The details of my adoption that I am sure of, or have documentation for, were gleaned over the course of several years after I learned of it, and are these: I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in what -- in the days before the sexual revolution -- was called a “home for unwed mothers.” Its name was the Door of Hope, run by the Salvation Army; a name that always struck me as an admirably brave attempt to put the best face they could on what was, certainly in the 1950’s, a delicate situation. My birth mother, who had wanted to keep and raise me on her own, was convinced by friends and the few family members who were still speaking to her that the best thing to do was to surrender me for adoption; to that end she had finally gone to seek counsel (good Catholic that she was, pre-marital sex and unwed pregnancy notwithstanding) in the bosom of Holy Mother Church. Catholic Charities (then, as now, one of the largest social services organizations in the world) arranged that I be placed in St. Vincent’s Nursery with the Sisters of Charity, in whose veiled and wimpled care I was to spend the first six months of my life, prior to my adoption. This was not an easy decision for her (that much is clear from the notes and comments from her file that the adoption agency sees fit to share with me), and my desire to find her was bolstered by a letter from those files that was given to me wherein my birth mother writes for permission to come visit me in the orphanage, something she has apparently done on several occasions. If nothing else, I owe this woman the comfort of knowing that I am alive, and well, and happy.
And that’s as far as I got. In writing the story down, I mean. I tried, for a long while, to write this second half of my adoption story; how I came to glean the details of my adoption from the highly redacted information provided to me by Catholic Community Services (part of the larger umbrella group Catholic Charities, and formerly called Catholic Children’s Aid); how I tracked down and subsequently found my birth mother and my half sister, still living in New Jersey, and what I learned from her about the story of my conception and birth, and her life after surrendering me.
I began attempt after attempt at relating this story in some coherent form, but I always found that I was getting bogged down in too much detail, or not enough detail; there was always something that was nagging at me while I was writing that caused me to stop and put the project aside again and again. I figured that I just needed to get some distance, think on it a bit, and it would all become clear -- a revelatory insight, a flash of inspiration and clarity of thought, and I would be able to write it all down, finally, once and for all.
The revelation I'd been waiting for came to me, one afternoon, working in the barn. While I was repairing a hayloft door that had been damaged in a windstorm, I found myself thinking about this out loud, and out of nowhere I heard myself say “I just don’t care.” What I meant, I think, is that after I learned I was adopted, the specifics that made up the next part of the story – who gave birth to me, who got her pregnant and why – weren't especially significant to me; the acquisition of that knowledge was never an urgent matter. I suppose that’s why it took years to begin the search in the first place. As I’ve said before, the question that kept coming up when I first told friends that I had been adopted was “are you going to look for your real parents?” Their insensitivity (unintended, no doubt, but there nonetheless) annoyed me no end. I know who my real parents are, thank you. I am their son, for good and ill; I couldn't see what relevance two strangers whom I'd never met (and in all likelihood would never meet) could have to my life here and now.
The search for my birth mother was, honestly, more an intellectual than an emotional exercise. I was curious to find the answers to this puzzle; and I thought it would be good for her to know that she had done the right thing by giving me up. I was not, however, looking for parents, or a family, or an identity. I had all of those; and I'm sure this is why it took me almost eight years before I started my search. I realized, when I came to write it all down (the flash of insight I had been hoping for in telling this tale) that my difficulties in relating the story were a reflection of that initial reluctance I'd had, which was playing itself out all over again. So, this story is really about my ambivalence around what being adopted actually meant to me, as much as anything else; and it is this story, not necessarily the details of my birth, that I believe has some value in the telling.
When I began my search in earnest, several of the organizations I contacted that help with matters of this sort all told me much the same thing – keep it low key, and search as anonymously as you can for as long as you can, because you just don’t know what sort of person you are eventually going to find, and you cannot allow your desire for answers get the better of your common sense; the person you find may not necessarily be someone you would want to have in your life, or the life of your family. My own experience, fortunately, encompassed none of the horror stories I had read -- adoptees coming to rue the day they had begun their searches, finding parents who were alcoholics, drug addicted, or only interested in extorting money from their long-lost child. The reality of what I ultimately found bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one-act play that, I’ll admit, I had constructed in my mind (despite all the advice warning me not to do so lest I be disappointed) about what she might be like. Because there was the trap, you see; it was easy, at the point where you decide to begin but as yet have no information, no clues, to get caught up in the excitement of the idea of the search, and give in to the temptation to create, based on no evidence whatsoever except the endless possibilities of the unknown, a back-story for yourself into which you could handily fit all the details of your life as it is now.
