Found (15 page)

I sat in the dark of my office for a long time, considering my options.

 

 

IT TOOK A few weeks but I added up several hours of conversation with the directors, organizers, and promoters who worked with that Virginia adoption organization.

I tried to understand how I could contribute. I asked questions and conducted interviews. I discovered that none of the people who managed adoptions for this group had been adopted. None of them had experienced mother-loss of any sort either.

This seemed incredible. I would have thought that the first order of business for those who handled adoptions would be empathy garnered by direct experience. How can one know the power of mother-loss unless they too have lost a mother?

I was driven to read many books on adoption, B. J. Lifton’s
Journey of the Adopted Self
, Jean Strauss’s
Birthright
, Florence Fisher’s
The Search for Anna Fisher
. I even called one of the authors, Nancy Verrier, who had written the books
Primal Wound
and
Coming Home to Self.

Once I got Nancy Verrier on the phone—in a kind of informal interview—I asked what she would tell people if she were giving the talk. Nancy was quick to offer her own wisdom—garnered from years of working with adoptees, first mothers, and adoptive parents:
“Tell them to have empathy for the children in their care. They are grieving a terrible loss of the mother and of identity. Tell them to not expect gratitude from these children. They have no gratitude to give. Tell them to read my book and other books by experts
.
”

As she spoke, I knew what I would say in Virginia. Her words became my speech.

When the interview was over, Nancy and I continued to talk. It turned out she was also a therapist, and after I had told her my personal story, she asked, “Have you ever explored the possibility of finding your birth mother?”

“No,” I said, but then I stopped. I swallowed a lump that had formed in my throat. “Well, actually,” I continued, “that’s not true. I did search for her but that was a long time ago ...”

TWENTY-ONE

FAVORITES

IN AN ODD TWIST OF FATE, the beautiful Midwestern Qi Gong instructor was not so married after all. In fact, he was in the midst of a divorce from a long-dead marriage. His children were grown. His wife was engaged to another man.

Amen!

I was bold. I told him to call me. “You know, if you want,” I added, in order to show the proper respect.

He called right away.

A first date proved what I already knew. He was soft spoken, gentle, kind, and steady. A good man.

I didn’t believe such a man would be possible for me. I just couldn’t have imagined it, and yet, here he was.

Within a few weeks, he became a fixture in our lives.

His name was Roger.

Josephine called him Rogert. Spencer called him Rog. I called him Rogelio.

Rogelio was from Cleveland and was related to Kurt Vonnegut. He taught classic Chinese medicine and studied Tibetan Buddhism. He was a brilliant thinker with a doctorate in acupuncture. He was also fluent in many languages—Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish. When he spoke to me in Spanish, my knees went weak.

I was tentatively happy with Rogelio, sharing my children and our routine. He came to our house for time in the hot tub and dinners of mac and cheese. He danced in the kitchen with Jo and helped Spencer with his math homework. He talked to Steve with respect and Steve even said he liked him. “He’s a different kind of dude,” Steve said. “Isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “He is a different kind of dude.”

 

 

WHEN ROGELIO SAID he loved me, I was suspect. I told myself—as a ploy to undo the couple we were becoming—that we were doomed to bad timing. He had to manage the complexities of his divorce and I was deep in therapy with Nancy on the question of my own adoption, a process that was emotional and intense. We were digging into unexplored terrain that left me sad and often in a state of deep shock.

I told Rogelio, right up front, I believed myself too unstable for such a good man. “Just ask Steve,” I advised.

Rogelio, not easily swayed, said he found me quite stable, thank you very much. He also volunteered to be part of a few telephone meetings with Nancy. He wanted to understand. He wanted to help.

Nancy told Roger that I would test him—try to push him
away—it was standard procedure for adoptees. “She has been abandoned by her mother at birth. It is a loss that goes deep.”

Nancy encouraged Roger to read everything he could about adoption and to be prepared for a rocky ride, in the event I searched for my birth family.

