Nothing yet

No response, though it’s just been three days. I do have this strange sense of calm that I wasn’t expecting. I’d been so worked up the past few weeks…do I send the message, do I not send it. Once I sent it, and after the initial wave of nausea passed, I felt better. It’s now out of my hands and up to my daughter whether and how she responds. It took me months to get to this point, so I’m not expecting her to think through it all so much quicker.

I have no idea if she’s even read it yet — Facebook doesn’t seem to have the same tracking system that MySpace does (and if it does PLEASE DON’T EXPLAIN IT TO ME! I’d rather live in ignorance on that one) so I don’t know if she’s picked up the message or visited my site.

Even though I’m not as anxious about it as I thought I’d be, it’s still hard not to wonder what she’s thinking. Is she drafting a response? Is she discussing it with her parents or friends? Are they pissed that I didn’t go through them as suggested in a comment? Has she deleted all the information because she just doesn’t care?

Or is she on some fabulous vacation and doesn’t regularly log on to Facebook? It is the summer, after all.

Maybe this inner peace I’m feeling is really just me protecting myself from potential rejection, but at least I’m getting through my days. And I’m seriously only checking e-mail a few times a day Thanks for the kind words everyone.

My message has been sent successfully.

… and with that confirmation from Facebook, my months of indecision have ended. I sent my daughter the message. Yikes!!! My palms are all sweaty, my throat is dry. I think I might go throw up. Thanks to all those wonderful people out there who helped me amend my letter. I also cleaned up some grammar problems that you were all too polite to point out (including the entire first sentence that made NO sense!). It was a case of too many revisions… blah blah blah. Will let you all know post haste if and when I hear any reply. Thanks for holding my hand.

I’d love some help…

I’ve decided to definitely/maybe/probably/for sure send my daughter a message on Facebook and have drafted a letter. I’d dearly love you eloquent readers to comment … no feedback too small, big or able-to-offend, I promise; I have thick skin and would love to hear even from those who think it’s pathetic! Want to thank Oceans too ‘cuz I’ve likely stolen some material from her without meaning to. Here it is:

Dear M,

I don’t know how to ease into this so it doesn’t come as such a shock, but I can’t figure out how, so I’ll just come out with it — I am Canuck, your biological mother.

I always hoped that we would connect again. My intention was to be patient, make myself easy to find and wait for you to contact me. I believed that since I had made this humungous decision to ask XXX and XXX to be your Mum and Dad, it would be your turn to decide what happens next.

However, fate has intervened and I have diminished resolve. I was not actively searching for you, but came to know your full name when someone who knew let it slip. After 20 years of thinking about you, I couldn’t stop myself from looking you up on Facebook. And having found you, I just can’t sit on it any more. I have been debating whether to send this for months. There’s no question that I would dearly love to hear from you, find out how you’re doing, answer any questions you have, but I don’t want to intrude either, and that’s been my internal debate. I’ve also thought that this may not be the best way to approach you, but I don’t have any other contact information.

So I am sorry for the intrusion, if that’s what this feels like. It’s still up to you to decide what happens next and when. If nothing else, you can check out some pictures of my husband, boys and me on my Facebook page. As I said, I know no other way to contact you – no address or phone – so if I don’t hear from you, I’ll get the hint.

Love,

Canuck (and plenty of ways to contact me)

Let ‘er rip! Please! Tell your friends to visit and comment! And thanks!

The Second Time

So I was pretty messed up after all that (see last blog), as you can probably imagine.  Messed up, but had to hold it all together ‘cuz it was also all such a huge secret.  I got through, but was in a complete fog (totally stole this imagery, thanks Fuzzy Rat Mother).  I didn’t turn to drink or drugs more than the occasional beer at a party, but I did get pregnant again pdq. Did I mean to?  Not consciously.  I was certainly smart enough to know how to avoid it and to this day can’t understand how I let myself go through it all again. 

But I wasn’t myself.  I wanted my son to be alive.  I was bargaining with life.  If he was just alive, I could handle the pain of not being with him because at least he would be alive. I couldn’t make that happen, but somewhere in that messed up fog, I tried anyway.  I started university pregnant; luckily I had huge classes in huge lecture halls, so I could just go to class, keep to myself, be anonymous.  I had M, a beautiful baby girl, in January 1988.  The fact that she was a girl, the very opposite of the boy I lost, jolted me out of the fog a bit, and I realized this was a truly different person.

I hadn’t even contacted the adoption agency before the birth, but had decided to place her too.  This time, I kept her with me in the hospital room and took care of her.  It was a Saturday, so I did nothing about the placement until I could phone the agency on Monday.  It was surreal and wonderful, and the hospital left me alone since there was no hospital social worker working the weekend either.  Sharon (adoption counsellor) came right away when I did call, a LOT perplexed, but very supportive.  I told her things would be different this time.  I gave her a list of “demands”:

1.  I will meet the aparents and will be there when they see M for the first time to take her home.

2.  They will have a son already, roughly two years old (my mother always called this the “Millionaire Family” so I guess it was my ideal vision of the perfect family).

