Jane, Birth Mother

(Image by Khusen Rustamov from Pixabay)

I am proud that at barely eighteen years old, I made the decisions that I made, and I decided years ago that I was not the least bit ashamed of any of it.

I got off the school bus at this drugstore across the street from me every day, and there was this older guy and his friends who were in there all the time. He absolutely flipped out over me. I was 14 years old.He was quite a bit older, more experienced. Eventually, my parents let me date him. The most I'd ever been taught about was periods, not what sex actually was all about, how to protect myself. Eventually it led to me being pregnant. But he just was obsessed with me. You know, candy, flowers, and clothes, and everything. I was barely 18 and I wasn't really ready to give up the rest of my life at that point. I was college material and all that kind of stuff.

When we found out I was pregnant, he told me he wanted to marry me, but I told him I had to think about it. I did not marry him because he was an alcoholic, a bad one. I did not want to bring a baby into that. I know he would have been good to me, but I'd seen him when he was drunk and stupid, and I could not fathom bringing a baby home to that. I loved him, but not the way a wife should love a husband. He was very good to me; he bought me anything my heart desired. If I saw an outfit in the store, it got delivered the next day to my house. But that wasn't the kind of relationship I wanted.

He didn't pressure me to keep the baby. He knew my parents would have really objected to that. But he tried to stay in good graces with my parents, though he really didn't because he contributed nothing. But I think he would have loved it if I'd have married him and he had a baby with me. But he was a pretty wild guy. He hung with a group of pretty big drinkers and partiers and they got kicked out of every place they lived. I'm not sure he wanted to give that up. He eventually went on to be very successful; he was an exterminator here in town and did a great job and left his business to his son who has since passed away. But he was a pretty successful businessman in spite of the fact that he was “la-la” sometimes.

After my son was born, I finished getting my high school education and I got a scholarship to VCU that paid for everything, so I ended up being able to fulfill some of my life’s dreams. I loved absolutely every single solitary second of it, and I finished in three and a half years. Getting my diploma felt good. When I open my eyes in the morning, that's what I look at. I have a great sense of pride in that because it didn't look like it was going to be in the cards for me. I had a lot of Episcopal clergy people that were my buddies. One of them sent me all these wonderful notes and messages about how proud he was of me--that kind of stuff really helped me through it. I didn't feel like such a loser.

Although my decision not to keep my baby hurt my baby’s father, the most important part is it did not hurt my son at all. It gave each of us a chance to start all over again, and my child a chance to start at all. And eventually his father understood. And as it turns out, my baby went home to really wonderful people.

In 1966 marriage and adoption were really the only choices--lily white girls in the zip code I lived in didn't come home carrying a baby. Girls of color did; their families would take care of them. But not Lily white girls in an upper middle class suburb. Not 1966. They might now, but not then.

When my mom figured out I was pregnant, she kind of hit the ceiling, but she and my dad ended up being wonderful about all of it. When I told my dad I was pregnant, he said, “You’re my daughter, and I love you. I'll always love you no matter what happens.” So that was pretty cool.

But I went into just this mental crash mode, I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't do anything else--I was absolutely a mess. Fortunately, it was Christmas holiday from school, so I didn't have to deal with school. We talked to the doctor, and he thought that since I had a history of chronic depression, that perhaps I would be granted an abortion because I had some mental issues. That didn't work. They sent me to the University of Virginia psychiatric ward to try to determine if I was of sound mind to do this, and they decided I was, but then they didn't release me because my blood count was bad. They thought I had leukemia, so I was there for a long time. It turned out to be a vitamin B deficiency. But even though I was hospitalized, I was free to go out and do stuff. People came to see me and it was fun to see all these cute interns. This other girl and I would hide their lunches in the ice machine and stuff like that.

My pregnancy was a total secret–I was whisked out of my hometown before I saw anyone I knew. My 50th class reunion was a couple of years ago, and I was talking to a girl who had been a really close friend of mine, and I told her. I thought she was going to fall over on the ballroom floor. She said, "I had no idea!"

I left home on February 15th, 1966, and I didn't return for some time. First I went to that hospital, and then from there, I moved in with an Episcopal clergyman and his family that my mother was friends with. My parents paid them for me to stay there. But it was terrible. It was like being an indentured servant. I took care of the kids, fed the horses. I went to church with them because he was a minister, but he wouldn't let me talk to anybody. It was very uncomfortable.

From there, my parents made arrangements for me to go to a Salvation Army home. Oh boy, that just about did me in, because initially they did not make it clear that their expectation was for me to stay there for three weeks after the baby was born to take care of him until he was adopted. That blows the door off making decisions and being able to stick with them. I just couldn't do it.