“Reunions are very emotional,” she warned. “Get ready.”

I was sure the therapy with Nancy would be our breaking point but Rogelio said he wasn’t going anywhere. He promised to stay at my side—no matter what.

 

 

ADOPTION BOOKS PILED up around my house and I read bits from each one. They contained testimonies, research, charts, data, and evidence. I talked to experts on the phone and combed the Internet.

As I moved closer to the idea of searching for my birth family, I felt hooked by an odd and binding loyalty to Bud and Janet. I told myself that to search would be a betrayal to their memory.

This belief expressed itself as a form of combativeness directed at Nancy. “What is the point of searching for my mother?” I demanded. “What will I gain?”

Nancy—ever patient—said I would gain an identity.

“I have an identity,” I insisted. “I know who I am.”

Nancy said no, I didn’t know who I was and then she had me answer a series of questions.

Q: What is your favorite color?

A: I like lots of colors.

Q: What is your favorite food?

A: Oh, I like so many kinds of food.

Q: What’s your favorite ice cream?

A: Well, sometimes I like mint chocolate chip but chocolate is good too. I don’t know. I really don’t have a favorite. I don’t even like ice cream.

Q: What is your favorite tree, flower, book?

A: There is no way I could possibly choose. There are so many.

Q: Political affiliation?

A: None.

 

 

WHILE THIS WAS hardly a definitive test of identity, I found it odd I was so evasive. When it came to the children, I had no end of confidence. I could tell Nancy that Jo loved pink and Spencer loved Red. Jo’s favorite food? Meatballs and mac and cheese. Spencer went for sushi, every single time. Jo loved cookie dough ice cream. Spencer only ate caramel swirl from Baskin-Robbins.

Yet I couldn’t tell her what I would choose or what I would have chosen as a child.

I thought I struggled with a fragmented Self but Nancy was showing me that I actually lacked a Self. There was no “I” in “me” and her questions finally pinned me down and brought me face to face with the horrible truth.

I should have been relieved because finally there was someone in this world who could help me, but I wasn’t. I was defensive and furious. I threw the stupid test in the garbage, but not before wadding it into a tiny, crumbled ball.

Nancy called this reaction progress.

She said we were getting to the heart of the matter.

My angry inner baby was finally showing herself.

TWENTY-TWO

NEVER GIVE UP

THE LAST BLOCK to my search was my own desire to control the outcome of my own story. I felt I had to know all scenarios before launching a search.

1. My mother was dead.

2. My mother had been in a terrible accident and lost her memory.

3. My mother was alive and didn’t want to know me.

4. My mother was alive and wanted to keep her past a secret.

5. My mother was alive and had been bullied into secrecy.

Nancy offered another version. “Very likely she is ashamed and scared.”

“Well, that is pretty selfish,” I said.

“Of course she is selfish,” Nancy said. “What teenager isn’t?”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“She is likely trapped in the mindset of being seventeen. She is likely totally regressed. It happens. I see it all the time.”

“But Nancy,” I said, exasperated, “if my mother is someone
who did not have the courage to overcome these feelings put in place when she was a teen, how can I bear knowing her?”

Nancy sighed on the phone—a sound I took to be impatience. I was sure all my questions wore her out but I didn’t care. All my life I had been swayed by the will of another and I wouldn’t be swayed by Nancy.

“Jennifer, you just need to meet your mother, have a cup of coffee, and talk,” she said. “Meeting your mother is not about her personality. It’s about the biology that connects you.”

Nancy and I had been talking for months now. Fall had turned into winter and now it was spring. She had already told me these things over and over again but I couldn’t seem to grasp the concepts.

She tried again—ever patient.

“It’s as if you have put yourself on hold—from a sense perspective—from the moment you were born, and the only one who can take you off hold is your first mother,” Nancy said. “She does this by being in the same room with you.”

