Search of a Lifetime

When you're an adopted child there are many times when you wonder where your "real parents" are. My thoughts turned in that direction long before I was ever adopted at the age of five. For even then I always knew that someday my mother would come to me and love me. No matter how much time had passed.

Well that meeting took 44 years but it was well worth the wait. Getting there took a lot of years of searching, tears, and more searching.

I started searching in June of 1963 when I was 17 and going to business college in Houston. I began my search by asking anyone who would listen to me about how to go about a search. Most everyone told me not to.

A couple of years earlier, I had mistakenly asked my adopted mother if she knew anything and she exploded in a fury, burning all the papers she had. Including my adoption papers. She didn't understand that I didn't want to hurt her nor would she have given me a chance to explain. My adopted father had recently passed away and I guess she thought she'd lose me too if she gave me any of the information she had. Possibly she felt that I wasn't grateful for all the things she had done for me. I never found out. However, I did salvage a medical record from the doctor who took care of me when I went to live the Svoboda's (my adoptive parents). It had my birth name on it and hope was born. I also realized that I would have to wait for just the right time to really search.

I married in 1964 and my husband was supportive of me finding my parents. Initially because he wanted all possible surprises removed if we were going to have children. Later, because he saw the need I had, though he didn't fully understand.

Over the next few years, my searching was done as time allowed. I'd find access in one small area opened and but most doors were closed--and nailed shut.

Even the attorney that handled my adoption, and knew me very well, refused to help. He sat before me, with my open file in his hands, seemingly reading through it and after a few minutes, he closed the file and told me it would be in my best interest to just forget about finding my biological parents. He compared opening my files to opening "Pandora's Box". It would probably cause me more pain and possibly cause pain to all the others involved in my life. No further explanation. I left his office completely confused and hurt.

I heard "don't open Pandora's Box" more times in the first 10 years of my search than most people would hear it in three lifetimes.

By 1971, I began having severe health problems. I became more determined to find my natural parents. But even with a strong medical need for the health records of my parents, some of my doctors brought up "Pandora's Box", and they were the ones who believed I needed my biological parents medical histories so they could help me.

I kept trying any resource I could: old court records (none were open); a visit to the orphanage that I had been placed in; anything or anybody I thought could or would help.

Again "Pandora's Box" came up along with a new twist. The new answer to my inquiries was that I had NO RIGHT to know. The legal system closed so many doors with these words. NO RIGHT! This was at the age of 27. You would have thought by 1972, that these foolish people would have considered me an adult, and accept the fact I had the right to know my past.

I was mature enough to have been married eight years, have three children, hold down a full-time job, and work very hard to survive mounting health problems. Health problems that were apparently hereditary but that I had no "right" to know from where they originated.

Between frustration, anger, and financial strain, my searching had dropped from a lot of footwork, phone calls and correspondence full-time to just a couple of months of each for the following years.

A major breakthrough came in May of 1980. I was scheduled for major surgery and frightened. I drove the 270 miles back to the orphanage and begged to talk to someone who had access to my records. A very kind and considerate caseworker explained that the law would not allow her to let me read my records. But after checking with her supervisor, she consented to read me parts of my records, without divulging the names recorded there.

I sat there in a daze trying to jot down notes as fast as she read. There were times I had to ask her to stop, so I could compose myself and my hands could stop shaking. Then I would continue to write. I was overwhelmed. Though she was talking about strangers, all this information was about MY FAMILY and ME. There was one statement she read that still rings in my ears today: my mother's words, "I don't want to give up my baby". That one little sentence gave me the strength and hope I needed to go on. Now I was assured my mother would still have love in her heart for me.

I left a letter to my mother in my files in the hopes that some day she would also search. I wanted her to know she was loved and welcomed in my family, her family.

I also asked my caseworker if she could verify or deny my mother's first name. The name Elizabeth had been going around in my head for years. I left my phone number and address and headed home.

The long drive home was filled with thoughts of "what if" and "maybe." Tears filled my eyes more than once causing me to have to pull the car off the road for a few minutes. Even after I got home, it took months to get over that meeting.

A week later the caseworker, after clearing my request through a number of channels, verified I was right. My mother's name was Elizabeth Gaines. After thanking her repeatedly, I hung up the phone and worked on getting my head out of the clouds. Now I had a chance of finding my mother, because I had needed a name to go any further.

Boy was I foolish to think that a name would solve my problems. I still had people telling me it was "none of my business" where she was and that I had no right to impose myself into her life.

I was frustrated. For most people, it is hard to understand how an adopted person feels about their need to know their biological family. They know all there is to know about their families and if they don't, they can ask an aunt or an uncle. They have the right, but I didn't.

I had tried to explain it was like having a huge jigsaw puzzle with two pieces missing. Without those two pieces (my parents) I wasn't complete. The whole picture was not there.

In 1983, I wrote to the district clerk in the county where I was born, asking for information on how to get a copy of the petition of adoption filed by my adopted parents. A simple form to be filled out and request for payment for the copies arrived within 10 days. I was astonished. It seemed so simple. Within three weeks I had the petition in my hands.