Then they took me to this psychiatrist who was very kind to me--I don't know if he'd had a daughter who had been through something like that, but he just moved me into a psychiatric hospital. And that's where I lived for a couple of months. And all the interns hung out in my room. They wanted to deliver the baby. They brought their girlfriends to meet me. It's the most popular I've ever been in my life.

This doctor was such a sweet person; he kept me from being a victim. At the Salvation Army home, I would have been forced into something that I didn't want to do, and all the plans that we had laid so carefully would have been blown up, and I'd have to sort of go back to jump street. But he gave me a safe and wonderful place to live. I had friends and everything.

Virginia’s Department of Social Services arranged the adoption. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, they made it so much harder to ever get the adoption records opened because it was the Commonwealth of Virginia. On the other hand, it protected me--it was not a fraud. They didn’t lie to me about where my son was going or anything like that. I wasn't told he was living in some mansion in South Carolina when he was not. They told me my baby’s adoptive mother was adopted. And he has a sister who was also adopted.

I am very blessed that I had the love of my father and my mother and my sister. My sister and brother in law considered adopting my baby when he was born, but I'm glad it didn't happen that way. My mother sent me a letter every single solitary day in all those places I lived while I was pregnant. She even sent me registered letters on Sunday, so I got a letter every single day.

After my baby was born, the doctor gave me a job in that hospital. I lived in a boarding house with a lot of girls who went to Pan American Business School. It was like a dorm for them. It was fun. I was with all these young girls, and I was able to be a teenager again. At my job, I answered the switchboard, made beds, and delivered food trays. Nurse's aide kind of stuff. I didn't get paid very well. But the place I was living was not very expensive either.

My son and I found each other at almost exactly the same time, through Ancestry DNA testing. A friend of mine gave me a kit for Christmas several years ago. And my son did it right before I did. So imagine my shock, when my results came back, and it said "parent-child relationship" and gave me his name. My heart just soared. It was a dream come true. I contacted him, and we set a time for him to call.

When I answered the phone, he said, "You have no idea how scared and nervous I am."

And I said, "Please don't feel that way. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm the easiest person to talk to, to be around. I'm just, mellow and laid back, and please don't feel that way."

And he said, "I feel better already!"

I said, "I wouldn't have looked for you if I didn't want to find you, and I will also tell you there's not a day in my life that I have not thought about you.” I celebrated his birthday every year. I had no idea what he looked like, no idea where he was. I asked him how old he was when his mother told him and he told me he was five. She had told him about my situation, that it was not feasible for me to raise him, and he was fine with it. I said, “That doesn't bother you?”

He said, “Oh no. I had a wonderful family.”

I think he looked for me at that particular time in his life because both of his adoptive parents were gone, and I understand that male adopted children often don't search until both parents are gone. But he had been thinking about it for quite a while. He had talked to a lawyer who told him it would be very expensive. He wanted to know for health reasons but also to find out why I would have chosen to part with him.

He and I text back and forth all the time. He's a really good guy. He's very likable, easygoing, responsible, financially responsible, has the same best friend he's had all his life. He doesn't really doesn't look very much like me, but people say they see me in him. He looks like my father and nephew across the bridge of his nose and across the brow. He looks a lot like his father because his father was very short and stocky and he's short and stocky, or as he refers to himself: "thick."

It was a dream come true to find him. It made me feel more complete, and it made me feel like my choices hadn’t been in vain when I saw that he was so well adjusted, so happy, and had such a great life. I never thought I would ever find him--I looked into all kinds of things, and people promised me the moon, but they wanted a whole lot of money for it. And then along came Ancestry DNA kits, and I thought I had as good a shot with that as anything else in fifty years. And there he was. I told a friend about it, and she looked him up on Facebook and sent me a picture of him. I said, “Oh, yeah. That’s my son.”

She said, “How do you know that?”

I said, “He looks like his father. He's got the same little grin that his father had. That's my son. I know it is.”

She said, "how can you be so sure?" But I just knew. Since then, she told me "I just wish he was more in your life." But he didn't know who I was until he was 53 years old!

He has come here to see me a couple of times. He has a steady girlfriend who really wants to meet me too. He's never been married and he doesn't have kids. I never got married either, and I don't have any kids besides him.

I ended up being friends with my son's birth father towards the end of his life. I spent some time with him, would have dinner with him occasionally, and I think he finally understood why things couldn’t happen the way he initially wanted them to be.