My Birth Mother

I think I'll begin this post by inserting a portion of the e-mail I initially wrote my birth mother:

I have known that I was adopted for as long as I can remember. My parents never kept it a secret. In fact, I even recently came across the book, Why Was I Adopted?, while going through all of our childrens' books, gathering some for my daughter. They read this book to both me and my younger brother (who was also adopted) over and over growing up, and they always made us feel like very special, very loved kids. If there is nothing else I can tell you that will make you feel good about the decision you made over 30 years ago, I can definitely tell you that I have had a fabulous upbringing. My parents are very special people.

To be quite honest, I never thought I would be doing this. I seem to always tell my friends and acquaintances the same thing when they find out that I'm adopted and ask me if I have any desire to ever meet my birth parents: "My mom is my mom. My dad is my dad. My brother is my brother. I've never known anything different." I have always thought that it might be nice to know more about any family medical history -- especially now that I have a child of my own -- and I have also thought it might be neat to see you, my birth father, and/or my half-sister (my mom actually always thought she was a full sister until recently) from a distance, just to see if there are any similarities in the way we look. But I have never felt that I am lacking anything in terms of any sort of relationship, probably because I have such a close bond with my family, so I have never felt extremely drawn to search you out. However, I think since the birth of my child, my mom has felt more and more that you probably wonder what happened to me and would probably like to know what is going on in my life. We discussed it quite a bit when she was down here helping me out soon after my daughter's birth, and she said if it was okay with me, she would at least like to call the agency and see about writing you a letter. As you know, she did contact Boys and Girls Aid, and she had Ms. Schroeder look into both my and my brother's records. When I found out that Amy had already tried to make contact, I guess it kind of changed things for me, and put more of a human element to your side of the equation.

I now feel like I want you to know who I am and how I am, as without you I would not exist. And without you I would have never had the wonderful relationships I have with my mom, dad, and brother. I thank you for the decision you made. Because of you, I have had a fabulous life.

There has always been an open invitation from my parents to help us locate our birth families if we ever had the desire to do so. As I said in the above portion of the letter, I have never really had such a desire, though I have always thought it would be interesting to see what they look like, to see if we have any similarities. But this has always been somewhat of a bonus feature to my life that I've kept tucked away in the back of my mind, never truly feeling that I needed it in order to feel fulfilled.

This recent reunion of sorts all began when my mom came down to help me out after Elsa was first born. We were in the car on our way back from an outing at the mall, and my mom asked me, as she has done periodically throughout my life, if I wanted to look into contacting my birth mother, especially since we had a trip to Oregon planned in the coming months. Elsa's birth had kind of stimulated this, as my mom thought that my birth mother would like to know how I was doing and that I now had a daughter of my own. I told my mom that I still was not really interested, and she asked if maybe she could write the birth mother a letter, just letting her know the generalities (she had done this before -- written both my and my brother's birth mothers -- but the letters were never received, probably because the agency needed more information from both parties). I thought this idea was fine, but it wasn't until just a few weeks before our Oregon trip that she contacted the adoption agency. The agency checked both my and my brother's files, and there was nothing in my brother's, but there was a note of contact from my half-sister from back in 2003. This made things a bit more interesting to me, and so quickly started the string of events.

Because ours were closed adoptions, contact has to be made from both sides, and both parties have to be in agreement, before any information can be released to one side or the other. I went ahead and filled out a registration form and paid the $45 registration fee and mailed it in to the agency. Upon receipt, the caseworker called me and went over some basic information, and told me she was going to try to contact the half-sister. However, she said she wasn't sure why the sister was ever allowed to file any sort of contact in the first place, as it is against Oregon law -- everything is to go through the birth mother. But she called the number and, sure enough, it was still good, and my sister happened to be with my birth mother when she received the call, thus allowing the caseworker to speak with her directly.

The caseworker called me back to let me know that my birth mother filled out her registration form and hand-delivered it that afternoon, and gave permission for me to have all of her contact information. And I mean all of it. It seemed kind of crazy to me. There is this person who gave birth to me, who I don't know in the least, and suddenly I have all of her information sitting in front of me. The most ironic piece of all the information? Her name is Susan (Sue) -- same as my mom's. So the ball was in my court. According to the caseworker, I could proceed with contact as desired, but she said she would like to go ahead and tell my birth mother my plans. So I told the caseworker that I was most comfortable with an e-mail. I'm not one to talk for hours on the phone (unless I'm talking to my mom), and I am much more the writer than the talker, so I thought I would better express myself via e-mail. And so the message posted (in part) above was born.

