Secret Son

In keeping with the National Adoption Month theme: Conversation Matters, each Wednesday during November, I showcase different voices from the adoption community. 

In the coming weeks, you will hear from advocates, adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents and social workers, people whose unique perspective create a deeper awareness and understanding about the adoption experience.   

This week, author and birth mother, Laura L. Engel has written a beautiful piece about reconnecting with the son she placed for adoption in the 1960s.

Secret Son

I remember brilliant stars sprinkled in a cloudless sky that night and cool, crisp October air. Just an ordinary evening for me and my husband, Gene. I took our dogs out for a quick walk and was planning a peaceful night of reading when my iPhone pinged. Glancing down, I stopped in my tracks. It was an email from Ancestry.com

The message read: Parent/Child Match.

I stared at the screen, eyes, and mouth wide open and nearly fell to my knees. My throat closed and my heart pounded erratically. Fight or flight adrenaline kicked in. Forgetting the dogs, I ran back into the house to my computer.

“What is it? What happened?” Gene called out.

Without answering I dropped in the chair in front of the screen. My fingers frantically hit the wrong keys as I logged onto Ancestry.com. 

The email was straightforward, business-like:

I just received my DNA profile from Ancestry.com It says we are a parent/child match. I am adopted, and I am looking for more information. – Richard Ray

Tears streamed down my face. Terrified yet thrilled, my thoughts turned to the tiny flat wooden box that had traveled with me across the country, moving place to place, holding my deepest secret, a symbol of the loss that changed the direction of my life, colored my days, and, at times, crushed my spirit. The box contains one item, a small, frayed birth card, creased where I had folded it and stuffed it in my pocket 49 years ago. It was the only tangible proof of the baby boy I had given birth to in the summer of 1967. 

On this cool, crisp October evening in 2016, my body trembling, my heart in my throat, I found myself again a 17-year-old girl, dropped off at an unwed mother’s home in New Orleans, alone and scared. Without support from my family or the father of my child, a teenage boy himself, I was made to feel like damaged goods or a criminal. 

In the 1960s, there were no organizations, nor education or assistance for young women in my condition. No alternatives, I was assured. In the end, I had been forced to relinquish my firstborn son for adoption, a baby boy I named Jamie. 

Made to feel like a criminal, I was told I would never see him again.

“Never speak of this. Forget him. It’s for the best.”  

Forgetting had been impossible. I had carried that child for nine months. He would always be part of me, and I had thought about him every day of every year. 

Now, sitting at the computer, I stared at the screen. 

Could this be happening? My God, could this be the beautiful baby I held and cried over as he was taken from me? My Jamie? All these years of wondering what he looked like. Where he lived? Was he healthy? Who else could it be? It had to be him. Richard. Richard? God help me. Please let it be him.

Gene hurried into our home office after rescuing our baffled pups. “Laura, what happened?”

“Oh, honey, listen to this,” I cried. With difficulty, I read the email aloud.

Tears sprang to his eyes as he hugged me close saying “I knew this would happen one day, Laura. Do you think it’s really him?”

“I don’t know. But no, yes, oh God… Yes, I do know. I know it’s him.”  

Who is this man? Will he hate me for giving him up? Can he forgive me? 

For years, I had longed for this day, secretly praying I would find him. I had researched how to find him, entered my name and data on countless search websites, and finally had submitted my DNA to Ancestry.com. Now he had found me— through DNA—on the Internet. This was something I could never have dreamed possible in 1967. 

So, why dear God, was I so afraid? How strange to have wanted this for all those long years and to now be paralyzed with fear. I had pushed this secret so far down, and now it was bubbling up, scaring me in a whole new way. I realized I’d never thought past finding Jamie. 

If this was my son, my Jamie, why was I not jumping for joy?  Why this fear?

Painful buried memories bubbled to the surface. Only a handful of people in my life had even known about his birth. Mama and Daddy had died decades later, never mentioning my son, unwilling to talk about that time in our lives.

