Three Names

Last night I was watching a new show called "Searching For..." on the OWN network.  I love this new network.  Most of the shows appeal to me.  A lot of real life stories, but positive ones.  The show "Searching For...." particularly appeals to me because it is about family members finding lost loved ones, mostly adoptees looking for parents, and birth parents looking for children they had given up to adoption.  Their stories are mine.  


Most people come in to the world and their parents give them a name that they have thought about for months.  Many times it has a family connection as my children do. Not the case in my life.  I have really had 3 names.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.  Laura Anne.  I always liked my name it had a pleasant ring to it.  I knew quite a few people with the name Lori or Laurie, but no one with the name Laura. Originally I was going to be a Rebecca after my aunt, but they quickly settled on Laura.  My parents didn’t have the usual amount of time to come up with a name.  The announcement of a daughter to come came in the form of a phone call from the Kentucky Child Welfare Cabinet.  They had been on a waiting list for a couple of years to adopt a girl to join their adopted son. The call came at the end of February 1969.  

It is really interesting how it works……kind of like giving you a call to let you know that “something” you ordered has finally arrived and you can come and pick it up.  So my parents and my brother loaded up in the car and drove to Frankfort the first part of March to check out the merchandise and decide if it met their specifications.  I was five weeks old and had been in foster care since my birth.  On this day, I was at the office waiting for “inspection”.  Parents go in and “check out” the baby----make sure it is cute enough and passes muster.   I couldn’t lose, I mean who could possibly turn down a cute bald headed baby girl?  My dad told me just a few years ago that he really hadn’t been on board for adopting another child.  He was 51 and really felt that he was too old to take it on.  I could see where he was coming from.  I can't imagine starting with a newborn at that age. He said he thought about his misgivings from the time they got the call until he walked into the room and saw me.  He swears that at five weeks I looked at him and smiled and he knew I would be alright……and more importantly so would he.   My life as Laura Anne had begun.

I had no idea I was adopted.  I always thought I looked like Dad.  He was left handed and so was I. If you have ever heard adoptees tell their story, many will tell you they always felt different and that is true.  There were subtle hints along the way, but I was too young to pick up on those.  I was different than the rest of my family.  I was always more outspoken.  They were very reserved. Unlike most children, I never heard stories about my birth or me as a newborn.  There were no pictures of me early on.  But there were no pictures of my brother either, so I guess that didn’t seem strange to me.  I can remember as a little girl sneaking into my mom's closet and looking for her maternity to clothes to play dress up in.   I did this more than once and never could figure out why there weren’t any.  I never asked her about it though……then she would know I was sneaking around in her closet.  Life went along and I truly never had a clue. 
   
There are certain memories we all have in life that stand out clear as a bell.  As if we are right back in that moment.  Vivid.  I remember the day I found out I was adopted as one of those moments. I think they are vivid because they are pivotal moments in life.  Moments that change you forever even if you don’t realize their impact just yet.  I was 13. I was sitting in the passenger seat and mom was driving. She often had to be at basketball games at the school where she taught and I usually went with her.  We were coming back from a game and were having a conversation about a boy in our church and I told her that someone had told me he was adopted.   I will never know what came over her at that exact moment.  Maybe she had been waiting to say those words.   Instead of answering my question about the boy, she very quietly said…..”well, you are adopted too.”    Believe it or not, that was that.  She didn’t say another word about it.  I just sat there in silence thinking about what she had said.  Her lack of emotion and matter of fact tone didn’t surprise me.  She was a no nonsense kind of mom and she also had an impeccable ability to completely ignore difficult emotional things.  Now some kids might have burst into tears or expressed any number of emotions, I mean I was a 13 year girl after all.  My first thought though…..oh that’s why she didn’t have any maternity clothes.    Silence the rest of the way home.    A few weeks later, I wrote a poem to my birth mother thanking her for giving me life and letting her know I was ok.  I was proud of this poem and it had allowed me to get a lot out.  I somehow thought mom and dad would like it too.  I was wrong.  My mother was angry….really angry.  I think she missed the part about thanking her for the life I had.   I never spoke with my mother about my adoption again.  
 
As a child I didn’t understand her reaction.  As a woman and a mother I understand it better and it has taught me some great life lessons.  In her time, my mom was born in 1927, it was expected that women would marry and have children, but not being able to have them wasn’t talked about.  My mom couldn’t have children and adopting made that known to everyone.  There was also the stigma of illegitimacy. My mother told me when I was pregnant with my oldest and not married that back in her day if a woman had a child not married and she happened to die she was buried in an unmarked grave.  In their day, illegitimate children were scarred material somehow.  I also realize now that she didn't want me to think about "another mother".  I understand her fears but also know these were my mother's problems.  Deep seeded beliefs that only in recent years I have I realized had nothing at all to do with me. 
    