The search for my birth mother was, honestly, more an intellectual than an emotional exercise. I was curious to find the answers to this puzzle; and I thought it would be good for her to know that she had done the right thing by giving me up. I was not, however, looking for parents, or a family, or an identity. I had all of those; and I'm sure this is why it took me almost eight years before I started my search. I realized, when I came to write it all down (the flash of insight I had been hoping for in telling this tale) that my difficulties in relating the story were a reflection of that initial reluctance I'd had, which was playing itself out all over again. So, this story is really about my ambivalence around what being adopted actually meant to me, as much as anything else; and it is this story, not necessarily the details of my birth, that I believe has some value in the telling.
When I began my search in earnest, several of the organizations I contacted that help with matters of this sort all told me much the same thing – keep it low key, and search as anonymously as you can for as long as you can, because you just don’t know what sort of person you are eventually going to find, and you cannot allow your desire for answers get the better of your common sense; the person you find may not necessarily be someone you would want to have in your life, or the life of your family. My own experience, fortunately, encompassed none of the horror stories I had read -- adoptees coming to rue the day they had begun their searches, finding parents who were alcoholics, drug addicted, or only interested in extorting money from their long-lost child. The reality of what I ultimately found bore no resemblance whatsoever to the one-act play that, I’ll admit, I had constructed in my mind (despite all the advice warning me not to do so lest I be disappointed) about what she might be like. Because there was the trap, you see; it was easy, at the point where you decide to begin but as yet have no information, no clues, to get caught up in the excitement of the idea of the search, and give in to the temptation to create, based on no evidence whatsoever except the endless possibilities of the unknown, a back-story for yourself into which you could handily fit all the details of your life as it is now.
Scenario # 1; or, The Story As I Would Have Written It If Anybody Had Asked Me: A young actress in New York (living in New Jersey with her widowed mother); she has a brief affair with a fellow cast member in the musical in which they are both appearing; the pregnancy, the realization that she is simply not prepared to give up the career she’s worked so hard to build for motherhood just yet; the decision, difficult but brave, to surrender me, always saying a silent prayer for the child she’ll never know every night just before she steps out on stage. It would explain my choice of theatre as a profession; I hoped that she’d be glad to know I had followed in her footsteps. Maybe we’d actually get to work together, someday; in the meanwhile she comes to see me in a show and greets me afterward, tears in her eyes, telling me how very proud she is. Nice story. Simple, and sweet. In fact, I think it might just be the plot of some old 50’s-era B-movie I saw one night on the Late Show.
Scenario # 2; or, The Real Story: In Which I Discover That God Has A Peculiar Sense Of Humor: A young woman in Northern New Jersey, growing up in a large family in very comfortable circumstances (her father owned a drapery/upholstery/decorating business); nice clothes, big house, parties. Her mother dies, and her father remarries soon after. He and his new bride, a woman not overly fond of her new stepchildren, buy a new house and leave her and her youngest sister to manage on their own; she takes work as a waitress. She had previously attracted the attention of an older man in the military, someone who had been advising and vetting small business owners (including her father) who wished to establish apprentice or training programs under the GI Bill. She is wooed, and flattered, and ultimately seduced into his bed; he disappears once he learns she is pregnant. She is dissuaded from her original intention, which was to raise me by herself, by the few family members who still deign to speak to her. She later discovers that her seducer may already have a wife and children in Pennsylvania. Finally, in a twist worthy of Dickens, he contacts her from (of all places) prison, which was the last she will ever hear from him. It seems that he and a partner had been running a little graft, a little scam on the side in their dealings with civilian businesses wishing to get GI Bill money for themselves; things had gotten a little hot in New Jersey and he managed to get himself transferred up to Fort Devins. The petty stuff proved to be not interesting enough, and so it was that he and his partner decided to rob a bank in Worcester MA, where they killed a guard in the attempt and were subsequently caught, prosecuted and jailed. Some years later, she marries and has a child – my half-sister – but the marriage fails (he is an alcoholic) and she must assume the burden of being a single mother, raising a child on her own under very strained financial circumstances. Not such a nice story, and not at all so simple.
Scenario # 2; or, The Real Story: In Which I Discover That God Has A Peculiar Sense Of Humor: A young woman in Northern New Jersey, growing up in a large family in very comfortable circumstances (her father owned a drapery/upholstery/decorating business); nice clothes, big house, parties. Her mother dies, and her father remarries soon after. He and his new bride, a woman not overly fond of her new stepchildren, buy a new house and leave her and her youngest sister to manage on their own; she takes work as a waitress. She had previously attracted the attention of an older man in the military, someone who had been advising and vetting small business owners (including her father) who wished to establish apprentice or training programs under the GI Bill. She is wooed, and flattered, and ultimately seduced into his bed; he disappears once he learns she is pregnant. She is dissuaded from her original intention, which was to raise me by herself, by the few family members who still deign to speak to her. She later discovers that her seducer may already have a wife and children in Pennsylvania. Finally, in a twist worthy of Dickens, he contacts her from (of all places) prison, which was the last she will ever hear from him. It seems that he and a partner had been running a little graft, a little scam on the side in their dealings with civilian businesses wishing to get GI Bill money for themselves; things had gotten a little hot in New Jersey and he managed to get himself transferred up to Fort Devins. The petty stuff proved to be not interesting enough, and so it was that he and his partner decided to rob a bank in Worcester MA, where they killed a guard in the attempt and were subsequently caught, prosecuted and jailed. Some years later, she marries and has a child – my half-sister – but the marriage fails (he is an alcoholic) and she must assume the burden of being a single mother, raising a child on her own under very strained financial circumstances. Not such a nice story, and not at all so simple.
