The Girls Who Went Away (49 page)

I asked her if she could tell me who my father was, and she said she didn’t know if she should. She had written him from the maternity home once, because she felt he had a right to know, but she did not hear back from him. She thought he was still alive and probably married. Maybe his wife did not know. She didn’t want to cause any trouble.

We moved on to medical information: she has problems with her heart. Then we covered genealogy. After learning her identity, I had visited a family-history center and scrolled through lengths of microfilmed census records to chart the maternal side of my family tree. We compared what we had learned about our ancestors and then returned to the present.

We are both gardeners. We talked about the varieties of lilacs we have in common. We discussed the perennials and roses and shrubs we plant. She has a nice selection of trees, including a couple of catalpas. She said the pods make a mess but it’s worth it when they bloom. She said, “They’re real pretty when they bloom.”

I asked if she would be willing to meet and she said she would, so I asked her to think about what she would like to do with our day together. In the meantime, I would look into reservations and send her pictures of my garden. Afterward, I felt baffled by what had just taken place, shocked even. It was not at all what I expected. I thought the conversation would be short or she would hang up. It was so hard to absorb the fact that the woman I’d just been speaking to, and whom I had just made plans to go visit, was my mother.

We decided on a town south of where she lives and a month later I returned to the farmland I had traversed fourteen years earlier in search of her
picture. I checked into a hotel the night before and that is where we met. I was less anxious on this trip. The wondering and circling were done. The desk called my room at 10:00
A.M.
and I walked down to the lobby, where my mother was sitting in a chair waiting for me. We had a quick, brief hug and then set out on our day together. We had made plans to visit a public garden. I drove and we talked the entire time. It was easy and comfortable and she was generous and open with information about everything except my father, whom she said I resemble. I studied her face and kept an eye out for mannerisms, but I recognized nothing. I could have known her all my life and never guessed.

As we meandered on back roads, we talked about the chronology of major events in our lives. She and her husband built two houses; I have renovated three. I must have gotten my fort-building and power-tool gene from her. She told me about family members and their interests and I confessed that I had already met her brother. He had never mentioned the stranger who stopped by and asked questions about her.

At the end of our drive we returned to my room to look at the pictures she brought of her garden. It is elaborate and impressive and I was awed by her ambitiousness. She arranged a group of snapshots end to end, so I could try to make sense of the layout and see how the flower beds connected. Still not understanding, I asked another question and she flipped over the envelope that had held some of the pictures and began to draw a schematic that looked precisely like my sketched plans for garden plots and studios and houses in Arizona. And though I said nothing to her, I think that was the moment that I knew she was my mother.

I’m still not sure whether she was eager to meet or merely felt she owed it to me. She said she was told at the time of the relinquishment that she was never to have any contact with me. And though she did not say it directly, I suspect that the agreement she made was at least a part of the reason she did not respond when she received my letter. She is from a generation of women—unlike my own—that generally did what they were told.

I cannot fathom this event from her perspective. At seventy-five years old, she has just sneaked off for the day to meet a woman who is a both a stranger and the newborn she surrendered almost fifty-six years ago. But like the women I interviewed who were near her age, she does not talk easily, or
emotionally, about her experience. We talked about feelings and about adoption in the abstract, as Hazel and I had done earlier. But at one point she did ask, “So you
did
have a good life?” And I assured her I did. There were only two times that I detected a crack in her voice. The first was when I was talking about how some of the women I interviewed had suffered and she said, “Yes, when you walk down the street you look at every little face and wonder.” And the second was when we were leaving my room to walk her to her car and she pulled a ring from her finger and gave it to me.

And so our reunion has begun, with neither of us terribly emotional—at least on the surface—and with no particular expectations and no specific plans. We will start with our common interest in gardens and sketchy plans on the backs of envelopes, and move forward. Not knowing whether that visit will be our last, I tried to write down the details before they escaped me. But my mind kept returning, again and again, to the image of a ring. Not the one she gave me when we parted but the one she mentioned in passing—an old high-school class ring that belonged to my father that she said is still in the bottom of her dresser drawer.

Though I cannot express it precisely, that ring seems emblematic to me of everything that has happened—of my endless circling and of returning to the place where it all began. It was a ring once given to my mother by my father as a symbol of his commitment. And in the years since, it has no doubt served as a reminder to her of that relationship and of me—the child born of it—a pregnancy for which society made my mother, and many women like her, pay dearly. Perhaps what I have been trying to do is to rectify that wrong. But I think my drive to record the stories of the girls who went away, and my belief that what they have to say is important, is linked to the endless circle—of love and family and mistakes and second chances—symbolized by that ring.

I
N THE MONTHS SINCE
The Girls Who Went Away
was published I have received hundreds of e-mails from readers whose lives were affected by events like those chronicled in the book. About half of the letters were from surrendering mothers who—though not interviewed—felt that their stories had nonetheless been told. Adoptees were the second largest group to respond. Most said reading the stories helped them to better understand their mother and the social pressures of the time, others wrote to attest to experiencing a similar fear of intimacy and sense of loss.

