Once upon a time . . .
It was the summer of 1970. A young dark haired girl and a tall blue eyed boy had fallen in love. They were on a beautiful sub-tropical island off the coast of Japan, called Okinawa. The girl and the boy loved each other very much. The girl was artistic, and only 17 years old. That summer, she gave birth to a baby girl. But the boy's father had forbidden them from marrying. And the girl lived alone with her father. Her mother had died years earlier, and her father would be soon to follow. It was her responsibility to care for him in his old age, and she knew that she could not care for a baby and her father as well. So they did what they thought was the best possible thing. Four days after giving birth, the new mother signed the necessary papers relinquishing her baby to complete strangers. Strangers who had been unable to bear children of their own. Strangers her little girl would learn to call Mommy and Daddy.
I can't remember a time when I didn't know that I was adopted. Even though the reality of it was clear, it was still very much like a fairy tale to me. The story above was my favorite fairy tale about my birth parents. It was based upon the few facts that we did know about my birth mother. She was 17. She was driven to the hospital by a tall boy with blond hair and blue eyes. Her mother was deceased. Her father was elderly. My parents told me she was artistic. I assumed that she was an only child like me.
There were other fairy tales, of course. There was the obligatory, "My mother is really a princess" story, which didn't last very long. And there was the famous, "My mother is really Olivia Newton-John" which lasted for about a year. After seeing the movie Grease, I decided that Olivia Newton-John was my birth mother. I marched right over to my adoptive mother and told her so. To this day, it is a running joke between the two of us that Olivia Newton-John is really my mother. But my favorite fairy tale was the one above.
I never completed the fairy tale with "and she lived happily ever after." I think that somehow, even at a young age, I knew that my adoption could not have been easy on my birth mother. I distinctly remember my mother coming to my room one night because I had been crying. She asked me why I was so sad, and I told her. I was worried about my birth mother. I always wished that she had grown to have a happy and full life, and met a wonderful man who whisked her off of her feet, loved her very much, and took very good care of her, but somehow, when I told myself the fairy tale, that was never included.
Through most of my life, I didn't think much about my birth mother. I was always curious about her, and some times I considered looking for her. But it was not an all-consuming passion for me for a very long time, and I never thought it had much affect on my every day life. Part of the reason was that I thought my search would be hopeless, since I was born overseas.
When I was sixteen, though, I stumbled on some paperwork my parents had. I found the legal documents my birth mother had signed and a letter she had received from the American Consular. On these documents, I found her name, her signature, her father's name, and my name--the name she would have given me had she been able to keep me. Her name was Martha. My name would have been LeeAnn. At that moment, it was as if she stepped out of the fairy tale pages I had relegated her to, and became a real person. She had a name, and she had given me a name too.
At first, I was angry with my parents. How could they have kept this information from me? I hid the fact that I had found this information, photocopied the documents one day when I knew they would both be away from the house while I was home. I felt like a Secret Agent. I gathered the documents as quickly as I could, and put them in a folder. I ran to the library where I made duplicate copies of each document I had discovered. Then I ran back home and put them back where I had found them, being careful to put them in exactly the same order I had found them in. I never came out and told them I had found these papers. Instead, it came out when my mother discovered a letter I had written about them. Then she told me the story behind how they had come to possess these documents.
While they were still living on Okinawa, my parents learned that there was a problem with my US citizenship. I was unable to inherit it from my birth mother, even though she herself was a US citizen. I had been seriously ill recently, and my mother was already distraught. When she learned that there was a problem with my citizenship, she feared that Martha was trying to hold up my adoption somehow, so that she could find a way to regain custody of me. Either my mother demanded proof, or the adoption agency offered it, but one way or another, we were given these documents: signed adoption papers, an Okinawan birth certificate, and a letter from the American Consular stating that I would not be able to inherit Martha's US citizenship.
