Mother and daughter get a second chance
As I sit down to write this, I can hear my wife out on the couch in our living room, chatting on the phone with her mother.
To those of you who routinely have such conversations, I hope you realize how special they are, because for my wife, these are the first she’s had in more than 20 years.
Mother’s Day has always sat low on our list of favorite holidays, me having lost my mom to breast cancer in 1984 — just six days after my 21st birthday — and she having her mother die 12 years later. This year, though, it will definitely be the most memorable, as we got to spend it with her mother.
Confused? I guess I should have mentioned that Marian was adopted at birth and knew nothing of her birth mother until her adopted father passed away in 2003. In a safe deposit box her dad kept, she found two copies of her adop- tion papers, both of which provided her with nothing more than a name. Even for an experienced reporter like me, trying to track someone down simply from a 35-plus-year-old name truly is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
She set that all aside as she went back to a life raising two boys with her first husband. After her youngest son was nearly killed in an accident on their small horse farm, she began to think about her birth mother, but mostly because she knew nothing of her family medical history, information few adopted children ever see but possibly lifesaving when a child is sick or injured.
She did a little digging over the next couple years, as her marriage came to an end after 23 years and she found her way back to an old boyfriend from 25 years earlier. Once she moved to the Capital Region with yours truly and we had time to talk about it, the interest grew. Having grown up
with an older sister who was adopted after my parents thought they wouldn’t be able to have kids (yep, I was a big surprise), I understood at least some of what she was thinking and feeling and I encouraged her to pursue whatever she could find out about her birth mother.
It took about three years of on-and-off research for that name she had found on her adoption papers to be discovered as the maiden name of a woman whose husband was tragically killed in a logging accident more
than 40 years ago. Some digging unearthed several possible addresses, both in northwestern Pennsylvania — not far from where she grew up — and Florida, and my wife carefully crafted a letter that she mailed to first one and then another address, as each was returned as undeliverable.
As she grew more and more frustrated, she reached out to a television show, Long Lost Family, that helps reunite adopted children with their birth parents. After they expressed interest, though, she decided not to pursue it, mainly out of concern for the impact such a public introduction would have on her birth mother.
In the meantime, though, she began searching the world of social media until she came across a man in North Carolina whom she believed could be her biological brother.
She “stalked” him on Facebook for several months — pretty much like she did with me after I found her on Facebook 26 years after we had broken up — as she continued to send out letter after letter. After reaching out to an online group who provided her with another address — which resulted in the same returned letter — I could see she was starting to give up hope. In her mind — and, I admit, mine, too — the only choices she had was to reach out to her “brother” or give up hope of ever finding her birth mother.
Less than 24 hours after she sent a brief message to him through Facebook Messenger, she had her first-ever conversation with her younger brother, Scott, an online chat that began with her literally convulsing in tears when he said, “We’ve been looking for you for years.” Ten days later, on Easter Sunday, we met Scott in northwest Pennsylvania, along with his wife and their 6-year-old son — Marian’s first nephew — and he introduced us to my motherin-law, Marguerite, who has been living in a nursing home for the last couple years.
To say it’s a miracle may be a little much, but it certainly had both of us thinking about our moms — all three of them. It’s a second chance most of us never get — just like getting a second chance with the love of your life after messing things up a quarter-century earlier — and we both appreciate having been able this year to take Mom out for dinner and a little shopping.
What I’ve found most fascinating as an outside observer is the inherent contradiction of listening to the two ask each other such introductory questions as “What is your favorite color?” while at the same time seeing how much they look alike and
how they share similar mannerisms. What warms my heart most, though, is seeing these two women appear to have had massive weights lifted off their respective shoulders, especially when they see or talk to each other.
That will happen more frequently now, after Scott bought her a new smartphone that Marian and I helped set up for on Mother’s Day, capping off a perfect day by video chatting with Scott and his wife and son. In this day and age, that’s as close to a family gathering as you can in most families.