Aunty Florine's China...and Angels among us

Wow, I ran like hell after that last one....forgot to sign my name and everything. What a spaz. 

So, I knew that once I started, these things would start piling up in my head like a 45 car pile up on I35 on a glare ice day.  (All my Minnesnowta peeps nod)  Today has been like that. Running in circles around the house, accomplishing nothing, thinking about adoption, and mine in particular.  It is mine, you know? I didn't do it, make it, instigate it, ask for it, choose it, go to court for it, want it or not want it.  Regardless, it's mine.  I own it.  It was bequeathed to me, like Aunt Florine's old china or something. Really though, the only record of it, is some adoption papers from 1965 that I swiped from my parents strongbox, and a dusty old original Birth Certificate somewhere in Solano County, with the name Tamara LaMoine White on it, hidden, because it has been deemed secret, by the State of California. It's possible I feel a need to document that thing I have to own a little more, flesh it out a little (pun intended).  I'm a person, an adopted person, and for a long time, I towed the "company line", and wound up 46 years old with no clue as to exactly what that thing I own actually means to me. 

Searching (yeah I know, not much of a segue).... like I said in my last posting, I always knew I would, I just didn't know HOW I would... or more specifically, how I would afford to search for my mother.  "Back in the day".... 81-82 to be specific, we didn't have the internet, children and we had to use things like USPS, you know, that thing that brings you all the Macy's ads? Ok Tam, stop being a smartass. An old smartass to be exact, poor Anaiyah, these are the "Gramma cards" she's been dealt.

So, like I said before, I posted what I had in every registry I could find, and waited.  There's a lot of waiting involved in searching, interminable, gut-wrenching waiting.  Waiting that slowly morphs.... from hope, to bewilderment, to disappointment, to dismay.  Dismay at the lack of results, and something else.... this nagging fear, this anxiety that slowly gnaws away at all that is lovely, all that is healthy, all that is alive in any given moment.  First,  you check that mailbox every day, with this eager, adrenaline anticipation romping in your chest.  The thoughts: "It's going to happen, it's finally going to happen.  Dear God, let it happen, I promise I won't freak out, I promise I will accept it, whatever it is (fateful words)  I promise I promise I promise" I made a lot of pacts with God back then.

 After a couple months, I had talked myself out of that particular tree, knowing that the disappointment was going to crash me, and the feeling had moved lower, down into my stomach, still fluttering, but a little bitter too, almost metallic. Still hopeful, but labeling myself  "realistic", I still checked the mail every day, just not with that same eager anticipation, because something died just a little every time I turned that key, and this is where my head started talking to me.  It's just a whisper at first, so soft and low you don't really realize it's there.... "maybe they were right"...."you might ruin her life, she's moved on"..... I was terribly afraid of harming my mother. I had been told all my life, by my adoptive parents and society in general, that mothers who relinquished did so for two reasons: the first being, because they loved me so much they wanted me to have a better life, with possessions and money and a Dad.... and the other was to have better lives for themselves, to go to college, to move on, to have families of their own (?), and that they didn't talk about us, they "put us out of their minds", that for us to "show up" could destroy their current families, that they would have to "confess their secrets" to their husbands and families, that the new siblings would hate us and be jealous.  Wow, just rereading that, that's a lot of whispering.......and apparently, I had drunk plenty of the KoolAid.  Just a side note for the civilians, all those whispers are a bunch of garbage, and if you think about it critically, who do they serve? 

So years go by, and Tam does life.  Does life, but always updating those registries when we moved, and we moved a lot, as my ex was in the military.  I was a young mom, had a philandering husband and plenty on my plate... but "it" still reared it's ugly head occasionally.  According to my ex, I got a little crazy around my birthday every year....and I'd have to say that was a fair assessment.  Birthdays are special, but they are extra special to adoptees.  That was "our" day, mine and her's.  I always wondered if she thought about me on that day.  I always hoped she knew I thought about her.  Somewhere in those 14 years of my first attempt at a marriage I did that little breaking and entering thing into my parents strong box.  Whenever Tom traveled, he would look in all the phone books and call all the Carole Whites, God bless his cheatin' heart for that, I mean it.  I updated all the registries again, with the wrong name.  Her name was Linda Carole White, damnit. Although, I know now, she didn't look, or register, I still can't help but wonder if her real name had popped up somewhere, maybe she would have followed the trail back to me.  That's one of the most frustrating things about being an adoptee, way too many unknowns, the "what ifs" will haunt you if you let them. I even went to the Solano County Registrars office once, and looked at the book, on the day of my birth.  Super high tech, not.  There was just a big black marker line drawn thru the name at the top of the list of babies born that day, and mine was typed in again at the bottom. (and you all know I flipped that page over, tried to rub out a name, held it up to the light, and was nicely escorted out) A big black line.

