Even though she isn't blood...

I received her annual Christmas card yesterday.  I am talking about the wife of one of my late birth uncles, Charlie.  As an adoptee, I started to wonder about my birth family about 43 years ago (Wow!!)  Back then, there was no internet so it was an unrelenting slog through city directories and phone books, but I was lucky that mine had been a private adoption through a lawyer.  The Children's Aid helpfully would not grant my parents a child because theirs was a mixed marriage; Daddy was Catholic and Mum Protestant.  Feature that!  You can't.

Anyway, I casually asked my Mother one day, apropos of nothing, who had handled the adoption.  After she told me, I wrote the firm a letter and forged my Father's signature to get my file released.  It worked, but all that was there was her name and occupation -- no address, nothing.  But at least I had a surname, which allowed me to send $5 to the Ontario government to obtain her birth records for geneological purposes (you used to be able to get this easily).  This gave me her mother's maiden name, McKegney, and where she had been born; that turned out to be Marysville, a small town just outside Kingston.  At a dinner in Kingston a while later, I met an older woman with the same name as my grandmother's maiden name, so I asked her if she knew a Catherine McKegney.  "No, but I did know a Katie Latimer," she replied.  Bingo, I'd found my family!  

I told her my tale of search and she gave me the names of two maternal uncles saying, "They'll be so pleased to meet you."  So, I called and eventually met up with them and learned all about my mother, who had died just a year before at the age of 49.  Let me tell you, that hurt.  Nevertheless, I eventually found and met Shirley's (my birth mother) brothers and sisters.  

All this to say, Shirley's sister thought I was just after money and warned her kids to stay away from me.  One brother was civil, but the other effusive and thrilled because he had worshipped Shirley and considered me the closest thing to her.  (Apparently, when she did marry, she was unable to have any more kids, so I was her only issue.)  

So, long story short -- or is it short story long? -- Helen, Charlie's widow, and I always exchange newsy Christmas cards and I received hers yesterday.  That made my day.  She is the last connection I have with Shirley, for which I am very grateful.  So, Merry Christmas!

Shirley Latimer, my birth mother, taken about the time she had me.

Her obituary, above.

The search for my birth father wasn't as successful.  Talking to Shirley's best friend, I learned he had been a semi-professional baseball player in the border circuit -- which is how he had met my mother.  They had only one date, but that resulted in me, a scandal at the time.  So, off Shirley was shipped to the Salvation Army Bethany Home in Ottawa, where I was born.

Learning he had been an umpire in the American League of Baseball and armed with his name, I sent a request to the League's office in New York for some information about him.  I learned he had been married at the time he was with my mother -- oops! -- was living in Buffalo and had four children -- five, including me.  Sadly, he had no interest in meeting me, so that was that.  But my search allowed me to learn from whence I came and that was something.