Sue wrote me back promptly and told me she was happy to hear I was raised in such a loving home -- that had always been her hope and prayer for me. She also told me that this was proving to be difficult for her (as the caseworker had warned me) because she felt like she was reliving a lot of what happened those 30 years ago by going through this process. She said, however, that she was more than willing to answer any and all of my questions. In my initial message, I told her that, though I felt quite nervous and apprehensive about it, I was definitely willing to meet with her while out in Oregon if she had the desire to do so. She said that her daughter (my half-sister), Amy, was -- get this -- going to be out here in the Atlanta area and then in Asheville, NC, during most of my time out there. (I guess I should pause here briefly and say that Amy is about four years older than me, and my birth mother had her with her first husband, and she continued to raise her after giving me up for adoption.) Because my mom was planning on acting as my support during this meeting, my birth mother hoped to have Amy with her for the same reason. It just didn't look like we were going to be able to align our plans so we could all meet at the same time, so it was left right before the trip that we were not going to meet and that we were just going to continue e-mail and possibly phone contact while getting to know each other a bit better.

So my mom, Elsa, and I went out to Oregon as planned. About mid-week while out there, I e-mailed Sue and just let her know that I was still willing to meet if she happened to change her mind -- that I only get out to the West Coast every few years or so. She sent me a message that evening and said it was funny because she was sitting down to write me a note asking me if I was still willing to meet, and there was the note from me. So we set up a time and place to meet -- lunch at a Mexican restaurant not too far from my aunt and uncle's house on the Friday before we were to head back home.

In the meantime, I had connected with Amy on Facebook and we also exchanged a couple of e-mails. She told me about her visit to Stone Mountain (she was literally like 20 minutes from our house -- crazy!), her first meal at a Cracker Barrel, and how she was generally enjoying her first visit to the South. She also told me about how she had been trying to find me for years -- even before that 2003 contact they had on file. She seemed genuinely happy to finally be able to connect. And I just continued to feel more of a mixed bag of emotions.

The actual meeting with my birth mother started out kind of crazy. I told her what kind of car we would be driving, and that I would be wearing a bright orange shirt. She told me she would be driving a cream-colored VW Beetle and would be wearing jeans, a black shirt, and a jean jacket. My mom, Elsa, and I took off for the restaurant after Elsa woke up from her morning nap, and I tried to make my first phone call to my birth mother, letting her know we were on our way (as I told her I would). However, the call went immediately to voicemail, so I had to leave a message. We got to the restaurant, but stayed in the car waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I finally saw a Beetle matching the description pull into the parking lot, but it pulled in quite a distance away from the restaurant, and was driving very slowly through the parking lot, pulling into a spot way far away. Nobody got out. Eventually the car backed out of the space, and again started tooling through the lot, and parked again a bit closer, but still a distance away, in a spot in front of a Big Lots. After a couple of minutes, a woman got out of the car. And she matched the description. But instead of walking toward the restaurant, she walked into the store. At this point I figured she was freaking out and wasn't sure she wanted to go through with this. I was feeling nervous myself, but had tried to mentally prepare myself as much as possible -- for any outcome. I wouldn't have been distraught if she changed her mind, but I was also just kind of ready to get it over with. We got out and stood in front of the restaurant, as we told her we would wait for her outside. After about five minutes or so had passed, and she still had not come out of the store, I decided to call again. This time it rang, but then it was like someone hung up. Weird. My mom finally decided she was going to go track her down in Big Lots. And she did. (Apparently Sue and her husband's cell phone numbers are one number off from the other, so I was calling her husband's phone, and in the meantime she was killing time in the store, waiting for me to call.) When I saw them both walking toward me, chatting away, it was one of the most surreal moments of my life. I wasn't sure what to do or how to act, but as they got closer, I realized I should at least walk their direction. So I met up with them, Elsa strapped to my front, acting as some sort of protective barrier between me and the unknown, and the only words I could find as my brain tried to process five million things at once was, "Hi. I'm Christi." My first thought after that was, "Duh." And my second was, "Wow. Our faces are quite similar." I kept my thoughts to myself for the moment, though, and we gave each other a bit of a hug and all walked inside.

