A branch gone from our family tree

Whenever I read a story like that heart-warming piece in The Telegram the other day about a Newfoundland man searching for a daughter he gave up for adoption 50 years ago, I can’t help but think of an adorable child named Laura and the brief but profound and lasting impact she had on our family.

To this very day, during Wakeham reunions, when we knock down geographical barriers to see each other, Laura’s name will invariably be mentioned at some point, and we’ll end up reciting the words we’ve never forgotten to a simple love song written by my mother over a half century ago:

Laura’s a pretty thing, She’s a Virginian. We buy her everything, To keep her in style. She’s got 10 stinky toes, And a funny little nose, We’ll surely miss her when she goes.

Those last three words, “when she goes,” accord this Wakeham family story its poignancy and sadness, given that we all knew when our parents decided to

foster a child through an organization called Catholic Charities way back in 1963, just after we had moved to Virginia from Gander, that Laura was never to be a permanent member of our clan of Newfoundlanders.

Mom had agreed to take the three-month old Laura into our home for what she was told would be 10 days or so while her adoption was being finalized; instead, we had this grand little creature in our lives for nearly a year, more than enough time, obviously, to think of her as one of us, a daughter, a sister.

We loved her, our little

Yank.

The tale of Laura’s early life became complicated when her biological father balked at the agreement he and Laura’s mother had made to give her up for adoption; the arrangements a family had made to adopt her were put on hold;

thus, the Wakeham family had a new member.

Right from the get-go, Laura was special, even superseding in importance (in our home, at least) the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (she was delivered into Mom’s arms on Nov. 22, 1963).

Yes, the American public was in shock, but we, the Wakehams of Newfoundland, were floating with joy at this chubby, smiling bundle of love in our midst.

My sister Carol, 12 years old at the time, was even more enamoured of Laura than the rest of us, her maternal instincts embracing a premature indoctrination, as she smothered her new “sister” with affection, always keeping open a protective eye, putting her to bed, taking her for walks through the neighbourhood in a stroller, giving Mom the time and energy she needed to raise the rest of us.

The photographs and home movies from that time in our lives are lasting evidence of a totally contented baby, a glowing and constant smile from ear to ear, a palpably effervescent child, oblivious to the fact that she was probably

helping this little clan of homesick Newfs adjust to a dramatically new life in the U.S.

The days turned into weeks, into months, we celebrated her first birthday, and began to assume (her naive, new-found siblings, that is) that we would have Laura forever.

But that was not to be, and we were shocked into reality one day when Mom told us that officials with Catholic Charities were coming within 24 hours to take Laura to her new family, that the biological father had dropped his objections to the adoption.

Our parents’ hands were tied; they had agreed, legally and officially, that under no circumstances were they ever to attempt to adopt Laura, that she was a foster child, and

her stay in their home was always to be of a temporary nature.

My sister Carol still recalls that she had suggested to Mom and Dad that we quietly leave Virginia with Laura — kidnap her, in other words — the innocent and wide-eyed plea made out of absolute desperation.

The afternoon the bureaucrats came to take Laura was one of incredible sorrow.

We cried our eyes out as Carol, appropriately, handed Laura to a woman who was anxious, I’m sure, to get the ordeal over as quickly as possible.

Seconds later, Laura was in a car that was backing out of the driveway, and then she was gone, out of our lives forever.

We eventually found out that her adoptive parents had renamed her Martha, and that she had a two-year-old sister.

But, for all of us, she will always be Laura, a “pretty thing, a Virginian.”

And we still miss her.

The days turned into weeks, into months, we celebrated her first birthday, and began to assume (her naive, new-found siblings, that is) that we would have Laura forever.