The Day I Joined My Family

“To an adoptee, Adoption Day is just like a birthday” 

If you’re an adoptee from the closed adoption era–that period in adoption history after WWII through the 1980s–when adoptive parents received little or no information about their adopted child’s background, then you have no information about the events surrounding your birth. There are no mother-child, skin-to-skin contact pictures in your baby album, nor are there driving-to-the-hospital-just-in-time stories to memorialize. Because we had no knowledge of what happened on the day my twin sister and I were born, we did what most adoptees do. We latched onto the importance of another vital event: Adoption Day. 

In many respects, Adoption Day is the day that our lives truly began. 

I turned sixty-two this year, and my adoptive mother still tears up when she recounts “the call” from Catholic Charities informing her she was to become a parent. Her vivid retelling of this moment has become so real to me it’s almost as if I was in the room with her when she picked up the phone.

Mom was immersed in a lesson plan with her busy, third-grade class at St. Cletus. First, there was a rap at the classroom door, and then the school secretary stepped inside the classroom.

“You have a phone call in the office,” she said. 

The entire staff at St. Cletus knew my folks had experienced a half dozen miscarriages during their five-year marriage, and that they had been waiting nearly two years to adopt. 

As the story goes, Mom left the administrator in charge of her class of forty-three students and rushed down the wide hallway. With each hurried step, Mom became more certain the phone call she was about to take was the one that would change her life. When she stopped at the Office, she was out of breath. The Principal glanced up and jabbed a finger towards the school secretary’s phone. Mom darted to the adjacent desk, squeezed her eyes shut and sent off a quick prayer before lifting the receiver. 

“Hello,” her voice was soft, questioning.

“Mrs. Ryan?  This is Marge, the social worker at Catholic Charities.”

“Yes… Hello, Marge.” Mom moved the phone tighter to her ear. 

“Sorry to disturb your school day, Mrs. Ryan, but we had a question about your adoption paperwork.”

“Yes…” 

The corners of Mom’s mouth twisted into a frown. She wondered why the social worker had pulled her out of a busy classroom to ask a question that could have been posed in the evening hours.

“In your adoption paperwork, you checked the box next to ‘Twins.’ Did you mean to do that or was it an error?” 

Mom did remember putting a neat checkmark in the box next to “Twins,” but in all truthfulness she wasn’t sure why she had done so. The decision just felt right. The youngest of twelve, Mom yearned for a big family like the one in which she’d grown up. 

“Yes, I checked the box for twins. It was no mistake.” Mom shrugged her shoulders at the waiting Principal as if to apologize for the call delaying her return to class.

“Well, in that case we need to set up a time for you to come to St. Vincent’s and pick up your twins, your infant baby girls.”

After Mom hung up with the Catholic Charities social worker, the Principal and everyone within earshot swarmed around my sobbing mother and helped her dial Dad’s office number.

 Several days later, Mom and Dad pulled their sedan out of the detached garage behind their two-bedroom ranch and eased onto on the chaotic Eisenhower expressway. When they reached Chicago’s Gold Coast, Dad maneuvered the car into the private lot behind the massive, red-brick structure at 721 N. La Salle Street: St. Vincent’s Orphanage.

Mom scooped up the baby gear she’d packed, and they walked hand-in-hand around to the main entrance. They strolled through the shiny, black-enameled gates, joy etching smiles onto their young faces. Inside the spacious, marble-floored vestibule, they were directed to the elevator. Shivering with new parent nerves, Mom and Dad took the elevator from the lobby to the fifth-floor infant nurseries. 

When the elevator doors opened, Sister Mary Alice Rowan, the prioress of St. Vincent’s was waiting for them. The stout, heavily robed nun ushered my soon-to-be parents into her office. She signaled for them to sit in the two chairs facing her large wooden desk, and then she rambled around it, settling her large frame into a chair across from them. Over the years, Mom has confessed that Sister Mary Alice frightened her. Seated behind the massive desk, Sister’s commanding presence in her dark robes and white, winged headdress did not invite questions. In this final interview of the eighteen-month adoption vetting process, Mom committed the ultimate sin of daring to ask Sister Mary Alice a question.

I can just see Mom, her dark brown eyes shining, her manicured brows furrowing. Her unbridled enthusiasm for a chance at motherhood must have propelled her to know more about the infant girls she would soon take home and call her own.

 “Sister, can you please tell us a little about the girls’ background?”

Through a thin smile, Sister Mary Alice offered a chilling admonishment. “Do you want these girls or not?”

Knowing Mom as I do, she squirmed in her seat, her brown eyes flicking first to my dad and then at hands writhing in her lap. 

“Yes, Sister. We do. We desperately want to be the parents of these two baby girls”

A look of satisfaction lit up Sister’s face as she held Mom’s dark eyes. “Then there will be no more questions. Understood?” Mom nodded again.

When Sister Mary Alice stood and slid around the desk, my parents followed her dutifully down the length of a glistening, linoleum hallway to the ‘waiting for adoption’ infant nursery. From behind a huge plate glass window, our new parents beamed at the sight of my twin sister and I swaddled in pink blankets and in the arms of two nurse’s aides. When Sister Mary Alice gave the nod to her staff, the young women emerged from the sacred space of the nursery and placed us into our parents’ eager arms. 

None of the details surrounding the day I was born have been passed on to me, so the rich descriptions my parents have shared about my Adoption Day are vital. Adoption Day is about forming identity and a sense of belonging. It is about anticipation and welcoming, and it commemorates the moment a family is formed.  And for all those reasons, Adoption Day is just as important to me as my birthday.

JULIE RYAN McGUE writes about finding out who you are, where you come from, and making sense of it. Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging is Julie’s first book. It released on May 11, 2021. 

Don’t miss a blog post!

Receive my blog posts directly to your inbox. 

Available on Amazon!