My Sister’s Search For Her Birth Mother
My step sister’s search for her birth mother spanned decades and when she was finally at the moment of knowing, I became an integeral part of the discovery. Crazy right? None of us could have imagined how this would unfold.
My sister Pamela is really my step sister. We met when I was 12 years old and my mom and her dad began dating. My parents had divorced years earlier and her mother had passed away from cancer. She always knew that she was adopted. She also always knew that when she was of age, she would look for her birth parents. When she turned 18 she sent off the appropriate forms to discover what she could. She eventually received some paperwork back with limited medical history information, but nothing identifying her birth parents. Records at this time, around the late 1980’s were sealed and that information was not public, or accessible and the government controlled it. There were not a lot of DNA options at this time yet either.
Several years passed. She married and eventually had two beautiful daughters and I married and had three children, two girls and a boy. When she went in for her first obstretics appointment the doctor began asking about her medical history. She told him what she knew, but most of her answers were “I don’t know”. When she held her newborn baby she said it was the first blood relative of hers that she knew. If you are not adopted, just let that sink in for a moment. As we became mothers we grew closer and would often go on walks after our Saturday night family dinners at our parents place. Our parents are still together today, nearly 40 years later. On many of our walks, we would talk about her search and our family fully supporter her in this hunt.
My only concern was that she would find out that the circumstances were negative. I didn’t want her to get hurt. I didn’t want her to find out there was some terrible parts surrounding her story. We discussed that possibility too and she was prepared if that was the case. These conversations took place across years and for a long time, she seemed to be at a dead end.
Eventually, the government decided that it would release the records. Pamela’s birth mother had indicated at the time of her adoption that she would be interested in making future contact or sharing information, so that meant that Pamela would receive the information. She requested it and the long awaited envelope arrived in her mail box on Christmas Eve.
That particular Christmas Eve our larger family was getting together at her Mother-In-Law’s house for our holiday festivities. It so happened that I arrived just before she did. When she walked in the door, she was very giddy. My sister is a kind, fun, wonderful person, but she is also a serious person and to see her giddy was unusual. We barely greeted each other and she handed me a white envelope.“What’s this?” I asked her. She told me that it was her adoption papers and they had just picked them up from her mailbox on their way over. She said she started to look at it but got nervous and asked if I would do it.
Weird. Why would she want me to look at her adoption papers? So she explained further. On the long white legal length page, were photocopies of three other documents. The first part at the top listed Pamela’s full name, that her birth parents gave her and then directly under that was the birth name that her birth mother gave her. That name was the first new piece of information. She had never seen this before and never even know that her birth mother had given her a name. The last name was the same last name that used to be my married last name. It was the last name of all three of my children. This is where she had stopped reading, and became a little over whelmed. I remember her saying to me “Wouldn’t it be crazy if I was some distant cousin of your ex?”. I remember agreeing with her but thinking it wasn’t that common of a name in the city where we lived, I kind of dismissed it and decided to look at the rest of the papers for her. I asked her why she wanted me to look at this for her when she had been waiting all these years for this very paper, but she just couldn’t do it.
Of course I’d look at them for her. I scanned down the page to the second photo copy where it listed her birth mother. Orleen Adele Goodwin. That was her birth mother’s name. It was a name I knew. It didn’t make any sense to me though. This was my ex’s aunt. His aunt, who had never married and never had children. I was so confused for a moment. Below her name was the address she and her mother, my ex’s grandmother lived at. I knew that address because my ex’s grandmother had passed away and I went there several times to help clean out the house. I knew his aunt had lived in the apartment upstairs decades before. Then it hit me all at once. I’d been sitting on a sofa this whole time and when I made the connection I literally jumped off the sofa. I remember yelling “Do you know who this is? Do you know what this means?”. By this point everyone there was in rapt attention waiting to learn what I knew. Pamela was laughing at this point. I said to her “Your birth mother is my ex’s aunt”. She got serious again and asked if I knew her. “Yes”, I told her I did. She asked me what she was like. This was the easy part. She is kind, lovely, lady.
This is where things got a bit wild. Everyone was peppering me with questions. Our children figured out that they were all cousins and that they were all blood relatives. Pam was first cousins with my kids father. I wanted to confirm this information, as though it was clear that Orleen was listed as the birth mother, I thought she didn’t have any children, but it turned out she did. She had Pamela and had given her up for adoption.
Orleen, at the time lived in Minnesota in the USA and my sister lives near Windsor, Ontario, Canada-where she was born at Grace Hospital (the hospital is gone now) in March of 1970. Within a day or two they were on the phone followed that spring by a visit. They are in contact to this day and both very happy with finding each other.
Whenever Pamela and I reminisce about this, we still say how surprising it was and what an incredible story it is. What are the odds that of all the people in that room and all the people she knew, she handed her adoption papers to me-the one person who knew her birth mother? When we would tell people about it, they’d be in disbelief. So we decided to make short documentary about it. We shot it in August 2020 and it is in post production. We hope to enter it into Film Festivals, once the pandemic is over. Pamela has a new search, she has a little information, but not much about her birth father and she is hoping to find out more about him or if she has any half siblings on his side.
Pamela has a photo of Orleen when she was about 23, the age she was when she gave birth to Pam. That same photo hung in my home for the 13yrs I was married. I saw it everyday. Pictures sometimes have secrets and what I didn’t know the whole time was that Orleen was pregnant with Pamela in that very photo.