It was then that my parents told me they thought that Martha was also adopted, and possibly also naturalized. It turns out that if a woman is unmarried and a naturalized citizen (i.e., not a "real" US citizen), she cannot pass her citizenship along to her child. Even though military bases are considered US territory, I guess because she wasn't in the service herself, the right to pass down citizenship wasn't extended to her. This is a real sore spot with me. It makes me angry that anyone can come to the United States, have a child and that child automatically has the right to US citizenship, yet I did not have the same right, even though both of my birth parents were US citizens. Additionally, if I were in the same circumstances as she, I would not be able to pass my citizenship along to my child, even though I have never known or had allegiance to any country other than America. This really burns me.
In any event, it was at that moment when I first started seriously thinking about looking for my birth mother. But because I was born overseas, half the world away, I felt like it was an impossible dream, and I gave up my search at the first brick wall I faced--which was locating the agency I was adopted through.
About ten years later, I had married and moved to California (where my husband was born and raised). I became more active on the Internet, and did some nosing around, which would lead to my more active search. I had come to learn that there were only two high schools on Okinawa, and one of them was not even built yet at the time I was born. I assumed that Martha went to an American high school, so all I had left to do was verify it. When I was about 26 years old, I learned that she had in fact attended the high school I thought she had--not only did she have a name, but now her existence had been verified by another person. It was then that I learned she had an older brother, and a woman named Barbara photocopied his picture from a school yearbook and mailed it to me, on my request. I was a little let down to find that he didn't look anything like me. I had long wished to look into a face like my own.
I loved my parents very much, they had done and sacrificed much for me. They were just as human as the next guy, but they had done their best to raise me well. Personally, I think they didn't do a half bad job. Of course, I'm biased in my opinion. But there were two things that they had never been able to give me, and through no fault of their own--a family resemblance and my family medical history.
All the males on my father's side of the family share a family resemblance. My father and his brothers look like his father. Their sons all look like my aunts and uncles. My mother's brother and sister share a family resemblance, as do my cousins. I was the only child in the family who didn't look like anyone else. I never said anything about it, but I felt like the oddball.
I learned to hate it when people told me or my father how much I looked like him. I would just smile and nod or say nothing, but I felt like these were empty praises that well-meaning friends were just mouthing. I looked nothing at all like my father, or my mother, or anyone else in our family. Our family never once made me feel as though I didn't belong, they were very loving and very accepting. I don't think they could have done anything to change my mind if they had known about it, but I always felt like the outsider.
The next thing I learned, from a fellow named Mark, was that I would most likely be able to locate Martha if I could locate her brother, Jerry. He gave me a few leads where to start looking, but I still considered it hopeless to find either Martha or her brother, so I just stored away the information he had given me for later use.
The next discovery came when I found Bob.
I had been searching a guestbook from another site about Okinawa, trying to find a reference to my birth mother from someone who knew her, or even an entry from Martha herself. I found an entry from Bob, which mentioned her by name, and contacted him. It turned out that not only did she know him, but she had dated him at just the right time for him to possibly be my birth father. I asked him what he could tell me about Martha. Right away, he told me a little bit about her, then he asked me who I was and why I wanted to know.
I've been brought up never to lie. When he asked me directly, I told him the truth. We discussed the possibility that he could be my birth father, but he had never known about me. His relationship with Martha had ended several months before I was born. I suspected that she knew she was pregnant at the time their relationship ended.
Almost immediately, Bob opened his heart and life to me. He told me much about his life, his family history, his family medical history, and he entertained my questions about Martha--which were often and many. I felt like the child of a widower father, who when tucked into bed at night would ask, "Tell me about my mother" for a bedtime story. I was struck by the many similarities in our attitude toward life and the way we had lived. But I was also eager to finally find someone who was from "my own clan," so in retrospect, I may have been a little too eager to find common ground--common ground which I could have found with any other human I could make a connection with. He was not the blond haired blue-eyed boy my parents were told about. That left a lot of doubt in my mind as to whether or not he really was my birth father though.