How will this affect our family? His family? 

Richard? They named him Richard.

“What are you going to do?” Gene asked. 

“I don’t know. What if he hates me? What if he thinks I didn’t want him?” 

As always, Gene was the voice of reason, “He won’t hate you.”

I wrote back: My heart is doing flip-flops, but can you please tell me the date of your birth and the place you were born?  

I jumped as the answer immediately popped up on the screen.

July 8, 1967. New Orleans, Louisiana.  

My heart stopped.

“It’s him! It must be. It’s Jamie!” 

I knew without a doubt, this was my son, Jamie, who signed his name ‘Richard.’ 

For hours, my hands trembling, we emailed, asking questions, cautiously sidestepping around each other, trying to come to terms with the miracle taking place. Our emails changed from one or two hesitant sentences to lengthy missives in which we poured out our hearts to each other. In just a couple of hours, I knew more about Richard than I ever dreamed I would. 

It was exhausting. It was beautiful.

Richard wrote, “I have had a good life. I have always known I was adopted from as far back as I remember.” He had been adopted at five weeks of age. Now a husband and father of three children, he was an Assistant Attorney General in his home state. He had lived a secure and fortunate life.

My mind on overload, I answered his questions—about me and the family he had never known existed. “I live in California. You have three half-brothers. A day did not pass that I did not think or wonder about you.”

Overwhelming guilt and sorrow tugged at my heart and the forty-nine-year absence of my son tore at my soul. My conscience screamed, “You should have been raising this son with your other sons!” I was simultaneously happy for him, jealous of his adoptive parents, yet grateful for them. Intellectually, I knew I had not been given a choice.  

I opened a new text and there was a photo of my son. Seeing Richard’s smile for the very first time was magical. He looked like he had sprung from me alone. I studied those photos of him and his children with awe and longing. DNA shouted loud and clear. Thrilled, yet heartbroken to have missed his life, I sobbed afresh.

This man is my son. This is my Jamie.

I will call you tonight, at 7 p.m. your time. Is that ok? He wrote. 

I typed. Of course, of course! 

My thoughts whirled: How could I wait three more hours to speak to him? Here was the baby boy my parents had not allowed me to keep, all grown up. Would they have been happy for me? What will the sons I have raised say? What will anyone say? 

My dark, painful secret was out, and I longed to shout to the world, “My son has found me! This is a miracle!”

When the phone rang precisely at 7 p.m., I grabbed it and squeaked, “Hello, is it you?”

I swear I recognized his soft southern voice. My heart soared. 

“Yes, it’s me.”

 “I know your voice,” he sighed.

We both laughed and quietly cried as I began telling him the story of his beginnings. He told me the story of his life. After we hung up four hours later, I replayed our conversation in my mind for hours. No word or detail was too small.

How can I describe my feelings? They defy words. Still, I will try.

I can only describe it as like the delirious happiness a new mother feels after she gives birth and kisses the velvety head of her newborn and ecstatically counts his tiny fingers and toes. The bliss of looking at that perfect and wondrous miniature human being and proudly thinking, ‘I did this. This precious child is part of me.’ It was similar to that fuzzy, insane joy you feel when you first bring your newborn home.

It was richly layered because, while tinged with a loss I could not deny, I had seen that baby’s future. I knew that he had been loved by adoring parents. That he had had a remarkable life. That he grew up to be a kind man, a decent human being, a father who loved his children, a husband who loved his wife, a man beloved by his family and friends.

A man determined to find and know his birth mother. 

A smile like no other graced my face. 

At last. My son. My son.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Laura Engel is the author of You’ll Forget This Ever Happened: Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s. The book will be available May 10, 2022. Preorder it here.

Follow Laura at www.lauralengel.com

IG StorytellerLaura

FB @ laurabaliusengel

Twitter @ lauralengelauthor

Don’t miss a blog post!

Receive my blog posts directly to your inbox.

Available on Amazon!