I opened my mouth to protest but before I could speak, Nancy continued.

“I know, I know, you are going to say I’m nuts but it’s true. Human bonding is about the senses and you have not had your senses filled up by the mother who gestated you,” she said. “You have been coping, Jennifer, and up to this point, you’ve been doing a remarkable job, but if you find her and spend some time in her presence, you will find your Self begin to take truer shape. You’ll establish a firmer base than you’ve had—you will stop being so defensive and so afraid. You’ll be able to move on. It’s as simple as that.”

Her words, as they always did, sparked tears. There was something in what she said that felt calming, as if there was a truth in the room. It also felt as if she were speaking to the deepest, most wounded part of myself—that baby that had yet to be fully born—the one I had been protecting since birth. But she was also speaking to the hardened survivor I had become. She was asking my protector to finally, fully step aside.

I just didn’t know if I could do it. I had been protecting Jennifer for so long.

Back and forth I went for weeks and even months.

I was like a wild horse that wanted to sprint in the direction of my mother. I was also a magician who made the horse disappear by asking questions:
What if your heart gets broken? What if this woman hurts you again? What if? What if?

 

 

BUT WHEN I finally decide to do something, anything, I give over my body, heart, mind to the job at hand. I become a laser beam of focus.

And that’s what happened when I finally resolved to search for my first mother. Come what may, it became my job.

First, I hired an investigator who lived near Portland. Our work was on the Internet—a virtual investigation—and we spoke on the phone.

With nearly nothing to go on, the investigator pushed me to recover my copy of the Non-Identifying Information Report.

I told her it had been lost but I was pretty sure I threw it away
after Bryan killed himself. I could almost see that old Jennifer wadding the page up and pitching it into the trash.

Not to be thwarted, the investigator suggested I write Nevada for a copy. “Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope,” she said. “It’s your legal right to have that information.”

I wrote the letter.

The state of Nevada is called a sealed state. This means it is the law to close adoption files. Not even a terminal illness can unlock them.

How odd that Nevada allows fast divorces and marriages and legalizes prostitution and gambling, but will not open adoption records.

The registry, established in 1979, remained active. I had called half a dozen times over the years, but stopped checking back before the kids were born.

When I wrote my letter to Nevada this time around, a response came right away:
No non-identifying information exists, sorry.

I called the state and spoke to a woman named Angel and I thought it was a lucky sign. My name Lauck—luck with an A—was perhaps about to pay off.

As politely as possible, I suggested that Angel look in my file again. She did. No luck after all.

Still very polite, I asked if she was sure there was no non-identifying information because the state issued a document years ago and it had to be there. I felt like a mother chastising a child who had mislaid a toy. “It didn’t grow legs and walk away, Angel. Go look again.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Lauck,” Angel pushed back, “nothing is in this file except the name of your first mother.”

A long, quiet ticking sound took over. My breath was gone.

“You have the name of my mother in front of you, right now? ”

“That’s right,” she said, voice bright and even perky, “but I cannot tell you. That would be illegal.”

It was as if Angel had struck me through the telephone line. I saw bright white light between my eyes.

“Do you know your mother, Angel?” I finally asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

“I’d like to know my mother too. Can’t you tell me?”

“No, ma’am, I would lose my job.”

She didn’t hang up and neither did I. We breathed on the line—two women, two daughters, two human beings.

I imagined Angel in her Carson City office, sitting behind a big wooden desk. I saw her as a small woman with straight, dark brown hair. She had a pert nose and a slim, petite body. She dressed in conservative colors, gray, brown, black. Her nails were painted a clear color with little white bands at the top of the nail—French manicure. She had lived an entire life, luxuriating in a sense of self, forming a solid and impenetrable ego and now, she was unable to bend beyond rules written by a handful of old men more than a century ago. She likely thought this was some test, being conducted by a superior, and the excellent way she managed our conversation might lead to a promotion in the future.