Adoption is about much more than the day a mother signs the relinquishment papers. It lasts forever.
Adoption is the birthmother who for twenty years uses her daughter's birthday as a PIN number.
Adoption is the grandparent who is terrified of the grandchild his daughter gave up.
Adoption is the adoptive parent who celebrates finalization day every year because that baby was finally THEIRS (and no one else's).
Adoption is the daughter who knows she was heartbreak for one and exaltation for another, the child who grows up in the shadow of the two children that "might have been", and the adult who still refers to herself as an "adopted child".
Regardless of one's position in the triad, closed adoption is a familial minefield. All the adults in the situation are told that no one will ever know. The child is told she shouldn't want to know. I broke the rules early. This is my story.
I wasn't supposed to be alive. At five months old, I weighed barely eight pounds. I had an angry scar on my chest from an emergency intubation to fix my punctured right lung. The caseworker didn't tell my parents much; she reassured them that although I was small, I was healthy. Although I had a rocky start, my first five months were fairly uneventful, she said.
The caseworker's glossing over my story would begin a 20 year long string of euphemisms - relinquished, placed, chosen - words that seem innocuous until you realize that those words refer to people.
For years, I called the hospital where I thought I was born pretending to be my Mom. (I say thought because my amended birth certificate, called an ABC, said I was born in "P.O. Box 97, P-, Mississippi" to my adoptive parents. When I was in third grade, my class had to bring a copy of their birth certificate for a class project about where we "were from". People picked on me for months because I was "born in a Post Office.) I'd call the hospital and say I wanted medical records for "my daughter" transferred to the local GP's office. When I couldn't give them any more than my adoptive name and current SSN, they'd politely apologize and hang up. After the second or third time, my Dad recognized the phone number on the monthly statement and I was roundly punished for lying (and curiosity).
My parents are strong people, educators. My dad is a professional musician, my mom a primary school teacher. They were brought up "in the church". Both are very active in the small Southern Baptist church in my hometown. I was raised in that church and as a product of my environment until recently reflected my upbringing. Alcohol was strictly verboten. Not even cooking wine was allowed in the house. "Cussing" was something you'd only see on television for a split second, for after the word came out, the station was changed. Democrats were bad people who took your hard-earned money and spent it on welfare queens. Bill Clinton was the next step down from the antichrist. We boycotted Disney for welcoming gay people. Above all were the "big two" - premarital sex and abortion. Neither was allowed, even discussed. Sex was only for married couples and abortion only for those interested in a one-way ticket straight to H-E-double hockey sticks.
The day I turned 18 I skipped school for the first time. Thirty minutes later I was in Biloxi, to keep an appointment with the diocese that I'd made two weeks earlier. I walked in and told the Sister at the front desk that I was Miss W-, there for my appointment with the caseworker. She made a pointed glance at my middle, looking for any hint of a bulge. I sat down in the waiting room with my slender notebook of filched and copied documents. After an hour, my appointed meeting time come and gone, I asked the Sister if there had been some misunderstanding. She frowned at my middle and asked if I was related to Mr. and Mrs. W-, of P-. "Yes", I replied, saying that since I was 18, I could get a copy of my Non-Identifying Records. Suddenly, her gaze popped up. She no longer looked inquisitive, now her voice dripped ice and acid when she said, "Oh. You're not here to sign papers. You want to find the people that gave you away." I said that I was entitled to non-identifying info at 18, to which she replied, as she led me to the door, "How could you do this to the people who took you in and raised you. How could you hate them so much when they loved you?"
All this time my parents tolerated my curiosity. They were concerned that I would "find out something bad." We had unbelievable rows when I'd explain that knowing something was better than nothing at all. When they understood that they couldn't stop my looking, my dad tried to take the search over for himself. He called former colleagues on the coast, often hours before I called them myself. He arranged meetings with former students of his who had been in school with Pam. He would find out information about different girls at Pam's school and then pass it on to me with a joking remark about "missing" something.