Shortly after finding Bob, I was able to locate someone who had a yearbook from the year my birth mother graduated from high school. This woman, Gretchen, also asked me right away what my connection to Martha was. Her question was a little more innocent, and stuck in my mind. She thought that perhaps Martha was famous, and I was collecting her old high school photo for a "Guess the star" type scenario. Again, I told her directly once she asked. At the time, I had a different version (the "search" version) of my home page available on the Net, and I directed her there for more information once I had laid out the plain facts to her. Her response touched me very much. Here is part of it:
"If I were [your birth mother] and read your home page, I'd be overcome. You're not coming across as angry, or blaming, or disappointed. I'd feel that this daughter I gave up all those years ago is no longer a source of guilt and loss, but a blessing in my life. ... the greatest impact would come from what you said about your [birth] mother's act of strength. The fact that you can recognize strength, and appreciate hers--that says plenty about her and even more about you. I would feel the deepest sense of understanding, from [you]. What a gift for her. What an incredible gift."
We continued talking, and to this day, consider each other friends despite the age difference (she is just a year or two younger than my birth mother). She was kind enough to photocopy and enlarge the yearbook photo for me. When I received it, I carried it around with me for days, took it out often to look at it, held it up against my face in the mirror, compared it side by side with photographs of myself. Later she even offered to send me her entire yearbook, an offer I gratefully accepted--another connection to my birth mother. Not only was Martha a real human being with a name and a brother and a boyfriend, she finally had a face now.
A few months later, I followed up on a hunch I had, and contacted someone I believed to be one of Martha's classmates, a man named Ron. He responded immediately, questioning why I wanted to know about her. As usual, I told him my reasons. I got an immediate response from him, stating that he would help me find her. I hadn't intended for any of my contact with her old schoolmates to lead to a a crusade on their part to find her, but was honestly very grateful and happy for the offer. He told me that he sent some information to someone who was in contact with Martha, and that he had never heard anything back since, despite his efforts. That lead never panned out.
I did have another hunch about someone else, though. Occasionally, I'll get a gut feeling about something, and be dead on about it. I'd had a gut feeling that Ron might be able to help me. That didn't pan out. I also had a gut feeling that this other person might be able to help me. But I was gun-shy now about following up on my hunches so it took me a while to gather up the courage to contact this second fellow.
I had received a lead from this second fellow, Mark, even before I had contacted Gretchen and received a copy of Martha's yearbook photograph. I had considered his lead to be a dead end, but I remembered one thing he said in his response to me: that Martha had been like a little sister to him. I had been too chicken to ask him more about that when he first said it. I was just grateful that he hadn't asked me about my relationship to her or reason for looking, so I didn't have to reveal my identity to someone else (I felt very guilty every time I did so, but I could not bring myself to lie--besides which, I'm not a very good liar).
I contacted Mark again, and asked him more about Martha. He didn't remember me right away, so I had to remind him how I had contacted him and his response to me. I asked him if he could tell me more about her, and if he knew her over the summer of 1970. I was hoping to find someone who knew about me, and hoped that by mentioning that particular summer I might be able to set off a spark of recognition in someone who had known her during her pregnancy. I didn't receive an immediate response from him after that, which worried me. I was sure that I was about to meet another dead end. Then I got a message from his sister, Kat, who is Martha's age.
Without Kat's assistance, I may never have found my birth mother. She gave me the first solid lead on her--a lead which lead to several important discoveries for me. She told me the city Martha had lived in when she last knew her, and the name of her then husband, and that her husband had passed away some time after she last saw them. Armed with this information, I was able to locate a marriage certificate from 1974 (with the help of a net-friend) and a death certificate for her husband from 1986 (on my own, in the county I currently live in)--I had not only tracked her to the United States, I had also tracked her to the very state I was living in!
From the first time I considered searching for my birth mother, I had believed that it would be a spiritual and enriching experience for me, and I had been adamant that I wanted to do as much of the searching as I could on my own. Had I hired a private investigator, I probably would have been able to find her much sooner. But conducting the search on my own gave me time to digest the knowledge I had learned as well as to acclimate myself to coming closer and closer to finding her.
I was a little surprised though at exactly how much the search would affect me spiritually. Through my search, I have come to believe that there is a Power guiding us, that we do in fact meet obstacles and make accomplishments at just the right time, and just when we need to. I believe there is a Plan, that we make our own destiny, but we are also part of something bigger yet--part of a wheel that continues on either in spite of, or because of our efforts. Had I followed any other path and found her at any of the times when I had lamented meeting a brick wall, I may not have been as pleased with or prepared for what I had found on the other side as I was when I finally did find her.