This scenario, told to me in bits and pieces in phone conversations and, finally, on the occasion of our first face-to-face meeting is far more dramatic than that which I had dreamed up; here was a story that really did appeal to that sense of theatre I spoke of before. But still, there was this feeling of detachment -- as I've repeated many times, I wasn't doing this to find a mother or a father. There was one thing, though, that I couldn’t have known until I made the search, the only thing, I think, that I was always ready to accept, even to embrace, as a real part of my life. Something that I hadn’t ever articulated a need or desire for, throughout this whole process; but in the end the one fact more than any other I was happy to discover -- that I had a sister.
My sister is a terrific woman, brave and strong, living happily in Tennessee, and married now to a man who loves her and cares for her. She has her own story to tell, and one I would not presume to tell for her; but suffice it to say she has had her share of grief, and pain, and loss. We speak, not often, but we have grown to love each other. I’m glad that she is in my life, and I would hope that she could say the same of me; it is good just to know that she is there. Of all the reasons for entering into this search, finding that I had a sister made the whole process worthwhile.
I cannot, alas, say the same for my birth mother. Good drama comes at a price. At our first meeting, my immediate impression of her (not surprisingly, given her story) is that of an unhappy and disappointed person whose life simply did not follow the arc she had envisioned, as a young woman, that it would. In addition, the emotionality of our reunion was leavened by the unmistakable feeling, which grew in intensity the longer I spent in her presence, that I just didn’t like her. This sounds harsh, I know; but it was provoked in part by how she spoke to my sister when we first met in person -- a situation where, you would think, we’d all of us be on our best behavior. She was by turns rude, dismissive, and belittling of her during the 5 or so hours we were together. Not constantly, mind you, but enough such that I came away from that first meeting with a sense of unease that never really left me. Instead of joy or exhilaration, or even some sort of peace of mind that I assumed I would feel in discovering this long-buried truth, all I could muster up, as I drove back home, was relief – relief that she had given me up, that I’d been turned over to the care of the nuns, and delivered into the hands of two loving parents.
I tried to be good – I phoned her from time to time, sent cards on Mothers’ Day and her birthday, but I have to confess that my heart really just wasn’t in it. I had found my answers; I had done what I thought was the right thing by contacting her, but I was done now, and I felt all the worse because I really didn’t want to pursue a relationship of any sort with her, though I knew that I had to, if only because it was the decent thing to do. She’s gone now; she’s been dead for a good many years. As I said, I still call my sister from time to time; she has told me on more than one occasion that I will never fully understand just how difficult their lives were together, and how fortunate I was to have been spared their struggle.
So this is where I’m going to leave it. I was conceived by accident, born a bastard child, given over to the care of the nuns in an orphanage, and then adopted by two people who loved each other and me as well. I have a sister, and I’m glad that I found her; the rest of it, while it makes a good story to tell, doesn’t really matter to me all that much. What does matter is that my father Mike was a fine man who was, by all accounts, admired by everyone who came into contact with him; a man who loved his son and died too soon, a man I miss to this very day. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. My mother Vickie was a funny, loving, good-hearted woman who had every right to fall apart after his death, but she didn’t – as sad as she was, and as much as she missed him, she got up every day and went to work to keep the roof over our heads and the food on our plates, doing what she had to do despite a grief and loss I cannot even begin to comprehend, because she knew she needed to take care of me. Neither of them lived long enough; and, lest you be tempted to think otherwise, neither of them were perfect, God knows, but they are my parents -- simply because I am the one they chose to be their son.
Epilogue: In our first conversation my birth mother asks me if I want to know anything about the man who had put this whole business in motion all those many years ago; was I going to look for him? Did I want to know his name? She tells it to me, that first day I meet her, and I remember writing it down somewhere. I suppose that it speaks volumes about my attitude, or my state of mind, or even my definition of what a “father” is, by the fact that I have long since forgotten it and have no idea where the paper is on which I wrote it.
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| Mom & Dad, ca. 1960 |