My parents' friends were harsher. They'd make patronizing comments like, "Aren't you cute in your little gumshoe phase." The ones who didn't make light of my search told me that I didn't love my parents or sister, that I "wasn't raised" to do this. They pitied my parents for having to put up with me and said it was all "bad blood". Never was I afforded any agency by anyone. To them, my search was something I was forced to do because I was just a bastard relying on the kindness of others. Some inner hatred of my parents is what made me want to look for my B-Mom, nothing else.
I let a year go buy, finishing my senior year and starting school at the small community college where my dad had taught for almost 40 years. Every time I drove to the coast, or Mobile, or Pensacola, I'd crane my neck at blonde women who looked 40-ish, hoping to see someone who looked like me. I was consumed by "the search". I found a support group online, people called "search angels" who would do leg work or answer questions. These wonderful people helped me properly (meaning with threat of a court order) petition the Diocese' new caseworker for my information. I was amazed to receive almost 100 pages of information. In reading those pages, I developed a hatred for White-Out. I yearned for an accidental omission by the person who wielded that little white brush. I sat with my blanked-out pages, holding them up to the light in hopes of finding something there that would give me part of a last name. All I had at this point was "Pam".
There is precious little substantial information to be gained from non-identifying information. I had a first name, a birthday, and some hobbies. I knew that Pam's mother had remarried after a divorce when Pam was five. She had a half brother and a half sister. I also found out that Pam was smart. She started taking 12th grade classes at 13, the summer before she got pregnant with me. Armed with my new cache of facts and an annual from Pam's high school, I found a last name. I also found a former teacher of Pam's who worked at the University I now attended. Amazingly, this teacher was tenured faculty in the History department, and I, as a History major, walked past her office every single day.
After some soul searching, I mustered the courage to talk to this new link. I stepped into the Doctor's office, introduced myself, and said, "Did you teach at O- Junior High School?" She replied with an inquisitive, "Yes." "Do you remember Pam M-," I asked. The same curious yes - to which I replied, "It's nice to meet you, I'm Julie Christine M-, her daughter." I missed my next class, and Dr. N was late getting home that night. We sat, I on the floor, she in an office chair rocking nervously and sipping Earl Grey as I asked her questions. Ever the historian, Dr. N asked for proof and I produced pages from my non-identifying information where Pam had answered in her own hand questions posed by the Diocese. Dr. N nodded, saying she'd seen that handwriting many times before, as she was Pam's English teacher.
Dr. N warned me. She and Pam had an "interesting" relationship. Apparently Pam felt somehow drawn to Dr. N, and confided to her teacher that she was being abused by her stepfather, J, assistant band director at O- J. H.S. Pam came into class with huge black eyes, getting attention and sympathy from her friends. One day when Pam was late to class and a friend said she was in the bathroom, Dr. N walked in to find Pam "retouching" her artificially-made shiner. On another occasion, Pam sat out of softball practice, going to Dr. N's room during her planning period to tell a harrowing tale of her father's stabbing her in the chest with a barbecue fork. When Dr. N. asked to see, there was a "puncture wound" courtesy of Halloween makeup, covered with "bloodied" gauze.
Dr. N gently mentioned that Pam was very "popular". Even at thirteen, Dr. N said, Pam was quite promiscuous. She was beautiful; blonde, blue eyes, petite, 5'2"; athletic, on the softball and drill teams; smart; and musically talented, playing French horn in her step-dad's band. She was, in a phrase, quite a catch. She was also easy to catch. Dr. N said she often worried about Pam's dating boys four and five years older than she. Dr. N would gently mention her concerns to Pam's step-dad, but to her knowledge, nothing was ever said. When everyone in this small southern town found out that Pam was pregnant, it wasn't really surprising. Pam saved that for when they asked who the father was.
Apparently Dr. N was one of the first people Pam told about her pregnancy. She got the school's counselor and the three of them talked about Pam's options. When they asked about the father, Pam replied that "they all knew" who it was. She accused her stepfather, citing as proof of his abuses the faked black eye and stab wounds. They called in the principal, and apparently began an inquiry only to discover that Pam's story was full of lies. Pam's charges were dismissed almost out of hand. Pam was removed from school, going to live with a grandparent. J- was interrogated, but nothing ever came of his questioning. Pam had a reputation for sleeping around and making up horrible stories about him, two things hard to overcome now that she found herself in "real trouble".