Doing it my way, I was able to prepare myself each step along the way, and I found her at a time in her life when she was not only able to accept me into her life, but she had in fact been thinking of me during the months immediately before I found her. For other adoptees searching--I'm not saying my way is the only way, I'm saying follow your gut. My gut told me to do it one way, and for me, that was the perfect way. Your gut may tell you something else. Listen to it. Take the time to feel whatever emotions come to the surface, and take the time to deal with them. The one thing I always recommend is to release any anger or resentment or fantasies you have about your adoption, so that when it comes time for a reunion (if it happens) you are like a clean slate--so that you have little if any baggage relating to your adoption when you show up on the proverbial front doorstep.
In any event, armed with some names and addresses from the marriage and death certificates, I searched the county property records. I located an address for her from 1992, and other vital information. Using that, I was able to track her address from 1992 right up to February 1998--I learned this information right before Valentine's Day 1998, as far as I knew, I had her current address. It took nearly a week though to discover that the address was for a nursing home. I was immediately worried that she was in ill health and called the home to find out if she was still a resident there and what their visiting hours were. I was prepared to drive there as soon as possible if she was still a resident, the home was less than 100 miles from where I lived. When I called, I was told that she had just moved out to an apartment of her own two weeks earlier, but they were not at liberty to give me her current address.
After coming so close, I was certain I had hit another brick wall, and felt that I was unable to get over, under, around it or even through it by brute force alone. I used the brick wall image often, and decided that I would sit down next to the wall and wait for an answer to present itself to me. And it did. I couldn't get Martha's forwarding address from them, but they would be willing to give her my name and address. She wouldn't know me from Adam at the time, but she might remember her friend Kat.
I contacted Kat and told her what my situation was. She had already mentioned that she would love to get back in contact with Martha, but I wanted her permission before leaving her address with the nursing home. She told me that would be fine. I didn't want to put her in an uncomfortable situation, especially not one she hadn't volunteered for, so I told her she didn't have to tell Martha about me if she didn't want to. I told her that I didn't want to put her in that position, and wouldn't ask her to. I only asked that she tell me how Martha was doing if Martha did in fact contact her. She agreed. I called the nursing home again and left her information. I lied! I told them I was helping Kat find Martha. I justified it in that at this point that was exactly what I was doing, so it wasn't really a lie in the most technical sense of the word. Then the wait began.
I don't think I even waited a week, maybe two, for a response, but those were some of the most agonizing days of my entire search. Near the end of the wait, I considered no longer waiting for Martha to contact Kat. In fact, I had come to the decision that it had been long enough--either the nursing home was never going to give Martha Kat's information, or Martha had received it, but refused to contact Kat. I decided I was done sitting next to the wall. I still couldn't get over it or around it, but I thought I could throw a message over it. So I decided that if I could find the perfect card, I would send it to her with a brief note inside.
Well, I found the card. And I wrote the note. In fact, I wrote the note three times and had to buy the card twice. The first time I bought the card, I scribbled my name in it right away, then thought better of it. So I went back to the store, terrified that they would be out of that specific card, but there was one last copy left. So then I carefully wrote out the note before printing it in the card.
The inside of the card said:
There are places in the heart
reserved especially for those
too special to forget--
You happen to be
one of those people. . .
one who will always be remembered
today and every day.And my note said:
I know it's been a very long time since we last saw each other. You might remember me as LeeAnn Ruth, but I go by my first name now, Kim, and I married. I think of you often and wonder how you have been.
You might not realize it, but you gave me a wonderful gift the last time I saw you. I remember it well because it was my birthday, August 2. I've never been able to thank you for what you gave me.
Please feel free to contact me, I'd love to hear from you.
I wanted to make sure that the note wouldn't give away a secret she might have been keeping for nearly 30 years. But I wanted to be sure that she would know exactly who I was the moment she read the note. I was ready to put the note in the mailbox on Friday, March 6, 1998 when I decided to check my e-mail before going out to the mail box with the card.
