Silver Linings come to this first mother

Dear Readers:

Lorraine

Ten days ago my husband Tony and I were in Marquette, Michigan for a granddaughter's graduation from Northern Michigan University. First, I'll get the bragging out of the way: Granddaughter Britt was magna cum laude, with an added plus: the Secondary Teacher Education Award. Her name will be on a permanent plaque at the school.

You can imagine the pride I felt. Well, it wasn't just pride, because there were moments during the graduation I couldn't help think back of...where I came from in this journey to get there. Losing her mother to adoption in 1966. YEARS of feeling devastated and desolate, wondering if I could ever climb out of this deep dark hole in my life, my heart, my soul. Giving up a child to adoption is something you never ever get over, not really, but there my husband and I were, in far northern Michigan, nearly as far North in the state as you can go, on the shores of Lake Superior, watching my daughter's tall, lovely blonde daughter graduate from college. And I've known her since the beginning.

Graduation: Britt and Lorraine (no animals were killed for coat)

It was overwhelming, and you know me, my emotions are on my skin, and both Tony and I had tears when her name was called and she walked across the stage. Because she was on the honors list, we were in seats reserved for family of honors grads, and we got the last two seats in the front row. That meant as she turned a corner and looked at the crowd, she found our mad waving and she smiled and waved back. Also present was her stepdad, her boyfriend, and a friend. The commencement speech by a colonel was short and excellent (first piece of advice: get a passport and travel!), the college orchestra played wonderfully and the graduates were led in by a bagpiper. Her adoptive parents were in Arizona and as her adoptive grandmother has Alzheimer's, they were not able to make the trip. Britt had made it clear our presence was not open to debate, but necessary and required, a fact that by itself was balm to the heart.

We all had dinner the night before, after the award ceremony, and had lunch together after the graduation. Then she and I went shopping for her Christmas present (clothes, a new outfit for a party she was going to that night), before she and I had an hour alone at a Starbucks. I will admit that when I published Hole In My Heart I was nervous not knowing how Britt would react, but the memoir had the effect of opening doors for us, and we have been much closer than we had been before. She said: Now I understood so much of what happened. Having the book forge a stronger relationship with this granddaughter has been the greatest gift, something I could never have predicted.

A let up during the rain. 

The next day Tony and I drove from the Upper Peninsula in sometimes blinding rain and thick fog, going at times 80 miles an hour to not get caught in the spray of the car ahead of us, which pretty much obscured the view. 

We drove over 400 miles to Saginaw, where I'd lived for six months and worked on The Saginaw News, my first job on a daily newspaper, my first job out of college. A half century later, Saginaw is much changed, It's lost its raw vibrancy, the restaurants were few and far between--and mostly closed on Sunday in December. The great yellow brick mansion on Mansion Row I'd once had an apartment in had been torn down and replaced with modern office buildings. After six months in Saginaw I got a better job on the metro staff of The Democrat & Chronicle and moved to Rochester, New York where promptly I met and fell in love with the political columnist  who would be the father of my daughter, Britt's mother. 

Fuzzy's restaurant in Saginaw--a time warp with homemade soup on a foggy day

Before the trip North, Tony and I had dinner with my alternate universe daughter, Jennifer, and her husband in Detroit. The next day I was interviewed by Cynthia Canty for Michigan NPR in Ann Arbor--the interview was on point and not condemning--Cynthia is an adoptee herself. She didn't mention that during the interview, but she has in others so I'm not revealing anything here she hasn't talked about herself on the air. The interview won't be aired until sometime after the new year, and it will be live streamed. Then it was off to Washtenaw County Catholic Social Services, by way of Map Quest (directions not quite, er, A+), where members of their adoption support group were waiting, along with the staff who deal with adoption. That was a great experience, as I met not only adoptees and other first birth mothers, but also adoptive parents (mother and father) and one of their children--now Facebook friends. 

Elly Falit, the pregnancy and adoption manager, could not have been more welcoming, and weirdly enough, she and I feel as if we have made a new friend--even though we are several states apart. We had emailed a number of times before and since, and so that implements the feeling. One of the first mothers who came told me as she was leaving that she came out of the closet this way: She worked at a fabric store, and a woman came in to buy cloth to make a remembrance quilt for the brother that she would never know--because he had been adopted. The mother said, Well, at the very moment, I just decided enough was enough and told her I was a birth mother. It was so good not to keep the secret any longer. What a wonderful comment that was to hear. If I have been a part of helping mothers come out of the closet, I will have done my job.

What I did learn was that "birth mother" is the linga franca there, and that no one had considered that saying "thank you" to a mother at reunion might be hurtful. It's a private call, but I did say I was glad my daughter had never said "thank you," but was more sage and honestly angry! about my not finding a way to keep her.

Incidentally, the Washtenaw County agency ONLY does open adoptions--unless the mother absolutely wants it closed--to the point of there being no record at all as per Safe Haven law in Michigan. Though we hate that Safe Haven laws seem to approve of mothers leaving their children with no record, they are the law and it's undoubtedly better to leave a child at an agency than on the steps somewhere--or in a public bathroom. But here they will do no closed adoptions at the request of the adoptive parents--only the natural mother. And the adoptions are fully open--everybody meets, and knows how to stay in contact. Wow, I thought, if all the adoption agencies in the country were like this, the world would be a better place.

Especially I thought of New Jersey, where the male executive director of the Catholic Conference, Patrick Brannigan, issued a statement that the media and all those involved in adoption have a "moral obligation" to publicize that state's new law--whereby adoptees will be able to obtain their original birth certificates come January 2017--so that birth mothers in the closet who wish to redact their names it will be able to. Personally, I'd like to swipe Brannigan's biological history clean and leave him wondering all his days who he came from to give him a taste of what adoptees go through.

Before we left Ann Arbor we managed to get a parking ticket for a space we had paid for during the time of the ticket. I got an actual receipt from the machine that took our money, and sent that in with the ticket and managed to get it excused. Silver linings all around, one might say.

Years ago when I wept through "Silent Night" at Christmas mass when I still hadn't told my mother about my daughter, I never could have believed all this would be possible. I'll try to write again before Christmas, as I know it is a hard time for so many of us, first mothers and adoptees. In other news, Yvonne, adoption nemesis and yet my friend and about whom I'd written about before, died and...well, that is a story for another day.--lorraine

For Tony's take on the trip: 

INTO THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS

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THANK YOUR FOR ORDERING ANYTHING THROUGH FIRST MOTHER FORUM. Just click on a link to amazon or the stores int he sidebar and order away--anything! It all helps.

Hole In My Heart: memoir and report from the fault lines of adoption

"As an adult adoptee who has attempted, but failed to find and reunite with my birth mother and half siblings I felt that I had almost gone through that process by reading Lorraine's book. She covers every issue that an adoptee has to consider. Many of these issues are extremely painful but because of Lorranine's clear and honest prose the issues can be processed. This book was therapeutic for me and I highly recommend it to any adult adoptee. Read it you will [be] better!"--Lori Marsden at Amazon.