Her reaction hurt me though and I think a part of me wanted to get back at her.  My mom valued silence.  Silence was golden, especially if it was something she wanted to keep secret. So that was in part why I told anyone whom I felt like telling that I was adopted.  I was actually proud of this in many ways.  It made me unique.  This all made my mom really mad…..she asked me several times why I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut!  By this age I couldn’t keep it shut because she was telling me too, but also because I needed to talk about it.  I had gone from thinking I knew who I was and where I came from to suddenly knowing nothing and all of this during those turbulent teenage years.   I suddenly knew that my left handedness had nothing to do with dad and when I looked at family pictures any resemblance was now just coincidence.  I had lost my identity and due to other events in my life, I desperately needed it.  When you are young the world still seems like a small place.  Even in my teenage years I didn’t understand the scope of this so I would search crowds looking for myself.  Imagine not knowing who you are.  People at the grocery, classmates, people at church…were they related to me?   We all need a face to put with our own.  How often do we hear you look like your father or you have your mother's mannerisms.  I wanted that.  


Wasn’t until after Ashley was born that I felt some relief about my own identity. I was now connected to someone else.  This someone looked like me in many ways……a fact that we would hear about for years to come and something I treasure.  A gift that I can never be thankful enough for.  Ashley's birth really got me to thinking about finding my birth mom.  I wasn’t dreaming about magical reunions or craving mother daughter moments.  But I needed to know where I came from and I was growing tired of not having a health history to put on medical forms.  Those health history questions seem like no big deal for most, but imagine how many times we are asked those questions in our lives.  Imagine never having a single answer, then also not having those answers for your own children.  This reason alone was enough to push me into searching. 

For several years my search got me nowhere.  I started with nothing. I had a birth certificate, but I found out it wasn’t the original.  Once you are adopted the certificate is amended to show your adopted name and the original is sealed away in a file.  A file I could never have access to without my birth mother's permission.  How could I get that if I didn’t know her?  Then something wonderful happened.  I was told that there were indexes at the Fayette County library.  These indexes listed birth certificates in alphabetical order by birth mother's last name and went through 1969.  They ended in 1969, the year I was born. I was in luck.  One problem I didn’t know her last name.  What I did have though was just as valuable.  The number on my amended birth certificate was the same as the original.  That number, like a social security number, never changes.  This was going to be quite a task, but I was hopeful.  I started with the first index of 1969.  Letter A.  Each index had probably 500 pages or more and I had to look line by line and match the number.   This was going to take a while.  I spent about 10 hours over the course of several days then on the 10th day I found what I had been looking for.  Volume G.  I had to look at the number several times before I was convinced I had the right one.  The number matched so I traced my finger along the line.  There in front of me was a piece of a puzzle I had dreamed about for years----Anna M. Gordon, my birth mothers name.  Wow!  Not only did I have her name, but it was similar to my middle name and the same as my youngest daughter.  What are the odds of that? The next part of the line…..Amy Jo……my first real name.  Hum…Amy Jo.  I kind of  liked it.  Suddenly I felt like an Amy Jo.  Forget Laura Anne.  I was Amy Jo and I was happy.  
 
Of course my search had only just begun.  There was no way I could stop at just a name.  I spent the next 8 years on and off searching.  I searched death records, marriage records, any records I could find.  I even had a subscription to Ancestry.com.   I eventually found she had been born in Michigan and that she had a sister named Susan. Then another dead end.  I had come this far and felt that hiring someone to complete the search was the only option I had left.  I located a reputable searcher whose cost was $750. This was a lot cheaper than most searchers, but I had done most of the work that they would normally do.  I sent him an e-mail with the information he requested.  I wasn’t sure he would ever respond.  Within 3 days he contacted me by phone.  He had found her.  Anna Mercia Gordon, along with an address and last known phone number.  She lived in New Mexico.  He also told me my aunt lived in Cincinnati and he gave me her last name. 