Women who came of age in the 1950s and ’60s wrote to reflect on how they might easily have been one of “the girls,” had it not been for dumb luck. Many recalled women they had known who went away, and several vowed to locate a former classmate to apologize for their lack of compassion at the time. I also heard from a few women who surrendered babies more recently. One felt she was stigmatized for placing her baby for adoption at a time when it is so common for a single woman to raise children. Another reported that despite having more involvement in the adoption process, the
feelings of loss and guilt were similar. She felt that within her conservative community the sense of shame was no different than in the ’50s and ’60s and despite the fact that she was in her twenties and a college graduate, she was “pushed strongly” toward adoption. She did not respond when I asked for permission to reprint her e-mail. Perhaps it is this shame that lead to her silence, as it did for generations of women before her.

I was deeply moved by the letters sent from brothers, sisters, subsequent children, cousins, and friends of surrendering mothers, as well as the notes sent from adoptees’ spouses and adoptive parents. As I read these letters, I was saddened by the longing of those who are still trying to connect, but heartened by the compassion expressed by so many caring people.

Dear Ann,

My name is Richard and I’m 63, a retired elementary school teacher, now living in Florida. Recently, in talking to my 61-year-old sister in Indiana, she mentioned a review of your book. I bought her a copy and we began reading it at the same time. I hoped, amongst all of the stories, she would find her own. I told her if that happened—upon finishing—she should write an inscription and send the book to the daughter she put up for adoption back in ’65. I felt, by book’s end, that her daughter must read this book in order to have a much better understanding of the time period and why so many very young women found themselves in what was essentially a hopeless, no-win, heartbreaking situation. I’ve also ordered copies for my two other sisters and had them sent with a note saying it was time to celebrate our sister’s “bravery.”

My sister married in the 1970s and, to my knowledge, she never told her husband she had had a child before meeting him. He has since passed away. They never had any children of their own. Some years back she received a call from Catholic Charities and was told her daughter would like to contact her. In the years since, they’ve continued to talk and she has met her daughter’s husband and her three girls (her grandchildren).

My sister—and all of these girls over so many years—were abused by a system that did not have too much concern for the well-being of the birth mother. Had the same energies that found a home for these babies gone instead
into finding a way to help many of these girls/women keep and raise their own babies, how much better off so many of them would have been.

I now have a whole new and loving way to view what my sister went through. This is a topic that needs to be talked of—and talked of in the most nonjudgmental way possible.

Richard

Professor Fessler,

I went out today at lunch to buy your book, hoping it will give me some insight as to what my mother went through. She died a few years ago on her 70th birthday. When she was in the hospital, delirious and hallucinating from a serious infection, I learned that my mother was one of the women you write about. She spent hours crying and begging, “Bring me my baby.” When she regained consciousness she did not recall telling me anything but I spoke with her about it and she did—in very few words—confirm her ordeal. She was weak and very sick. I was never able to get more information before she passed.

In that moment at the hospital, her entire life made sense to me. She was a woman who had a sense of sadness and longing her whole life. It burdens me beyond comprehension to think of her sadness and despair and of her never being able to speak of it or share it with anyone.

Marie

Hello Ann,

I am listening to your interview with Diane Rehm and feeling waves of emotion sweeping through my spirit. I need to find my daughter.

The most I could get from the Catholic priest who arranged for my girlfriend to go to California in 1968 was that the baby was a girl and was born on March 4th or 5th. He told me he wasn’t sure, but I’ve long believed it was a way to keep me from finding this child. I was 20 at the time, and my girlfriend was 21. I have not learned anything about the baby other than what the priest told me.

From time to time over the years I have attempted to find her and am
still very interested in finding her, to know that she is okay, to learn what kind of life she has had, and if she has thought of me, or thought to look for me.

At that time, I was a student at a Catholic college and lived with my parents. My parents were hysterical over this, threatened to cut me from their wills, even throwing me out of the house a number of times over the course of several months. I developed a severe case of shingles from the stress of it all, but that was seen as part of my punishment.

I don’t have a first name; the date of birth I have is questionable. I’ve run out of leads.

David

Dear Ann,

I have loved a man for the past 10 years, a child born to a girl who went away. Thoughts are tumbling…a lump in my throat…I’m finding it difficult to put feelings into words.

He found her recently—a whole family, a full brother—I went with him to meet them. There are no words, only lovely tears.

He has incredible similarities to some of the women in your book…inability to attach to people who love him, to commit, to feel at home, always feeling like he doesn’t fit in. It has been a struggle for him his whole life.

We lay in bed this afternoon, each reading our own copy of your book. We have shared many books in our time together. Never one like this.

Sincerely,

Ellen

Dear Ann,

In the mid-60s I was living in a suburb of St. Paul when a cousin who was a Lt. in the Navy appeared on my doorstep with one suitcase and very pregnant. Since I am a gay male, she evidently thought I would offer a safe refuge since we both had an unspeakable secret. At that time I had an efficiency (no bedroom) apartment. We had grown up together. Our mothers were sisters. While she was there we had our laughs and we did our share of crying, yet we survived. Those days harbored a cruel society but we made the most of what we had.