I read and reread the papers. I was amazed that my birth name was not on any of them. My adoption papers, that I had gotten a copy of a few years earlier, didn't have my birth name on them either. It made no sense. An attorney had told me that my birth name had to be on any papers concerning my adoption. But it wasn't there. Then the mystery was solved. It seems that because of a foster parent I had who wanted to adopt me herself, all the information in the petition for adoption and the adoption papers themselves did not have my birth name. Instead they all carried the name that I would carry once I was adopted.

It was great to have these papers, but I was still in the dark. I felt that any chance I took from this point on had to be a positive one. I took a chance.

I again called the caseworker, at the orphanage and asked if there was any possible way to get a copy of any of their records. Anything. After checking with the legal staff and her superiors, she called me with the good news a week later. I would be receiving an envelope with the approved papers in it. It would take some time because all the places with names had to be blocked out and then copied. I was still not allowed to see any names, but at this point I didn't care. I did not mind waiting. I had become very good at it.

I watched the mail closely for weeks. I think the mailman thought I was going crazy. Then finally one day a 10x13-manila envelope stuffed with papers was delivered. The papers were caseworker reports from the time my mother released her parental rights to the time of my adoption. The papers also included the reports on the foster mother who did not want to let me go. I was a little disappointed. I had wanted a copy of the papers that Ms. Ricks had read to me in 1980. But these papers told me of a world of which I had vague memories of. Memories that now flooded my mind. They also gave me a better understanding of why I had been given up and reaffirmed what my caseworker had read to me earlier. That my mother did not give me up of her own free will.

But I still wasn't any closer to finding my mother. Then in 1984 I was told that because of my health problems, with a doctor's written request, and copies of my diagnosis, I could get a court order to finally get my court records open. What I didn't know was that you had to file those papers through the court in which the adoption had taken place. And also you had to find a judge who was sympathetic to adoptees. You also had to convince that judge that your intentions were not to interfere or hurt the natural parent. I had several people checking out the judges in Houston and one was finally located. But, before I could contact him he died.

After three more years of doors being closed in my face by legal representatives, social workers, investigators, and a host of other fools, I finally found a judge that would hear my case. And even better I didn't have to physically appear before him. I just had to send him all the paperwork.

The papers were all submitted in November of 1987. In January of 1988 I got my response. And what a response. I received four pages of information. In those four pages were my mother's and father's names and a condensed personal history for each. Also included was a report of my adopted parent's personal history. But then I had another problem. Me!

I was filled with so many thoughts, fears and misgivings it took me four months -- and a lot of encouragement from my friends and family -- to get brave enough to read, really read, everything in those pages.

I located my mother the first week of June 1988, by calling her brother in Louisiana. I found her, not using the information received in the court order but from the notes I had taken in 1980 sitting in the case worker's office at the orphanage. I hadn't really needed a court order after all. Unbelievable. Although it was nice to have the added information. And I did need the information to find my father, which is another story all together.

I told my mother's brother that I was an old friend of his sister's, and had lost contact with her in the 40's and would like to find her. To my surprise and delight he told me she lived in Michigan, was married and had three children. Michigan, a world away from Texas. Within 10 minutes I had her full name, address and phone number.

After hanging up the phone, every emotion that I was capable of feeling, I felt -- from laughing to tears and every muscle in my body shaking, I danced around my house like an idiot. After 25 years of searching and 42 years of life, I had found my mother.

I called a friend and told her of my find and she offered to make the initial contact. I didn't want to just jump into my mother's life and possibly hurt her. A week later contact had been made. Her initial reaction was "I can't believe she found me!" A couple of weeks later I received a short note from her asking me to give her time. No problem for me. I would have waited another lifetime. And after her initial shock wore off, we started writing back and forth once a month for a year.

Before she had married, not my father, she had told her husband to be about me and they promised each other never to bring it up again. And for all those years she kept that promise. My mother was a woman of her word, which impressed me even more about her.

In June of 1989, I heard my mother's voice for the first time in 43 years. Her husband had passed away four days before and she waited until she was alone and to call me. Hearing my mother's voice and hearing the words "I've always loved you" was the greatest gift of my life.

We continued writing and now talking on the phone for almost a year. In May of 1990 we decided it was time for us to meet. The big day. A heart to heart meeting.

On July 19, 1990, I flew to Michigan to meet the woman who had given me life 44 1/2 years before. When I left the airplane I couldn't look up, I was too scared. But when I finally did and our eyes met, I just ran to her. We held each other so tightly, and laughed 'till we cried. I wanted to hold on to her forever. And it felt like I did. I'm sure the people in the airport thought we were crazy standing there clinging to each other, alternating laughing and crying. But neither one of us cared.

We spent the next 10 days getting to know each other better and bonding more.

On that glorious day in July, I not only met my precious mother, but my best friend. That two years of corresponding and another year of writing back and forth and the long distance calls (for which the phone company really enjoyed because our phone bills were astronomical) had brought about a friendship that most mothers and daughters never know.

My mother is the sweetest, most loving and understanding person on God's green earth. And I am so thankful she's MINE! God has truly blessed my life!