She's Out There

How many talk shows with reunion episodes can one person watch before they start playing with a person's psyche? My search has been an on-again off-again thing for 30 years. I have done all the things an adoptee would do to search. The only thing that differs is that I have never had a response, except to be told there is either no record or I don't exist in their files.

I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Dec. 2, 1955, at 11:10 a.m. at the Catherine Boothe Memorial Hospital. That's all the information I have. My story of adoption differs greatly from the adoptions done today.

Back then at the hospital, there was a room full of babies. My room had about 23 babies up for adoption. My adoptive parents had just given birth to a baby girl (Jennifer) and she died 5 days after her birth. My parents were devastated, and being in their 40s, the prospect of another child was not good. The doctor and the nursing staff were crushed by her death because my parents had been trying for a long time to have a child. In 1955 it was not common for a 40-year-old to give birth.

The story goes, my mother was not well and was recovering from a C Section. My father was taken to the "room" where all the babies were, that could be adopted. He was told to pick one out to have as their own (boy, it's not done that way now). He did just that, and picked a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed girl! Yep that's me. I was home 10 days after my birth. I always thought that story was a bit hokey but as time and some investigation panned out I found it to be totally true.

I have always known that I was adopted; I don't ever remember a time in my life that I wasn't aware of this. In fact I was always told that I was "special" and to be picked was a great thing as other children had no choice in who there parents were.

Even with all of the love in my life it did not stop me from being one of the meanest adolescents that I could be. I always felt different from them from everyone. At every opportunity I threw that in my parents' face.

If something went wrong with my day or if I was in trouble for anything I would respond with, "Well why did you pick me anyway if you wanted a perfect child? You should have picked someone else." I have now been apologizing for that comment for 25 years as I have the most wonderful parents on the face of this Earth. What they have put up with over the years is a lot, as I think a lot of adopted people have issues of abandonment to deal with and those play out in some very strange ways.

From alcohol and drug abuse, to just not caring about themselves or anything around them. Convincing themselves that no one cares (and in most cases, that couldn't be further from the truth). From age 16 to 26, I was on one hell of a self-destructive spiral downwards. Booze and drugs took over my life and everything else that came with that. I am truly lucky to be alive.

Life changed at 27 when I got pregnant with my beautiful daughter Candice. I had Candice as a single parent and it was very important to me that she knew who her father was; that was the only thing I asked of him. He agreed, and I'm glad he did because today she has a wonderful step mother, a biological dad and two beautiful half sisters.

Two years ago, after watching one of those emotional reunion shows, I got thinking (again). I called my mother and asked her for the name of the doctor who arranged the adoption. She gave me his name and the area where he used to live.

My next question was, "Do you think he's still alive?" She thought he would be as he was quite young then. It took me a few minutes to gather the nerve to make the phone call. I dialled information for Mount Royal, Quebec, and asked for the number. I was in shock when the computer came back at me with a number.

When I finally made the call, an older English woman answered the phone. I asked, "Is Dr. Phelphs in?"

Her response was, "Which one?"

I answered, "The father."

She told me he was now retired and moved to the Laurentians. I asked for the number and to my surprise she gave it to me. Finally, I got the nerve and called. A very soft-spoken man answered the phone and I said to him, "This is a very unusual phone call, I want you to think back to Dec. 2, 1955, and tell me what you remember about that day."

To my absolute shock he mentioned my parents' names and then told me in his whole career he had only arranged two adoptions and I was one of them. He then told me the story of how I was chosen. The story was identical to the one I had always been told. It sent goose bumps down my spine. I finally got the nerve to ask him who my birthmother was. At that point he got adamant about not going into other peoples' lives as it could upset things. I think that was his way of telling me he knew who she was. There was the question of where my files were. He told me they were at the hospital where I was born but I still have had no luck in retrieving them.

I then gave him my address and phone number and told him if he did know who my mother was to please tell her that I was put with the best parents anyone could have ever wished for and that she had a beautiful granddaughter and that we were all healthy and thanked her for giving birth to me.

That was in 1996. It's now 1998 and I have a computer and Internet access. It's amazing what modern technology can do. I must be registered with at least 50 adoption registries and have access at my fingertips to millions of records. Even with all of this I still have made no connection. There have been a couple of leads and even a possible name. I must have cried for an hour when I found that lead. Afterall, I had been thinking about this for a long time and in my mind I thought I had figured out all the reactions I would have if my search was ever successful. I soon discovered I was wrong.

I will never stop looking although sometimes the looking gets a little obsessive and hard to deal with. But if one doesn't look one will never find. I know my birthmother is out there somewhere and I hope I find her.

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