Cape Karen
In 1993, a long held personal secret, and the answer to a million prayers, delivered silently to a Higher Power, came to a long-awaited joyful resolution. That was the year when my first-born son, who I had, with great sorrow, given up for adoption in 1962, finally succeeded in his courageous and persistent quest to find me.
It happened right before Christmas that year, and I can honestly say that I have never received a more welcome surprise or a more meaningful Christmas gift.
I was born into a home rife with alcoholism; both of my parents were in a drunken stupor, or feeling and behaving angrily hung-over, all of my life. I had an older sister, Sally, ten years my senior, but she (gladly) left home at seventeen to go to college in Vermont. She eventually married and began a family of her own, and she rarely looked back to find out how her little sister was doing. (I guess she wanted to keep her past far behind her, and I was part of that past.)
So, basically, I was left alone, from the age of seven on, to deal with the daily difficulties and the many embarrassments of living with two unfit parents. No one cooked, so opening a can, or eating at a neighbor's house became my means of nutritional survival. Falls, fires and fights were as 'normal' at my house as were breakfast and dinner at most homes. And, unlike today, in those days you didn't tell anyone, anything.
"How's your mother," someone would ask - "Fine." I would reply, even though I knew she hadn't gotten out of her bed for months, or that she was in the hospital having those cirrhosis-of-the-liver induced poisons drained from her bloated body, once again.
"How's your father?” a teacher would inquire. "He's fine." I always said; yet the night before, he had spent the entire night passed-out in his Jeep. He usually ended-up lodged inside the big hedge that surrounded our house when returning home from a night of drinking at the Hyannis Yacht Club; more often than not, he missed the corner entirely when trying to turn the Jeep into our driveway.
To keep a long story short, suffice it to say that my loveless, lonely, frightening and dysfunctional (to say the least) home life was a natural breeding ground for my eventual 'fall from grace.'
In the 1950's and 60's girls were expected to remain virgins until marriage. (I know, it sounds strange today, doesn't it?) If a girl became pregnant outside of marriage, and millions of us did, she was quickly sent away, somewhere far from home, to avoid bringing shame on her family.
(I won't even comment on the irony of that statement.)
Anyway, in 1962, at the age of nineteen, after briefly dating an older boy, who was not someone I loved enough to marry, I went from being a motherless child to becoming a childless mother. (In those days we were called "unwed mothers," today we are called "birthmothers." )
If I had thought my home life was a nightmare growing up, this new event in my life became an ongoing bad dream - a burdensome secret, which I silently carried for 31 years, as I continually wondered what had happened to my baby boy. . . a child I was not even allowed to see or hold after giving birth to him. I walked around with a big hole in my heart.
The lawyer had sternly warned me, at the time I signed away my son for adoption; alone in a strange town, recovering from my first childbirth in a strange hospital, to tell no one about his birth. And, I was especially warned not to ever try to search for him.
And so I didn't.
But . . . no one had ever told him not to search for me; a finger-wagging, mean-spirited lawyer never warned him not to search for his birthparents.
Oh, yes, his adoptive parents discouraged such an attempt when he first brought up the subject, for fear he would be sorely disappointed; and they were in constant dread, when he was younger, that I would appear on their doorstep and try to snatch him away. But, eventually, they said, "Go ahead, search. . . if you must."
So, he did; for twelve years he searched. And, in spite of many legal brick walls, he finally succeeded in finding both of us; his birth-mother and his birth-father.
His adoptive parents had given him wings; and, as found birthparents, Ralph and I could finally give him roots.
At long last, he could feel psychologically complete.
Now, he knew why he had curly blonde hair and sensitive blue eyes. Now, he had his medical background to pass along to his own children; my three wonderful, and only, grandchildren - who call me their "Fairy" Grandma.
And there is so much, much more.
I have this blog page now, too; compliments of my handsome, first-born son; my 'all-grown-up' baby boy, who just turned 43.
We were able to celebrate his birthday together, for the first time ever, this August 10th. Knowing it was important to me, he was kind enough to bring his family all the way from Minnesota to the Great Smoky Mountains, just so we could do that.
(Yep - there are 43 candles burning on that cake. Nope - he didn't get 43 presents.)
Thanks, son, for finding me ~ and for making my dreams come true.
Your birthmother loves you!