That's when I got Kat's message.
"I just talked to your birth mother this morning . . . she would love to hear from you."
I had to read the words over again just to make sure I wasn't seeing things: ". . . she would love to hear from you."
I talked to Kat as soon as I could after receiving her e-mail, and got Martha's current address and phone number from her. Kat told me a little about the reason Martha had been in a nursing home. She had suffered a stroke nearly 5 years ago and the right side of her body was paralyzed. I was saddened to hear that she had suffered, but glad to know that she was finally living independently again. After hanging up with Kat, I took a walk to calm my nerves, then called Martha almost immediately.
Because of the stroke, Martha spoke a little slowly. This forced me to focus all of my attention on her, which also made it easier for me not to get over-emotional. I was actually a little surprised. I felt like our call was anti-climactic. I expected violins and tears and joy and sorrow on both our parts. But the phone call was more like two old friends calling each other after years of separation. Martha even said something about it, that it was "weird" but not weird all at the same time. I don't think either one of us ever really expected to see or hear from each other, and yet, there we were. Mother and daughter, yet total strangers. It was surreal and completely natural at the same time.
I asked her if she remembered Bob. She didn't. Then I asked the dreaded question, "Do you know who my birth father is?" And she named another fellow. I was a little saddened, after coming to know Bob, that he wasn't my birth father after all. And a little anxious because this meant I would have to find someone else now.
We talked for about thirty minutes. I wouldn't be able to visit her that weekend, so I told her I'd send her some pictures, and try to visit her the following weekend. That night I wrote her a five page letter, which I mailed on Saturday. I told her about the pictures I sent, and I tried to jog her memory about Bob.
The following Tuesday, she called me after receiving the letter. She finally remembered Bob. Bob had been looking for her long before I had. Since I didn't know how their relationship ended, I told him that if I found her before he did, I wasn't going to give him her contact information without her permission. He was understanding of this. I told Martha that, and asked if it was okay to let him know where she was, and she said that would be fine.
After talking with her some more, I got on the Internet and sent a message to Bob about the good news (I had already told him the bad news, and we had discussed that bloodlines didn't change much of anything, he was still like a long lost uncle to me, and I was still like an older daughter or niece to him). He called her immediately afterwards. He would be in town the next day, to visit his other daughter, Chrissy.
On Wednesday he arrived, we had a late lunch, and then he set off to visit Martha. Thursday evening, I got another call from Martha. Apparently he had said something to her about how we had thought nearly for sure that he was my birth father. After he had left that night, she thought about it some more, and she said that he could possibly be my birth father, she wasn't in fact sure. She apologized again and again for this. I told her that it didn't matter, it was okay. Before I found her, my birth father could have been any man in the world, now it was narrowed down to just two men.
The following Sunday, March 15, 1998, I saw my birth mother face to face for the first time.
I had planned for my visit to last from 11 AM until 4 PM. We gabbed away at each other for the full five hours. I showed her my drawings, she showed me hers. I showed her my photo album, tracing the years, the friends, the relatives, the places we'd lived. She showed me photographs of her two sons. As far as I know she still hasn't told her sons. But I'm not in any rush. And I've tried to make it clear to her from the beginning that I don't want to rush her. There are certain things I want, medical information, and the identity of my birth father. I am well on my way to getting both. The rest is icing on the cake. I'm absolutely thrilled that she was happy to be found, and wanted to meet me, and would like to have continued contact.
Once again, with the help of some friends on the Internet, we were able to locate the second man, who Martha had originally named as my birth father. I had a simple blood test done, hoping that it would rule one of the two men out, but it did not. I'm once again at a crossroads, and unsure about exactly what I want to do. I am leaning more toward thinking this second man is my birth father, because of a striking resemblance between the women on his side of the family and myself. I'm wary of making any decision based on looks alone, but I also don't particularly want to spend the money for a DNA test (they're not cheap), since I have no urgent medical need to positively identify which one of these men is my birthfather. So, for now, I stand at the crossroads--sometimes unsure of which direction to go, sometimes just admiring the scenery where I am right now. When the time is right, I'll take the next step--whatever that may be.