This is the essay 'The Globe and Mail' had said would be running today to kick off Mothers' Day. A senior editor cancelled it, presumably because he googled me and my blog came up and he didn't like what I write. I was pissed off because the essay editor loved it and even had me go so far as to sign legal waivers confirming publication. Here they are......adoptive mother, Lillian Griffith, and birth mother, Shirley Latimer, below:
_____________________________
The selfless love
of two mothers gave me everything
“We entered a huge room, where there were rows and rows of
cribs. Daddy and I walked up and down
the rows looking at each baby, but when we saw you, we just knew you were the
most beautiful and happy baby in the whole room, so that’s how we were lucky
enough to choose you!” Growing up, I
treasured this story my mother always recounted about how I came to be my
parents’ daughter. I’m adopted, so every
Mother’s Day I celebrate two mothers; the one who raised me and the other who
birthed me, but was never able to meet.
It didn’t happen like that of course, but what a wonderful way to let an
adopted child know how loved she is. In
fact, I can’t remember not knowing I had been adopted and it made me feel
chosen and special.
Growing up, I proudly told all my friends I was adopted, but
sometimes they could not understand that.
When I was in grade four, one classmate stood up in and asked the
teacher if it was true Nancy was adopted?
Calling on me to answer, the teacher asked me to stand up and tell the
class about it. Instead of being
ashamed, as this girl had hoped, I positively beamed telling them the story of
the rows of cribs from which I had been chosen.
During a parent/teacher interview, I overheard the teacher telling my
parents how proud they should be of the way I had handled the embarrassing situation,
but for me it was a moment to celebrate.
The reality of my beginnings was far less romantic. When I did the research years later, I
learned my birth mother had only been 17 when she got pregnant. The father, older and married, had preyed
upon her at a party and then disappeared.
This was back in the late forties, when having a baby out-of-wedlock was
the worst shame imaginable. Today, all
kinds of young women get pregnant and decide to keep their babies, but back
then it was unheard of and forbidden. To
do so condemned a young woman to lifelong shame and lies. It also ruined their lives, forcing them to
quit school and often leave the family home.
In my case, my mother had been sent away “to school” in another city to
have her baby under the care of a Salvation Army Bethany Home for Unwed
Mothers, as they were then called.
That’s where my mother and father got me and it had all been arranged
before I was born. My adoptive parents
were unable to conceive a child and because my father was Catholic and my
mother Protestant, the province would not allow them to adopt because theirs
was considered a “mixed” marriage. I
can’t imagine anything so ridiculous, but that was how conservative the world
was back then.
So, they turned to a lawyer who sent them to the Bethany
Home to find a baby. In those days,
birth mothers had to keep their babies for six weeks before turning them over
to the adoptive parents. As a mother, I
cannot imagine anything more tortuous than caring for a newborn, knowing all
the while you would have to give it away after six weeks of bonding. I can’t even imagine having to dread the
approaching day when your baby would be ripped rom you, but that’s the way it
was then. Of all this, I was blissfully
unaware as a child. It was only when I
married and became pregnant that I began to be curious about my birth origins
and genetic background. That’s when I
started to secretly try and find my birth mother. But these were pre-internet days, so the
research was dogged and grinding. I
started by casually asking my mother, a propos of nothing, which lawyer had
handled my adoption. After she told me,
I forged a letter from my father, asking for the file. The lawyer sent it, but there was precious
little information in it – only her name and, job – no address, nothing
else. Armed with this, I searched city
directories for weeks, estimating her probable age and looking for her family. Eventually I found several with the same last
name. Calling each up, I finally hit the
jackpot, but it was an empty one because her aunt told me my birth mother had
died a year earlier at the young age of 49.
I was crushed. I had
anticipated a tearful reunion and the beginning of a wonder relationship with
the mother who had given me life, but that was not to be. Instead, I contacted her relatives and
introduced myself. They all knew about
Shirley’s shame; some were welcoming, but others didn’t want anything to do
with me. These rejections didn’t dim the
pride I had always felt in how my loving family came to be my family. Eventually I travelled to the towns and
cities where they lived and enjoyed learning everything I could about my birth
mother – including the fact that I was so glad she had been brave and selfless
enough to give me up. Had she not, I
would have been raised in poverty instead of the middle-class upbringing I had
been so fortunate to have had. The
saddest part was that she had died just a year before I had found her, never
knowing what had happened to her long, lost baby. When she did marry, she was unable to have
any more children and when she died, her brother found pictures of me hidden
among her things. How tragic. I finally knew all about her, but she never
learned what had become of her child.
I often hear stories about how adopted adults have suffered all
their lives from the stigma of having been rejected by their birth
mothers. Rejected? I consider myself one of the luckiest people in
the world and feel only gratitude and admiration for the young 17-year-old girl
who cared for her baby for six long weeks and then had to give it away, never
to see it again. Back then, open
adoptions didn’t exist. In fact, the
original birth certificates were replaced by the adoptive one, effectively
erasing the baby from the face of the earth.
Frankly, it worked better that way.
Everyone got on with their lives and adoptive parents didn’t live in
fear that a birth mother would change her mind and take the baby back. How unbearable that would be, always waiting
for the other shoe to drop and finding your dreams of becoming a mother
shattered.
So, every Mother’s Day I celebrate and give
thanks for two mothers. Their gifts to
each other and me are incalculable.
