My life has always had a mystery at its foundation. And a giant clue came into my possession this summer that may be the key to unlocking the answer to one question I've never really felt compelled to honestly verbalize for the lump in my throat: Who is my birth mother?
I've known I was adopted since before I could comprehend words. This is because my parents started telling me at about the same time they started reading to me. And I'm fairly certain that they started reading to me as soon as they adopted me at four months old.
By the time I started grade school, I understood what being adopted meant and in the 1970s, it meant that you didn't talk about having been adopted, such was the social stigma. Fortunately, we have come a long way, baby, and that particular stigma has turned into a badge of honor - I was adopted; ie, my parents definitely WANTED me. No doubt there. We live in a world of open adoptions now, but in 1970, mine was closed. Sometime in the 1980s, the PA courts planned to close all adoption records and make obtaining valuable information such as birth parent names very difficult. Anticipating that someday, I might ask this question, my parents wrote to the courts and got my original birth certificate, which they did not look at. Rather, they handed the envelope to my uncle, who apparently looked at my birth mother's name and said, "It's really close," meaning, it was really close somehow to our family name of Lynch.
Then my uncle placed all of the documents in an envelope pre-addressed by my dad with our home address, and mailed it home. My parents placed that sealed envelope in their bank's safe deposit box and started telling me about it in my 20s. I declined obtaining the envelope, reasoning that the woman cared enough about me to give me up instead of being a 20-year-old single mom who would struggle to raise an infant with the help of her parents. She probably didn't need to hear from the girl she gave up all those years ago. She had me, named me (I also know my full original name - it is nothing like my name, the one that you all know me by), and gave me up to the state. While I was installed with a foster mother and before my parents were alerted to my presence, I've been told that she bought me things and sent them to the foster home. I have also been told that she was probably in the court room a year later, the day the judge made my adoption official.
I have never wanted to find her - out of respect. Respect for what must have been a very difficult decision. Respect for her privacy. I don't want to bring this woman pain by showing up one day and surprising her. But now that my parents have given me the envelope and I have opened it and viewed the name of the woman who gave me life, I find myself compelled to know the rest of the story.
I am a story person, you see. I like the details. And there are details about me and my past that I would like to know. This is my chance to complete the missing pieces of my story. So I leapt and registered with an online adoption registry and have contacted a nonprofit adoption agency that conducts searches in Pittsburgh.
I don't know how this story will end. Finding a birth parent is an emotional journey that can be laced with disappointment - she may have passed away, she may refuse to speak with me, she may not be found at all. That's the negative side. The positive side might be meeting and talking and learning about the woman and her story - the practical (medical stuff) and the real (how exactly did I come to be?)
Throughout my entire existence, I've wondered if I look like her. If she is creative and outgoing like me. If she is stubborn and just a bit arrogant, but very generous - all qualities of mine. I wonder if she ever married. If I have half-brothers or half-sisters somewhere. If she likes cats or dogs. Travel. Photography. Intellectual challenges.
So many questions. And today begins a new chapter: the search. I am ready, more than I have been before, whatever the outcome.
