The stiff, brown envelope containing my adoption records remained unopened on my desk long after its arrival in my mailbox. I am not sure if it was fear or discipline that kept me from opening it. Whatever the case, DNA results from Ancestry and 23andMe arrived about three weeks later – more information that might help me identify and reunite with my birth mother.
At that point, I could no longer prolong this. It was time for the big reveal.
I wanted my dad and sister to be there for it, however, so we made it a road show of sorts. Debi and I made the 2 ½-hour drive from Beaufort, S.C., to Lugoff one Saturday in mid-February 2022 so that we could all sort through the information together.
Debi was on tenterhooks from the brown envelope’s first arrival until we pulled into Dad’s driveway. I found myself oddly at peace, however. In fact, I would feel that way through most of the search. Occasionally, some new fact or consideration interrupted my tranquility — indeed, I was in for such an episode that very evening — but our drive to Lugoff was light and serene.
And even after arriving at Dad’s place, we did not dive right in. We went shopping at a few antique stores in nearby Columbia, then grilled steaks on Dad’s deck that afternoon. Only as the sun dipped below the rooflines and submerged Dad’s neighborhood in a blue winter tincture did we reconvene around the kitchen table to sort through records.
As I fired up my laptop, I handed Dad and Jen copies of a letter I intended to send to my birth mother once I identified her. Its opening was almost identical to the eulogy I delivered for Mom nearly five years earlier. I wanted my birth mother to know what my adoption meant to a woman who thought she was unable to conceive and who longed so fervently for a child. I wanted her to know about the wonderful family that raised me, the marvelous wife I found, the exciting places we had been and the things we had done.
And I wanted Dad and Jen to read this for reassurance that they need feel no more threatened by my search than the woman I was searching for.
As Dad and Jen dabbed their eyes and handed the letter back to me, I launched my browser and navigated to my bookmarked Ancestry account. I pulled up the 23andMe log-in page in a separate tab.
As the websites loaded, my excitement did, too.
Then I remembered the stiff, brown envelope, which I had tucked into the legal pad next to my computer.
“Wait. I’ll open this first,” I said, picking up the envelope.
Debi groaned.
We both expected the DNA results to yield more information than the adoption records, and she knew I was dragging out the drama.
Poking my pointer finger into the tiny hole at the corner of the envelope where the flap was not sealed, I dragged my digit along like a blunt letter opener, ripping at the crease until I was inside. I removed four sheets of paper — they faced away from me — and braced to read a document with more black boxes than a crossword puzzle.
But when I flipped over the sheets, I saw no censored parts.
“Ohio Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics Certificate of Live Birth” was scrolled across the top of the first photocopied page. Below lay row after row of gloriously unobscured information.
Now my heart was really racing.
I read the first cell. “Rigel” was my last name at birth.
Already, terrific news! That was an uncommon name and thus a boon to my search — far easier to fish a mother from a school of Rigels than from a muddle of Smiths or Joneses.
The name was also unexpected. Given my blue eyes, freckled complexion and quick temper, I was sure I would be searching for a “Murphy” or a “Byrne” or an “O’Sullivan.” Debi was long convinced one or both of my biological parents were Irish, but the DNA reports I would open later that afternoon traced only a tiny portion of my lineage to Ireland and the British Isles. Instead, the results indicated that my roots were in Eastern Europe.
Then, the best discovery of all: Shifting my view two lines down, I read for the first time my birth mother’s full name.
“Lynette Marie Rigel,” I announced with a smile.
Once spoken, her name hung above the kitchen table, held aloft by contemplative silence. We mulled it, sounded it out in our brains, considered its portend, as if repeating it in our minds would unloose some deeper meaning. Or perhaps her GPS location.
“I’m not sure if it’s pronounced ‘RYE-gul’ or ‘REE-gul,’ ” I noted, breaking the long silence. “Is that German?”
Then, as if satisfied her name had been exhausted of all further possibilities, I continued to scan the rest of the birth certificate.
No father was listed, but the document indicated I was born in Columbus, Ohio, just as we thought, in Mount Carmel Hospital, just as adoption agents told Mom and Dad in 1969. I popped out at 6 pounds, 5 ounces.
Then, my thoughts were tripped by the first contradiction of long-accepted lore.
“I thought my birth mother was from Columbus,” I said, lifting my eyes from the birth certificate to my father, so that I could scan his face for confirmation.
“That’s what we were told, or at least what I remember we were told,” Dad answered.
“It says here, she lived in Springfield, too. Where is Parr Drive?”
It is just miles from the house on East Madison Avenue where we lived until moving to South Carolina in 1976, seven weeks before my seventh birthday. I paused to consider the possibility that sometime during a seven-year stretch, my birth mother and I passed each other on a sidewalk or in a grocery aisle without realizing it.
I read on, only to be dazed again, gasping at the contents of the small box at mid-page.
“Oh, my,” I whispered gravely, unable for a moment to punch out another word.
“What? What?” Debi asked.
“You can’t just say something like that and then not tell us,” Jen added.
“Mother’s age at birth,” I muttered, pausing again to make sure I was reading the hand-written entry correctly.
“Fourteen,” I continued, inexplicably afraid to look up. “It says she was only 14.”
A lump bulged in my throat, and I batted my eyes as my lashes moistened.
“They told us she was 16,” Dad said softly, breaking another long silence. He sounded confused, as if unconvinced by his own explanation, as if he had reason to apologize.
From Mom’s earliest iteration of my adoption story, I understood that I was born to an unwed teenage mother. Technically, that had not changed. But the difference between 14 and 16? It seemed such a wide gulf. What’s more, because I was born in June and Lynette had a January birthday, if she carried me past the second trimester, she was almost certainly 13 when I was conceived — not even in high school yet.
My sister and my cousin Wayne faced steep challenges in the unexpected pregnancies that gave them their first children. But this? This was not merely a difficulty. This raised the possibility of an incestuous or statutory conception. It suggested a young mother who was not merely victim to her own indiscretion but a girl who was preyed upon.
And if that were the case, I might well be seeking someone who, for good reason, preferred to remain hidden.
Did I really want to go through with this? Into the night, Debi and I dug for information that might help me answer that question.
But my biological mother’s age would not be the last jolting fact we unearthed before bedtime.
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