fitting, since this was their home, even though it was never really their house.

This house in which they lived for so long is my house now; it has been mine for twenty-five years. That fact hardly seems to matter to most of the long-time residents of the town, who still refer to it by the name of this young couple who lived, grew old and died here more than thirty-five years ago.  This too, is as it should be, since you never really “own” an old house, so much as you are simply another name in an ever-lengthening list of caretakers; people whose job it is (if they have the wisdom and good sense to see it; not all do) to safely see the house though another human generation and pass it on to those who will come after.  Fred and Amelia themselves, if they knew the house at all before they came to live in it, probably knew it as “the McCarthy place," from Michael and Mary Margaret McCarthy who bought it when Amelia was about six years old and lived in it for fifteen years; and in all likelihood the McCarthys called it the “old Putnam place;” and the Putnams, well, Amos and Dorcas Putnam, who were third cousins and direct descendants of Jacob Putnam, one of the original settlers of the town, bought the house from the Widow Burton (related to them distantly by marriage), in whose husband’s family the house had been for as much as eighty years, or more, from the time it came to be built by her father-in-law, Deacon Burton, the town's first Town Clerk, who had fought in the French and Indian War.

A commemorative plaque now sits next to the old front door of the house.  It is a beautiful, hand-lettered thing, and it lends the old place a dignified air; here, it says, is something that has endured, something that has remained, something that has seen the sweep of history pass like a ghostly parade through its dooryard.  It gives the approximate date of construction and acknowledges two of the prominent early names associated with its origins, names that are not just confined to old road maps or given to geographic features, but names whose direct descendants can still be found in the local phonebook.  It is, truthfully, a sign, in the archaic sense of that word – an outward symbol or manifestation of an inward grace, a grace that is the gift of the spirit of this house, as it was embodied in all those who took care of it. 

I end this journey, now, where I began; with a photograph. An old couple, their two smiling faces creased and lined by years of work and care, are standing near well-tended flower beds.  Here is what I know:  Fred and Amelia have just passed their 60^th wedding anniversary; their children are having grandchildren of their own.  It is 1963, and it is only for us to know that they have almost reached the end of their long lives.  They will both die, only a few months apart, in 1972; you do not spend the better part of a century with someone to be content to remain behind when they embark on the final journey. Two pictures, bracketing a life, reminding us all of our own fragile, human impermanence. But now, almost forty years on after their deaths, the house remains as it has been for over 240 years. Trees and shrubs they planted and tended now depend on me to prune and water them; the septic system that Charlie dug by hand in 1941 is still nursed along lovingly with periodic applications of Bacteria-In-A-Bottle and Root-B-Gone.  And so it is with the other bits and pieces of this house, added on over time, each of which is a piece of the story of those it sheltered.  I’ve replaced a clapboard or two and some sheathing here and there, a room has been added, and the house, the barn and even the chicken coop all sport solid new roofs.  It is in those moments when I am planting, or painting, or patching something – when I am taking care of the old place, in some large or small way – that I most strongly feel the connection, running like a cord, binding the present to the past. It links me with Fred and Amelia – and the McCarthys, and the Putnams and the Burtons – in a real, immediate way.  It links me to this town, this community; a place where, in a few short years, I will have spent the balance of my entire life.  I have the care of this place, for now.  I have the job of seeing it safely into the hands of my child, and her children.  I am a caretaker – like Charlie was.