first encounter…
I stood there, speechless. Staring. Wondering. Are you her? Are you my birth mother? Is this actually happening?
My eyes searched her face looking for some resemblance to my own, no matter how slight, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t breathe. The small bedroom we were in, shrunk even further.
My Mum and Dad kept chatting away as if nothing was wrong. How could they be so calm? Had they not realised the connection?
Are you her? Are you my birth mother? The questions swirled round and round in my head. Endless possibilities ran through my mind.
Eventually, the four of us went downstairs having finished viewing the room. My parents finalised the details and we were all set - I would stay there for the next six weeks.
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The basic information provided to my parents at the time of my adoption ran to no more than a single typed A4 page.
It included details for both my birth mother and birth father. A first name for each, their age, some physical attributes, the number of siblings each had, cursory details of hobbies and employment. No surnames. No locations.
At the time, I thought the information was pretty useless*. An initial flurry of Google searches (via a dial up modem!) didn’t lead me to any major ‘aha’ discovery. I did, however, glean some new information. I found some possible locations for my birth mother thanks to the listing of her occupation on the page. It was a pretty tenuous link and in the absence of any further information I lost interest and stopped the online searches; storing what little I had learned away for another day.
And that day came in late 2007 when I found myself, alongside my parents, in a rural Irish town trying to source accommodation for my final college placement due to start in January 2008.
We had arranged an appointment with one of the local B&B’s and when we arrived the woman in charge introduced herself as (******). A woman of the right age, with the right name in one of the towns I had discovered through my online sleuthing. My mind went into overdrive.
Was it her? Was this my birth mother? Was her husband my birth father? Did she have children? Did she recognise me? What should I do? Was I meant to say something?
Whereas before I only ever thought about my adoption in passing, after this ‘first encounter’ I was consumed with questions about who my birth parents might be. I realised I no longer wanted to live with the uncertainty of not knowing. I made the decision then to find them by starting a proper trace through official channels.
As for the woman in the B&B, no … she didn’t turn out to be my birth mother. But another woman in that very same town did.
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*I now know the information I received was a veritable treasure trove compared to what most adopted people have access to. Many adopted people receive little to no information about their birth parents /adoption circumstances and, under current legislation, have no automatic access to their original birth cert. This whole area is being looked at by Minister Katherine Zappone who is progressing the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill through the Houses of the Oireachtas.