Dr. N told me all of this, and within 48 hours I was hearing it all from the source. As Pam tells it, she had been looking for me for almost a year, searching the web for any mention of her name in conjunction with an adoption. Her friend found my website, and Pam looked up all the W-s in Mississippi. There are only a handful. The first phone call reached my uncle. He put her in touch with my Dad. Dad gave her my cell phone number, but he called me first to give me warning. Five minutes later, I talked to Pam for the first time. That first night we were on the phone for five hours. She wanted to know everything about me. I wanted to know everything about her.
Now, looking back on it, the only thing that compares emotionally is the first few dates with my husband. We all know it, that feeling of anticipation, of excitement, the nervousness. I was so terrified of doing something wrong, saying something offensive. I didn't want to do anything to make her leave me again. This strange person didn't even sound like me. She picked on my southern accent, telling me that it took her years of travel to get rid of her own. A few weeks later, she finally mentioned my birth, my father, and her family, all in the same marathon conversation.
She was thirteen, she said, out of school for Hurricane Frederick's arrival. Her stepfather had sexually and physically abused her before, and her mom, C-, was complicit in the abuse. When her mom went to the hospital where she worked (she was head nurse) to help batten down the hatches, her stepfather raped her. A few weeks later, she knew she was pregnant. Pam said that for months she hid the pregnancy, and no one at school knew. They went to Gatlinburg with a friend for Easter vacation, Pam said, and during the trip her mother realized what was wrong. When they returned, Pam said that her mother went to the hospital and collected and brought home all the tools she would need to administer a saline abortion.
What C didn't know was that Pam was seven months along. According to Pam, C began the procedure by telling her that she would have a miscarriage. Pam went into labor, and partially delivered me. When C realized how far along Pam was, she rushed her to the hospital, where I was delivered and airlifted to Ochsner Foundation Hospital with a punctured, fluid-filled lung, sepsis from Pam's punctured bowel, and weighing a little over three pounds.
I was there for two months, in NICU, and Pam apparently was kicked out of her house. By her version of events, C put Pam in a mental hospital in New Orleans, where Pam stayed until she got out (somehow) and got a job cooking at the Napoleon House restaurant. She worked there for some months, living on the street and with friends she made at work. A few months into her employment, some well-to-do tourists came in. It was late and Pam was closing the kitchen (alone) when orders came in. Pam prepared them herself and the party was so impressed with the young chef's work that they asked her to work for them aboard their yacht(s). The "leader" of the group was one
Robert Firestone, famous psychiatrist and sailing hobbyist. Pam went to work for Firestone, traveling the world for the next fifteen years in his employ. She swam around the islands of Dalmatia, shopped for food in southern France, London, Tokyo, Beijing, Perth, and any other city one can imagine. At one time she sent me a picture of one of Firestone's boats in a lock. The picture was on the cover of a Yachting magazine, and she said the blonde head in the photo was hers. One of Pam's more fantastic stories is that she was in San Tropez when
R.D. Laing died. Pam placed herself there, with Laing, as he had his fatal heart attack on a tennis court in France. (Laing's son and biographer, Adrian Laing, can offer no corroboration for her part in the story. Furthermore, in response to my inquiries, Dr. Firestone has responded that "understand[s] [my] curiosity but [he doesn't] feel comfortable entering into [my] dilemma. [He] would hope that, to the best of [my] ability, [I] pursue [my] own life, free of past issues.")