My hands were shaking and quite honestly I was scared to death.  Twenty-five years of knowing I was adopted and I held the possibility of her in my hands.  Of course I called right away…..no answer.  I did this several times over the next several days, but never got an answer.  Maybe the searcher had been wrong.  I finally got the idea to search her address and find other addresses and phone numbers in the area.  I called one of the neighbors and yes they knew her although they seemed hesitant.  I realized they probably thought I was after Anna but maybe not for anything good.  I decided the best thing was to let them know who I was.  They told me she wasn’t there very often but they would leave a note on her door and talk to her when they saw her.   I was back to the waiting game….or so I thought.  I had almost forgotten the aunt in Cincinnati.  Didn’t take me long to find a number I felt was probably hers.  I called and Susan answered.  I asked if she was Anna’s sister.  She hesitated, and before she could answer I began telling her who I was.  She was very nice and said all of my facts added up so she felt I was telling the truth.  We talked a long time but she never offered Anna’s phone number.  I was so excited I didn’t find that odd.  She said since she lived so close she would love to come down and meet me and I agreed.  

You can’t imagine how this all felt.  If you have ever seen these stories on tv and thought the people were being overly dramatic, I am telling they are not.  Years coming together in an instant.  The first time in my life I had spoken to someone who shared my blood.  Each moment in this journey was getting more and more exciting.  I had never in my life been on such an unusual high.  I still knew there were rough spots ahead in this journey…scary moments, but I was excited.  This was my aunt, who was so welcoming and open, but what if my birth mother didn’t share the same warmth?  Over the years I had heard other adoptees talk about how difficult it had been to deal  with the rejection involved in being given up at birth.  I had never felt that.  I knew that if I had the opportunity to find out why, I would understand no matter what the reason.  I had been where she had been…young, pregnant and scared to death.  Whatever her reasons were, I knew how personal and painful the choice may have been and knew I wouldn’t harbor any resentment.  I also knew that she might not want to know me or even admit I had ever existed.   Again I had heard those type of stories and how hurt and bitter the adoptees had become at a second rejection.  I knew whatever the outcome with my mother, I already had more than I ever had and knew how lucky I was. 
 
So my Aunt Susan came.  Honestly, she didn’t look a thing like me.  Although she searched my face, I don’t think she saw them in me either.  None the less we spent the next several hours talking.  I suddenly had tons of medical history. I learned about my grandparents and my mother's childhood.  She brought pictures and a huge box of writing my grandmother had done before she died in her early twenties. Not all of the story was warm and fuzzy, but a true family story is rarely free of dark moments.  I found out I have 4 brothers and sisters. Yes, you read that correctly …..4 siblings.  I have an African American brother, 2 brothers who are Guatemalan, and a sister with Peruvian roots.  Imagine this blond haired blue eyed girl as part of that family.  I also learned that my youngest sister was younger than Ashley.  Crazy and exciting. 

As the visit drew to an end I finally asked Susan if she had a way to contact Anna.  I now knew that my mother had lived a rather nomadic life and so I really thought she would tell me she didn’t know how to reach her.  Instead she pulled out her phone and said, "Well let's call her right now".   Seriously.   Right then? Oh my, could this finally be it?   I heard Susan say hello to Anna.  There was a short conversation about something, I honestly can’t remember, and then Susan told Anna she was sitting there with Amy Jo.   Apparently there was silence.  Susan repeated Amy Jo.  More silence.  Then Susan said, I am here with the daughter you had in 1969.  Then I could hear her.  What I heard was excitement,  what I felt was relief.   As you can imagine I don’t remember every detail of what was in the conversation that followed, only that I was handed the phone and I heard my mother's voice for the first time.  What do you say after 38 years?  In our case, you say “How have you been” and you go from there.  Pivotal moments…memories frozen in time.
 
So what about that third name?  The third name is why she didn't recognize the name Amy Jo.  Turns out that back in the days of Catholic homes for unwed mothers, the girls were encouraged strongly not to name the children as if they were their own.  It was suggested that she choose the name of a character from a book. She chose Little Women, Amy and Jo…..so I legally became Amy Jo.  How strange and how perfect that from those characters she would choose the two that I would turn out to be the most like! When I asked Anna what she would have named me if they had let her she said…….wait for it……..Emerald Sky.  My name would have been Emerald Sky.   All of those years, in her heart, I had been Emerald Sky.  Well, I was born in the sixties after all! God bless her, and mom and dad.  At that moment I decided Laura Anne was a perfectly beautiful name.     

    I have met my mother and have a lot of respect for her.  She came and spent the night with us not long after I first talked to her. I see a lot of myself in her and finally understood why I had always felt so different than my own family.  Anna is opinionated, strong-willed and passionate in her beliefs.  She has lived through a lot of adversity. I could relate to that although I knew by comparison I had been lucky to have the life I had.  She had done the right thing for me. Even though distance keeps us from getting together very often, we do talk several times a year and I feel a connection and a bond with Anna that I am so thankful for. 

Anna, in her late twenties

 My grandmother Beth, Anna's mother