I looked down at the tiny bundle, quietly telling him that I loved him, one last time. As I sat in the wheelchair, outside the hospital doors, a woman got out of a black Lincoln, walked over to me and reached for the baby. With tears, I handed him to her and she quickly walked back to the waiting car. The driver of the car was easily recognizable, he had come to see me in the hospital after the baby was born, to see what I was like and to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind, about the adoption. That was the last time I ever saw my very first baby, my birth son, more than 40 years ago.
As quickly as I could, I got into the car that was waiting to take me home, along with my mother who showed no sign of emotion and instead remarked, “Well, that’s over and done with!” We pulled away from the curb and I turned around to see the black car leave behind us and turn in the opposite direction. Nothing else was said during the ride home, in fact, where my mother was concerned, it was already ancient history.
It had been a high school romance that continued long after graduation and into my boyfriend’s short-lived first year of college. I went into secretarial work shortly after while he managed to flunk out of his first year of school. The family business became his next option. Life progressed and there was talk about marriage, at some point in the future. Meanwhile, my parents, who had been separated for several months, were actively embattled in a divorce. I wanted out, anywhere but where I was, someplace where I wasn’t caught in the middle of their warfare. And so, I managed to get pregnant, a moment of deliberate carelessness that I thought would be my way out.
When the news hit on the boyfriend’s side, his parents were anything but pleased; in fact, his mother offered to send me to Puerto Rico for “an abortion and a vacation”, as she so kindly stated, going on to say that “there would be no marriage, we were much too young”. We were both 22 years old. The now ex-boyfriend quickly joined the Air Force without so much as one last word and I made the adoption decision with the intervention of my Obstetrician, it was handled privately through my father’s attorney.
To my mother, my condition was a matter of embarrassment and furthered the heated arguments between her and my father. They fought about anything and everything while I tried to become invisible in their angry lives. My pregnancy managed to go by quickly and the baby came exactly nine months after my birthday, the night he was conceived. I requested that my newborn son be brought to me for all feedings, much to my mother’s dismay and the surprise of the hospital nurses. I even went so far as to fill out his birth certificate information; naming him made him completely mine, at least for the three days I was able to count his tiny toes and fingers and just hold him.
I had no visitors, with the exception of my mother and a man who came into my room, armed with a Polaroid camera, a copy of J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and his business card. He was an attorney and, as I later found out, the father of the adoptive mother, the driver of the car waiting outside the hospital when I was released. A fast talker, he spent time questioning me about my background along with other subjects. He threw out questions about politics and the arts almost as if he wanted to see if I was an intelligent person or just some stupid girl who got herself in “the family way”. I fired back, with acceptable answers, and he finally stopped with his third-degree asking then if he could take my picture. I agreed. He then wrote his home telephone number on his business card, told me to call him with anything I needed, wished me all the best, and he left.
That card was the only connection I had to my birth son and I left it tucked between the pages of the book. Sometime after I returned home from the hospital, my mother deliberately threw them out; her way of making life disappear. One day the mail brought the baby’s hospital photographs; my information was on his birth certificate so the pictures automatically came to me. I have them still.
I went on to marry and have children, I have a good life but the emptiness inside has never gone away. As time went on, stories about adoptees searching for their birth parents gained popularity on television and elsewhere in the media; by now, my son was well into adulthood. Over the last twenty years, I’ve registered with as many birthparent websites as possible just to have my information out there should my son ever look, avoiding the scam-oriented, paid search “specialists” who provide little, or no, positive information.
After all this time I still wonder if my son was ever told that he was adopted and if he was, what he was told about me. He might know and have no interest in finding me, he might have been told I died or, worse yet, he might be dead. I will continue to search with the hope of someday being reunited with my son, to let him see the person I am, to make him understand why I made the heartbreaking choice in giving him up for adoption.
And to tell him that I love him…again.
……………………………………………………………..
Once the “Publish” button was hit, I had second thoughts.
What was it about this missing part of my life that just reached in and pulled such a tender memory out of my heart and onto this screen? For me, it was about sharing a loss, something that I had been told to just put out of my mind almost forty-five years ago.
How can any woman make believe a life never existed?
Adoption, abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, loss of a child in an accident or through an illness, it’s all the same. If you have a heart, part of every breath you take belongs to the child you helped create. It belongs to their memory.
Since I’ve gone this far, I’ll share a little more. The name on the birth certificate reads Stephen Lee Smith, born June 7, 1967 in New Rochelle Hospital here in New York.
He was mine. Just for three days.
Update! It took almost 47 years but, on January 31, 2015, a private message on Facebook opened the door for a reunion I thought would never take place. He found me! One of the first things I wanted him to share was to thank his wonderful parents for giving him the life I could not, those many years ago. Now, we’re busy with e-mails, phone calls and getting to know each other…at last!
