There are a few things you should probably know about me if you’re going to come along to find out whatever became of that girl on the exam table — the unwed teen who gave birth to me in June 1969 and placed me for adoption.
First, you might grow impatient with me as you wait for the story to unfold. I hope, however, that you will ultimately appreciate the wait. The mother who raised me is as essential to this story as the one who placed me for adoption. You need to know her, too, if this story is to make any sense. Second, although I am pretty doggone resolute once I’ve made a decision, I can be forever in committing to a course.
Consider the time I quit smoking.
I puffed a pack and a half a day from the time I started college until I was well into my mid-30s, even though I knew damn well those cravings might one day kill me. The problem was, “one day” always seemed so far away, and I enjoyed smoking right now. I liked the way my brain cleared as my lungs fogged. I liked the little tickle in the back of my throat, the smell of lighter fluid, and the warm, metallic clack of my Zippo snapping shut.
Plus, cigarettes helped me fidget away the nervous energy that comes with newsroom work.
I started writing for newspapers as a junior in high school and worked 24 years for McClatchy publications in Beaufort, Hilton Head Island and Columbia, S.C., after graduating from college. During most of that time, I weaved cigarettes into my daily routine — write furiously for 45 minutes, take a smoke break; edit for another 45 minutes, take another smoke break; design the next day’s sports front, take one more smoke break.
And so on.
My lungs did not need cigarettes, but my internal clock sure did. And because I believed these routines to be an expression of my self-discipline, I convinced myself that although smoking is a terrible idea for most people, my puffing was practically a virtue.
Of course, smoking was not actually an expression of my self-discipline but a corruption of it. I concocted rationalizations for my destructive behavior just like any other addict. I also resisted any notion of quitting to pad an ego prone to crack at the first hint of failure — if I did not try to quit, I could not fail, right?
Fortunately, my wife, Debi — you’ll hear a lot more about her, too, if you keep on reading — gave me a ration of grief about my habit. She never issued an ultimatum, but I knew she did not like being married to a smoker and that I was setting a poor example for my stepchildren, Ande and Tommy. I rarely smoked in front of them, but I had to sneak away to satisfy my cravings.
And I did not like feeling sneaky.
Even once I resolved to quit, however, it took me an entire year to actually stop. Anxious overplanning is another of my tics, a response to the uncertainty and discomfort of potential change. Before I undertake any bold action, I must first devise a strategy. And that strategy must be considered, memorized and rehearsed. Then, in a fit of overanalysis, I exaggerate the risk of action until I’ve burrowed myself deep into the status quo, hiding there until or unless shame comes to dig me up and march me forward.
So it was with the search for my birth mother.
As I explained earlier, I decided to find her a few days after Mom’s funeral in July 2017. I did not actually start looking, however, until December 2021. I filled the intervening 53 months with frets.
My initial reservation was how Dad and my sister, Jennifer, would react. Mom and Dad had always told me that if I ever wanted to find my biological parents, they would help me. I believed them. However, somewhere in the back of my mind lingered the notion that theirs was a vow made out of obligation — that although they would help me, they did not necessarily want me to look. After all, how could they not feel threatened by such a search? And why would I want to threaten the two people I loved more than anyone in the world, who were responsible for almost every good thing that had ever come my way?
I know now that there are a lot of adoptees who do not feel that way at all about their adoptive families, who did not have the kind of life I have enjoyed, who feel a great, big hole in their hearts that they desperately seek to fill. We’re going to talk more about these folks, too. But for my part, I did not lack love or attention. My heart was full. My needs were satisfied.
And if I ever were to go looking, surely the immediate aftermath of my mother’s death was not the time to embark. Dad, Jen and I grieved her loss deeply, and I would not risk a search that might hurt them — or be misinterpreted as an attempt to satisfy my own curiosity or to replace the mother I had just lost.
But my stalling was not entirely selfless, either.
I was at least as concerned and uncertain about how I would react to what I discovered. I was fairly sure I could be content with a one-time encounter with my birth mother, although I could imagine many ways such an encounter could go off the rails. Maybe it was pretentious to believe that with one messianic swoop, I could relieve my birth mother of some long-festering sorrow. For all I knew, I was a long-forgotten mistake, like the stupid haircut you managed to banish from memory until paging through your high school yearbook. My birth mother might not appreciate the reminder of me any more than I like pictures of my mullet.
My sudden appearance might lead her to believe I’m looking for money or a permanent seat at the Thanksgiving table. It might also threaten her relationship with people who do not even know I exist.
And for any or all of these reasons, she might reject me. Could I bear to be spurned? Or ignored? My ego withstands rejection no better than failure.
But the converse was nearly as frightening. What if my birth mother turned out to be a bit too clingy? She might be an addict, a criminal or destitute. Maybe she is mean, self-centered, crass or stupid. I could be inviting a relationship with a steaming bucket of dysfunction. What could be worse than feeling indebted to someone you do not particularly like?
So in my mind, I had built up my birth mother to be as big a threat to my well-being as cigarettes. A force beyond my means to handle. An agent of chaos. Did I really want the hassle?
No, I did not.
But the catastrophizing was becoming an excuse for inaction. It also impeded me from a higher purpose. For even if I had to track down my birth mother in a prison, slum or asylum, even if she proved to be more annoying than a morning cough and nicotine-stained teeth, she deserved my thanks for the decision she made as a young girl. My life had turned out too well for her to know nothing of it. She must know what she did for me.
And what she did for Mom.
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