Pam's story of travel with the Firestones takes her all over the world, and finally ends fifteen years later, in California. The crew were in San Francisco, and Pam took a flight to LA to pick up a very special car (a DeLorean) for Dr. Firestone. She got to the airport and got the car, driving through rush-hour traffic. She stopped at a traffic light and, on the overpass above her, a rushing taxi driver crashed into a red Miata convertible. The convertible landed on top of the car Pam was driving, breaking several of Pam's vertebrae, her hips, and both legs. Pam was in the hospital, and it took her several years to re-learn how to walk. She went from a special spinal institute in CA to a hospital in New York. There has never been any mention of the Firestones after Pam's accident. According to Pam, they dropped her after her injuries.
At first, Pam and I talked on the phone for hours, almost every day. I took notes of her conversations like mad. Her story grew, becoming more and more outrageous. If I asked her to clarify something that had been said before, she would say that she didn't remember. Any questions about high school were met with silence. Then, if I didn't call for a few days, when we finally talked she would remember something. Pam understands very well what I need, information. She also knows how to use that information to exert control over my emotions.
At first I accepted everything Pam said at face value. When I told Dr. N about her accusations of her mom and stepfather, she suggested I should meet the OB-GYN who delivered me. I made an appointment to see Dr. D, and when I stepped into his office, he asked why I had come. When I said that I was Pam's daughter, he was speechless. Dr. D said that Pam came to him after a failed abortion, and that she named the son of a very prominent Biloxi family as the person who was performing the abortion. (...a son, who, by the way, is now an internationally recognized concert pianist, and whose parents have been recognized numerous times as two of the best teachers in the state and the nation) When I ask questions about Pam's (and my) past, Pam gets angry. She won't answer my questions, and says I'm calling her a liar by asking them. One night, not long after our first conversation, Pam mentioned that she was so surprised that I was such a "super-conservative" person, since "I was so smart." I replied that it was because that was what my Mom and Dad raised me to be. She replied that even now that she'd talked to me, she wished she'd had an abortion as soon as she found out since I so ruined her life.
Finding Pam, and coming to terms with our strange relationship (we talk once a year, or less, and when we do, it becomes a litany of Pam's medical complaints and guilt trips) has changed me. As I said earlier, before Pam I was a strong-willed and very outspoken pro-lifer. After finding Pam, I realized that my birth (whether she was being honest about my father's identity and the circumstances behind my conception or not) was what ruined her life. That realization forced me to understand that no person should have the ability to tell me what to do (or not to do) with my body, and if Pam's story is true, then no person should have been able to force her to carry me, ostensibly a product of rape, to term. A large and varied group of events made my political swing happen; it wasn't
just Pam. Finding her, however, is a huge part of my life.
During my search I became very involved with the group MARRA, a loosely-associated online discussion group of adoptees, birthmothers, adoptive parents, and supporters who lobbied the MS legislature for better information access for all members of the triad. (For those of you curious about adoption "terminology", the Adoption Glossary here is a helpful tool.) These men and women, from so many different backgrounds, worked to get an "Adoptee Rights" bill into the Mississippi legislature. Of course, Mississippi, like Texas under Bush, decided that adoptees don't need to know anything about their past. (Which reminds me of a t-shirt from
Bastard Nation, "'Shut your mouth, you Bastard' has a whole new meaning when you're adopted. Give me my records!")
Adoption doesn't end when the relinquishment papers are signed. It doesn't end when the kid turns 18 and gets a sheaf of paperwork. Many times, when the reunion is complete, the search isn't over. The search only ends when the adoptee feels whole again. Some, like my sister, may never need to search. Some may burn with curiosity from the first day they understood they'd never met anyone they were related to. That doesn't mean that my sister loves our mom and dad any more or less than I do. I just needed to know.
My search still isn't over, but (much to my husband's elation) it isn't all-consuming now, either. I look a little every day, hoping one day that I can find someone that Pam went to school with, or who knew about me. I have an uncle and an aunt. Somewhere, I have a father, who gave me his long fingers, long, narrow feet, and broad shoulders. Even now, six years after my search began in earnest, I still have so many questions. And yet, doors are slammed in my face the second I mention that mine is a different "type" of genealogy research.
The historian in me wants to know all the answers. The adoptee in me wants to know the truth. This is one triad member who is tired of the dark and will not be ashamed.