How Document Details Can Reveal More Puzzles

Julie McGue

Author

During the eight-year probe into my closed adoption, besides search angels, statutes and gatekeepers, I encountered huge periods of waiting. Limbo bookended every step I made. The amount of time between asking for help and getting some kind of answer varied wildly. The norm was for days to fold into weeks, and those weeks slipped easily into months. With regards to locating my birth father, twenty-one months lapsed between learning his name and receiving a response from him. On one occasion, however, my query was immediately answered and its result was puzzling.

Pasted in the beginning pages of my baby book is a hand-made christening announcement. The heavy white card stock is written in silver ink by my adoptive mother’s careful hand. It declares that a new life entered the Catholic faith through baptism, anointed and witnessed by both sets of parents and godparents. The pages following the notice are littered with miscellany, basic baby physical descriptions and habits. Conspicuously absent are my baptismal certificate and snapshots commemorating the event. Adopted through Catholic Charities, I’d been told that my baptism occurred at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.

Instead of asking my adoptive mom what happened to my baptismal certificate, I picked up the phone and called the rectory at Holy Name. Situated on north State Street, Holy Name Cathedral is the seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Any sacrament received in the Cathedral is an honor reserved strictly for parishioners. St. Vincent’s, the orphanage from which I was adopted, was one block from Holy Name, so technically it was part of the parish. That St. Vincent’s babies would receive their first sacrament at the Cathedral made perfect sense to me.

My plan was to request a copy of my baptismal certificate, and then to inquire what other information about me resided in their files. As I lingered on hold while the administrator checked the baptismal records, I imagined the woman flipping through dusty tomes in the rectory basement to get to February 1959, her bifocals scrolling down the names that began with ‘R’. The longer I held, I could almost see the line where my given name popped up, handwritten in an elegant cursive beside my baptismal date, my birthdate and my adoptive parents’ names.

“I have located the records,” the woman said in a rushed manner. “I will mail you off a copy in the morning mail.”

Before I could think about it, words sprayed out. “I was adopted from St. Vincent’s. Are my birth parents’ names written there?”

“We would never have received that information. When an infant was adopted, the paperwork was sent over to us from St. Vincent’s. At this office we would have entered the baptismal date, and then the adoptive parent’s names would be entered alongside the infant’s new given name. That’s all that is listed here. No birth names. No birthparents’ names.”

Something in her statement puzzled me. “What is the date of my baptism at Holy Name?”

“I’m sorry. You were not baptized at the Cathedral, but rather at St. Vincent’s in the chapel on the seventh floor. In those days it was deemed important to baptize babies as soon as possible, so nurses acted as stand-in godparents. While the sacrament didn’t occur at the Cathedral, this office certified it. Your baptismal date was Feb. 27, 1959.“ My adoptive mother’s birthday— something else I didn’t know.

Somehow, I stumbled through a courteous thank you and the recitation of my mailing address with the registrar. Astounded that a simple request for a copy of a document had yielded two new pieces of information, I decided to call my mother. When I relived the painful moment with the Holy Name administrator, my adoptive mother was equally dumfounded.

Mom’s voice trembled with distress as she explained.“When we were seated in the prioress’ office, before we were taken to the nursery to get you, I asked, with a big smile on my face, ‘Can you tell me a little about the background of the girls?’ Sister leaned forward across the desk with her winged headdress flapping at your Dad and I, and said, ‘Do you want these children or not?’ I said, ‘Oh yes, Sister. I do. I do desperately want these girls.’ And she said, ‘Then there will be no more questions.’ That was it. I just listened from then on.”

My mother hadn’t failed me, hadn’t perpetuated a mistruth on purpose, she’d just accepted what she’d been told. At some point in my formative years, should she have explained to me that she hadn’t been present at my baptism, and in fact neither had my adoptive father or godparents? Probably, but all those explanations would’ve been difficult and unpleasant. For my adoptive mother, the point was not whose arms held me as the sacred chrism was poured over my forehead, but that I’d already been blessed and free of sin.

While the solution to the problem—where was my baptismal certificate—had been easily solved, more puzzling questions emerged. Over the course of figuring out my personal story this past decade, I’ve discovered that family secrets are stubborn and unwieldy. While acquiring a document may seem simple, what it unearths has a ripple effect. In regards to my closed adoption, I doubt I will ever be patient about waiting for facts to land in my inbox. Likewise, I am likely to be skeptical about the veracity of all the details I receive.

“Over the course of figuring out my personal story this past decade, I’ve discovered that family secrets are stubborn and unwieldy.”

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