My mom was smart and ended up bringing the scrapbook/photo album she put together for my wedding, with the thought that there might still be a chance we would see my birth mother. The book was a fabulous ice breaker, and allowed Sue to see photographs of me, my family, and my friends through the years. She just kept saying, "Wow. Wow, you really look like me there." She brought a few photos too, one of which was of herself in 1974, and there were definitely similarities. Our body shapes are nothing alike -- she says I get my build/height from my birth father, who was over six feet tall and fairly slim. I didn't learn much more about him throughout our conversation except that he was a smoker and had really bad eczema -- perhaps where my weird skin issues and some of Elsa's problems come from. That and she doesn't really know where he is these days. After their divorce, he apparently went to live with his elderly mother in Southern Oregon.

The general story behind my adoption is something like this. Sue was in her second marriage, had a four-year-old from her previous marriage, and was pregnant with me. My birth father had lost his job and was showing no signs of wanting to find a new one, and my birth mother was starting to feel like things were turning into Marriage Number One all over again, so they ended up divorcing. She said she felt like she was raising Amy fine and was able to support the two of them on the meager salary she was earning. She said they were living in a cracker box of a house, but that it suited them well enough. She was young at 24, but felt like she had things under control. However, her parents really felt that she was not going to be able to support another child on her own, so they really pushed her to go the adoption route. She mentioned that she is a people pleaser (maybe I somehow get that from her?), and though she really did think she could handle the addition (me), she decided to do it their way, and went through the adoption process. She claims she received little support from other family members and really entered a time of feeling very isolated and alone. She said the adoption is the biggest regret of her entire life, and that there was not a day that went by where she did not think about me. I think I believe her, though in the scheme of things that doesn't really affect me that much one way or the other. All I could keep telling her is that I have had a fabulous upbringing and have always been well loved. I think that helped ease her mind somewhat, but I still think she is carrying around a lot of baggage.

We chatted for probably an hour and a half, maybe even two hours. My mom told her some about her experiences with both adoptions, we asked some questions, got more answers. There were tears from both sets of mothers' eyes. I learned that at least my birth mother's side of the family is quite healthy. I also got an answer to another question I've always had -- at 11 pounds, was I or was I not a c-section? Answer? No. It was a natural birth. She said one of her biggest worries was always that she had gestational diabetes and no one ever told her. But she found out later that was not the case. I guess I was just a fattie.

We took some photos before parting ways, one of which I will post below. It was a little strange to say goodbye. The whole ordeal was just so strange. Here was this fairly monumental meeting that was somewhat rushed into, a huge whirlwind of 30 years worth of mixed up feelings and emotions barely sorted out in a mere two hours worth of time, and then this let down -- almost relief on my part -- of the goodbye. I left feeling sad -- more sad than I have ever felt about the situation. As we walked back to our rental car, my mom grabbed my hand, and that is when my tears started to well up. The sadness wasn't really for myself. I still knew who I was -- still know who I am. My mom is still my mom. My dad is still my dad. My brother is still my brother. The sadness was really for her. I could sense the sort of battle she has had with herself over this decision for all of these years, and I could almost feel how it has just torn her up inside. I just hope she can find some happiness in knowing -- and seeing -- how happy and fulfilled I am.

So the question really is what we do from here. In one way I feel like I've opened up a can of worms of which I don't know how deep I want to jump in. But in another way I feel like I have been able to learn something about my history and have been able to quench some of those tucked-away curiosities, and that maybe there are a few more I would still like to discover. For now, I have continued to exchange some e-mail messages with Sue and Amy, and they are working on getting together some more photographs to send to me -- maybe even some of my birth father, if they can find any. Sue would like me to send a couple of baby photos her way, if I don't mind, so I will probably do that. In the meantime, I just continue to process, process, process all of this.

It's been a crazy journey, and I thank everyone -- especially my parents -- for supporting me along the way.