I've had the Eagles playing on my iPod while I've been writing, and when I took a break, the song "Desparado" was playing......have you (adoptees especially) ever listened to those words?  "now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones that you can't get"  "your pain and your hunger, they're driving you home" "your prison is walking through this world all alone"........ I'm becoming melodramatic, been cooped up in this apartment too long I think.....

OK, this is the part where it actually happens, the "event" so to speak... and it really had nothing to do with any effort on my part, frankly.  My "game plan" had always been to hire a private investigator, because I was so clueless and overwhelmed by it all, it was just a matter of affording it, and I was close.  My son was grown, I didn't have to feel guilty about spending the money on a "frivolous" thing. I was closing in on it, and preparing myself.  Preparing myself for rejection.  I used to have talks with myself (doesn't everyone do that?) ... promising again, that I would be respectful, that I would accept whatever she could or could not give, that I would be ok if she didn't want to know me (yeah right).  Hey, I tried.

Fast forward to 2002, One day, I'm sitting at the computer with my roomie and dear friend Amy, looking at a website about horseback riding in Yosemite.  I remember it clear as day. This instant message pops up from someone with the AOL screen name CA BERTH SEARCH or CA BIRTH SERCH (ok, maybe not clear as DAY) and it said "are you still looking for your parents?"  We were logged on to Amy's computer.  I looked at my dear friend, with whom I had shared secrets, hopes and dreams, failures and misgivings and said "Ame... are you adopted?"  to which she answered "Yes" to which I answered "Me too" to which she answered "No shit?" at which point I almost knocked her off her chair and said "ANSWER THEM!!"  She did, and our newly found search angel, Kathy, got a "twofer", that being two searches for the price of one, the price being nothing.  Nothing.  Not a damn dime.  Not money for stamps, not ten bucks for her internet service, nothing, nada, zip, zero.  I had never heard of such a thing.   Amy had posted on some site that I apparently missed, and Kathy, wonderful, amazing, resourceful, sneaky, altruistic Kathy, had found her, and by luck or Divine providence, me, as well. 

An aside: I was raised in a very Catholic home, I believed in God before this happened, but after that day, I BELIEVE.  There was no chance in it, in my opinion.  And for all the bible-thumpers that believe it's God's will to rip a kid out of a mother's arms and give it to another that they have deemed more suitable, or proper, or Christian.... all I have to say to you is this Matthew 19:6. "What God has wrought, let no man put asunder".... it ain't just fer weddings, dipstick.  Scripture doesn't just apply when you can afford to have someone design your "birthmother book".

Anyhow, this wonderful Kathy, search angel of the most extraordinary ilk, had all kinds of cool info and resources.  For one, she knew that in CA, your amended (fake) birth certificate had all of your adoptive parents info on it, but one thing was the same..... the # on it.  With the stolen names I had, my birth date (thank God it was real) and the help of some bootleg microfiche she had smuggled out of somewhere (I defy you to use the phrase "bootleg microfiche" 3 times in a coherent sentence tomorrow) that contained the CA birth indexes, she found me...... and her..... and him, within two days.  Within two days, Amy and I both had the complete names of our fathers, and the phone # of a family member to contact.  I owe Kathy my sanity, my current identity, my heritage.... and if you asked her why she did it, she said because she found her mother 18 months too late, and didn't want that to happen to another person. The true measure of a human being, is how much they give through their pain, how they transform it.  Angels on earth.... they're here.  

So now what?  You have to pick up the phone, that's what......

Tamara

You better let somebody love you, before it's too late" The Eagles