3.  They will give me lots of pictures.

Even a few years later, I realized how much more I could have asked for, but being the non-demanding type and still seeing adoption as the “old school” closed version Juno talked about, it was a breakthrough for me.  Sharon said “Okay”.  That was it.  I trusted her.  She knew which parents were perfect right away and I believed her.  Didn’t even need to hear about others.

Because I hadn’t given notice before she was born, there was a bit of a delay in the aparents being able to take her home, so unfortunately she was in the agency’s version of foster care for a week or so.  Sharon picked me up at the hospital and drove me to her office.  She was looking at the aparents file and said — “Now you want her to have a 2 year old brother…let’s see exactly how old their son is.”  She was reading and this shocked look came on her face.  Their son was born EXACTLY two years earlier; they share a birthday.  Now that’s a custom order! Too funny.

When I met the aparents for the first time, M was in the foster home.  I showed them pictures and talked about how beautiful she was.  They described their life.  I felt like I could let out my breath.  They were so down-to-earth and likeable, and it was all about their son and their excitement at bringing M into their family. I didn’t feel invisible, like I did with the other aparents. A few days later we met again at the office, this time with M, and they took her home.  We took a bunch of pictures together.  There weren’t a lot of tears at the time.  At one point amum was holding her and both of them were admiring her stupendous beauty, then amum looked at me and just handed her back.  It spoke volumes to me.  Here she was at the most exciting time, where her wait was finally over, where the week or so between knowing M was out there and being able to see her must have been excruciating, and she thought of me enough to just let me hold her again.  It was touching. 

They sent pictures over the next year or two, but there was no agreement for ongoing contact.  I really think that they would have, had I continued to ask, but it was me who pulled away, didn’t keep up contact with Sharon, went on about my life. Every few years I would drop in to adoption conferences that sprung up, just to get my fix.  In 1993, I went to a big one with hundreds of people and just sat and listened to whatever they were talking about at the time.  At a break, I found Sharon and she gasped “Oh my God, Canuck, *amum* and *adad* are here!”  She took my hand and wove through the people milling around straight to them. And there they were.  They immediately started bragging about how smart M was and how she’d stick up for herself with her older brother.   They joked that they could predict what she would look like by seeing me again. The amum went on about how M told her kindergarten class that she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up, and how amazing that was in a sea of five-year-old aspiring astronauts and ballet dancers. I was in shock I guess and didn’t speak much. The amum later told Sharon she thought I might have not wanted to hear so much because I was so quiet, but it was just the suddeness of it all.  Anyway, they sent a few more pictures of her 5 year old self and life was good.

I don’t mean to make this all sound so rosy that I wasn’t feeling the pain of being away from her, because I certainly was.  I’d spend hours looking at her pictures, aching to hold her, to hear what her voice sounded like. It was just SO much better than the first time, and I was certain we would have a relationship again in the future. 

It all started with…

… the classic story of girl meets boy and gets pregnant.  It was 1986, and A was the cutest, funniest, coolest thing that ever lived in Canada.  I turned 18 that year and just started at a new high school. In Ontario, we had a grade 13 at the time.  He wasn’t my first boyfriend, but he was the one I fell hardest for.  And I fell a lot harder than he did.  Regardless, we broke up after just a few months and I discovered, after a long period of denial, that I was pregnant.  I didn’t tell anyone, except for a private adoption agency I found in the yellow pages.  I was probably 7 months pregnant before I did even that — thank god for 80s leggings and baggy shirts — everyone looked pregnant!  Not to mention the height of the hair that took focus away from the midsection.  I might try to explain why I didn’t feel I could go to my family, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The agency owner was a male social worker who smoked incessantly.  This was the 80s, so people smoked everywhere.  Even in a small office housing a very pregnant teenager.  He also smirked whenever he had to ask something he was uncomfortable asking. He took my history and presented some prospective APs. This was probably over a few appointments, but I can’t remember.  I don’t know when open adoption became more common, but it certainly wasn’t mentioned to me in 1986.  I chose a couple because they had already adopted a girl, then 2, and they were both professionals (read lots of money). 

I went into labour September 2 and had a fairly fast, uncomplicated delivery.  The baby was taken to the nursery and I visited him a few times.  It wasn’t really that different from the other mothers there; the babies slept in the nursery and were brought to the mothers for feeding.  We were all given sleeping pills with our pain relievers post partum.  The male SW called me at the hospital and said he would be sending one of his other SW employees, Sharon, to see me.  I had met her briefly in the office.  She was fabulous.  Just the right amount of upbeat and serious, in her early twenties.  She went through all the paperwork with me, talked about the adoptive parents I had chosen, oohed and aahed over the baby.  I left after a couple of days and she told me about how it went when the aparents picked him up at the hospital. 

