I’m just damn near 69 years old and two weeks ago I met my birth family for the very first time. It’s an experience I simply have to write about, but as with everything, there is a back story that I’m going to tell now. Spoiler Alert: The meeting with my family went better than my wildest dreams.
Vermillion Cliffs Arizona
Adopted
I always knew I was adopted. I knew I was adopted before I was even able to grasp the concept or understand at all. My parents were always open and honest about the fact.
I have lived a truly great life, with no regrets. I grew up in a loving and caring family with all my needs and many of my wants met and exceeded. I was protected and cared for and allowed to be and do what I wished with minimal constraints.
I was an ornery little bugger. Me and my brother kept my mother on high alert for a lot of years. We were always up to something, and I do mean always.
There Was Always a But
People that aren’t adopted never wonder what their mother looked like.
People that aren’t adopted never build a fantasy family in their minds.
People that aren’t adopted always know who they are related to, and who they aren’t.
When I first started my search for my birth mother I had one question that I wanted to ask. “How could you carry me for 9 months and then walk away?” It really was all about me. That was 50 years ago.
a row of sunflowers
I was told by the State that records didn’t exist, that my life officially started with my adoption. But I was one day old when that happened, what came before?
I was told by the State that my records had been destroyed in a fire.
The state lied.
My brother was adopted through an agency, and they assisted him (and me) in any way they could over the years.
Things Change
As of July 1, 2014 the laws of the state of Washington changed and adoptees had rights. A right to an original birth certificate or a health statement filled out by the birth mother. I applied for and got my birth certificate and there was my mother’s maiden name and nothing else. A couple of months of dedicated online research revealed to me what her current name was and that I had 3 siblings.
My brother got his birth certificate at the same time, and the adoption agency sent a person out to make contact with his mother to see if she wanted to see him. She didn’t. She said her current husband would divorce her if he found out she’d had a baby before she met him.
I spent a long time writing a letter to my mother. Months, really. I finally got up the courage to send it and no answer. Nothing. I just presumed that meant she didn’t want to see me or to let me know ‘her family’.
Navajo Bridge, Arizona
Five years later I took a flyer on the Black Friday deal from 23 and me for their complete genetic testing. I got my results on New Year’s Day, 2020.
There was a first cousin listed there. Since they were only really dealing with half the DNA I knew she was my niece. I made contact with her through the site and she answered. We went back and forth twice before I told her what I knew, that she was my niece and gave her the maiden name of my mother as proof.
I didn’t hear from her for 3 days, long enough that I was pretty convinced that she and her family didn’t want to know.
I was wrong. It simply meant that she needed to go to her father and two aunts before she felt comfortable continuing. That started an email and text blizzard that ended with me driving into my sister’s yard on June 26, 2020 to meet my brother and two sisters. It turns out my mother had 4 children in that family, but a brother was killed in an accident less than 2 weeks before I made contact with them.
Oh, yeah. There was a reason my mother never answered my letter. She died in December 2014 of pancreatic cancer. Before she could have received my letter.
There is more to this story as you might guess, but I’m going to let that carry along until the next installment.
All words and photographs in this post are mine. For better or worse.
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