It reads like a police report. It begins by describing, in the plainest of terms, the location and details of an occurrence: time, place, duration of event. There’s a simple description that lists height, weight, build, hair and eye color, ethnicity - the things you would need to find a suspect. This was all the information that I had about the people that created me and the day of my birth. The papers have always been with me, born the day that I was and still with me thirty five years later.
I’m not sure when I became aware of the papers and what they meant. There was certainly a time when I knew nothing of them and had no idea that the people who were my parents were not actually my parents. However, I can’t think back and pinpoint the time that this shift in my awareness occurred.
When I was five years old, my brother joined our family. I suspect that when he arrived he brought with him some version of the truth. There was no way to pretend that he was the biological child of my parents, the way that they had likely pretended with me. There were blaring indicators that this was not possible, indicators that even a five year old could pick up on.
Once I understood that I was adopted I surely must have felt different but I don’t look back on my childhood as anything unusual. I was fortunate in many ways. We lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood, my brother and I attended good schools and were encouraged in all extra-curricular activities. I grew up with friends and adventure.
Nevertheless, there was a disconnect. At some point I began to feel startlingly separate from my family. There is almost always a separation that takes place between parent and child, usually initiated by adolescence, but this was different. Early on it became evident that my parents’ were not sure how to embrace us unconditionally. Perhaps there is something in the creation of a child that formulates unhesitating affection. Some adoptive parents might be able to cultivate this, but my parents found this difficult.
As the distance between my family and I grew, so did the curiosity about my biological family. However, I had low self-esteem and feared the rejection of the family that I had never met, the family that had already refused me once. It seemed clear that if my adoptive parents did not approve of the person that I was becoming, my biological family would surely dislike me as well. Instead of wasting my time searching for my birth parents or placating my adoptive parents, I decided to create a new family all my own. On my 18th birthday I moved in with a boyfriend that I had met just two weeks earlier. Six months later I was pregnant.
It wasn't long before that self-fashioned family fell apart but I soon cobbled together another one. I found another man to love me and my son. This time I got married, six months before I gave birth to my daughter. We were a good family in which I was gifted unconditional love and yet I still battled with depression and feelings of inadequacy. I drank heavily and occasionally wondered about where I came from, curious about if these feelings were a result of nature or nurture.
I contacted Catholic Charities to open my adoption records. They charged a $300 fee and there was no guarantee that my birth parents would have granted permission to be contacted once the records were unsealed. I decided not to risk the money and instead I would occasionally scan adoption message boards. For the most part I had come to believe that there was no need to invest any energy in search and that I was better off focusing on the family that I had.
In November of 2011, when I was 31 years old, something happened. I woke with the remnants of a dream still flickering behind my eyes. It was really just an image that lingered in my head as I climbed out of bed, the image of a Google search bar that was filled in with: "baby girl, Norfolk, VA, 1980." These keywords were the most basic way to describe me and my birth and my dream was suggesting that I search them.
For whatever reason, that morning I chose to listen to my dream. When I sat down in front of my laptop and replicated the search from my dream, it wasn't the first time I had performed that search. It had never proved fruitful in the past but that morning the search results were different. The second entry listed a link to the same adoption registry that I had visited in the past and the description contained my surname, "Frederick" along with the other distinguishing descriptors of my birth, "2/7/1980" and "DePaul Hospital." I quickly clicked on the link for that post.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This post was clearly directed at me; someone was looking for me. I sent an email to the creator of the post that contained my phone number and said, "I think that I may be the person you are looking for." Then I headed to work, trying not to be overwhelmed by the possibility of what could be. By lunchtime my phone was ringing and when I answered it the voice on the other end was excited and tearful. It was a girl, not much younger than me, who had posted the ad for her mother...for my mother. Jena was my half-sister; one of three children my mother had after giving me up for adoption. There was also Megan and Michael and all of them had been looking for me. Jena said that she would email me pictures of our mother and I was to expect a call from her that evening.
If there was any doubt in my mind that this was in fact my birth family, it dissipated the moment I opened that file of pictures after work. The first picture in the series was of my mother, Patricia, and there was no denying the resemblance between us. In several of the pictures I received she was even wearing glasses that were identical to the Sophia Loren-style frames that I had been wearing to be daring those days.
When the call came that evening and I heard the sound of my mother's voice I felt as if I were speaking to myself. I was most struck by the similarity of our laughter, how it seemed to come at the same moments and ring with the same depth. This was comforting, as was the ease with which it came. There was no awkwardness or hesitation in that conversation, just excitement and love. She was able to offer me more than the information about my origin. She was able to offer me the feeling of belonging that I had long been chasing after. Though I hadn't physically been a part of the life that my birth family had shared, she confirmed that I had always been there. Oddly enough, when I look at the pictures of their life together, I do feel like I was there.
That summer I traveled to Plattsburgh, New York to meet my birth family....my entire birth family. I met my mother, my sisters, my brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and grandparents. From each and every one of them I felt the same acceptance and love. I heard stories from all of them and slid those stories into the empty spaces of my head and heart.
My mother was also able to tell me about my father, but that is another story...