In our province, if the bmother uses a private agency instead of the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), she still has to meet with a CAS worker to sign the TPR.   I took my meeting with her as being a safety measure — the government agency making sure the private sector wasn’t coercing pregnant teenagers to give up their children.  She was pretty dour, and I felt like I had to convince her that adoption was the right route for me at the time. 

So I never felt coerced, like so many other bmothers did.  At least it wasn’t active or overt.  I hadn’t sought any help in making the decision. There was certainly family pressure to not cause problems and to deal with my own issues myself.  Again, another story. I felt I had no other option, which is a kind of coercion, I guess.

Over the time period after the baby was placed for adoption and before it was official (6 months? 4 months? Can’t remember) I’d meet with Sharon regularly and got a few pictures from the aparents. 

Around Christmas, December 16 to be exact, Sharon called to make an appointment with me.  It had been a couple weeks, so made sense. I asked if I could bring a Christmas present for the baby for her to pass on and she said “Let’s talk about it tomorrow”.  I should have wondered at that, but it was a traditionally closed adoption and I had even been surprised to get the pictures I had.  When I arrived at the office, the receptionist greeted me warmly and offered tea.  Now, that was weird.  She was not unfriendly in the past, but had never offered tea before.  Still no feeling of dread.

Sharon brought me into her office and told me she had some bad news.  The baby had died; the amother found him in his crib two days previously.  It was ruled SIDS (crib death). What the hell do I do now?  I’m sure Sharon was devasted to tell me, and she got nervous and started talking and talking.  For whatever reason, she just gave me the aparents names and correct spelling.  She said the funeral was immediate family only, and they did not want me or the people at the agency to come.

So I had to grieve losing him again, while I was still grieving losing him the first time, without the hope of reunion.  No hope.  And I had to do this while living with my family who knew nothing of any of it. I told a couple of very close friends and they were invaluable for support, but it was tough.  Sharon brought me in to the office the next week and got the amother on the phone.  She started bawling and saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have kept him up so late.  He was perfect.  I’m sorry”.  Now that I’ve had more two boys, I feel her pain more than I did at the time, but I was feeling put upon to be the one comforting her.  She had plenty of people to lean on!  Later, Sharon told me the afather was furious that we called.  He was worried I’d intrude in their life.  Hey, jerk. Guess what? You were only interesting to me when you had my baby.  Don’t think he ever knew I was told his name!

How do I grieve this secret baby whom I knew mostly from my imagination?  I felt like I needed something concrete, I needed to go the the cemetery.  It took weeks of calling the agency to try to get the information.  Sharon was sympathetic and I still believe she would have told me if she’d  known, but the owner was the one dealing with the aparents and they weren’t telling.  The owner was a very poor communicator, and would tell me to call back in a few days, or next week, then would ask why I kept calling and maybe I should find some counselling.  Um, aren’t you guys social workers? Wouldn’t it have been kinder, easier, faster to just say the aparents don’t want me to know? 

Turns out, if you know the person’s name, it takes one phone call to any cemetery in the province to find out where he’s buried.  So I did that instead and when the owner called me months later with the information, I could tell him I already knew.  Small victory, but finding my son’s grave didn’t feel like much of a win.

Twenty-one-and-a-half years later, there is no gravestone, as it’s a family plot and I guess no one else has died.  I went often at the beginning and left flowers, but there’s just nothing there and I stopped going regularly. The last time I went, probably a year ago, I wasn’t even sure I had the right spot.

The saga doesn’t end there, which you’ll know if you’ve read my previous entries.  I got pregnant again shortly after and had a daughter in January 1988.  Same bdad, same denial, same agency.  I guess I subconsiously wanted to go back and do it right this time.  To be continued…

Waffling

Gave myself a couple of days to ponder and read through some adoption forums and more blogs.  Seems many others have been faced with the same conundrum thanks to Facebook/MySpace.  I don’t want to send my daughter a message that way if it will make her uncomfortable using Facebook again.  She has a gazillion friends to keep up with, after all. 

Maybe an intermediary would be better.  I’ve been considering sending a note with pictures to her aparents instead.  I believe wholeheartedly that they will handle it well; let her know they have the contact information whenever she wants it.  She is 20, after all — might not be ready for me yet but she’s not a child anymore either. Just not sure if the aparents should be the intermediary — tough position for them.

Been thinking too that it might be a good idea to call the SW and have a coffee with her.  I’m VERY curious if her slip was intentional, but she also knew the aparents much better than I did, so might be able to steer me in the right direction.