by Diane Burke
Shortly after we married in 1986, we packed up the kids and moved to Florida.
We rarely made it back to Michigan after that move. My relationship with my mother became nothing more than a couple of telephone calls a month and a gift on Mother’s Day and Christmas. Slowly, over the years, my mother’s memory worsened and, when I was forty, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Soon the telephone calls were to my father because my mother no longer was capable of holding conversations.
Florida turned out to be a good move for us. We knew there were plenty of timeshare properties there and employment would not be a problem. We were starting a new life together and we both wanted a fresh start. What better place to do it than in the world of Disney where dreams come true.
Chapter
7
Steve
On my twenty-first birthday, I went to Atlantic City with my parents and a friend. I’m not exactly sure why I wanted to go there. Probably a bit of nostalgia. I knew I’d been born in Atlantic City.
So I sat with my parents at a bar and had my first legal drink. I went to the casino at the Claridge Hotel and gambled for the very first time. I had a great birthday.
I had started thinking more and more about my mother. Especially on my birthdays. She may have been able to forget about me the rest of the year, but she had to be thinking about me on this particular day, wouldn’t she?
So birthdays became days of reflection and wondering. Was my mother still alive and out there someplace? Was she remembering this one day, this special day unique to just the two of us? Was she thinking of me? Did she ever regret giving me away? Did she ever miss me?
So I came to Atlantic City on my twenty-first birthday, the day society considered me an adult. I told my parents it was because I wanted to drink for the first time and try my hand at gambling. The truth of the matter was that I wanted to feel closer to my mother. In what better place could I do that than in the city where I had been born?
Diane
Thank God for red lights.
One day, just for fun or out of boredom, I told myself I was going to time how long the wait was at this particular light. Traffic officers could top off their monthly quota of tickets just nabbing the yellow light pedal-to-the-medal speed racers trying to avoid the wait.
I was behind the wheel of our van, waiting for the light to change, when another one of those moments in life, the kind that sneak up on you and rock you to the core, came from the most unlikely source. My husband, Bill, sat in the passenger seat. My boys, Dan and David, were in the back.
“Mom, is it true I have another brother out there someplace?” David asked.
My gaze flew to the rearview mirror and connected with my youngest son’s eyes.
“Who told you that?”
I was shocked and upset and furious. No one had the right to tell him that information except me. How did he find out? Did my ex-husband tell him? Did my sister? Who would have told an eleven-year-old child he had a half-brother he didn’t know, and why?
“Mom?”
I could see David in the mirror. He didn’t move a muscle. He simply stared back at me, surprise and shock evident in his expression. Dan remained silent.
“Who told you? Did your father tell you?”
“Nobody told me. The thought just popped into my head so I asked.”
“Don’t lie to me. I want to know. Your father told you, didn’t he? Why? Why would he do that?”
David’s eyes glistened with tears. “Nobody told me, Mom. I swear.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Is it true, Mom? Is it true?” His voice held a sense of wonder and a tear slid down his cheek.
I forced myself to calm down. Anger wasn’t going to get the answers I needed and it was obvious my anger was upsetting him. I took several deep breaths and, when I spoke again, I forced myself to remain calm.
“David, I’m sorry I yelled. You surprised me, that’s all.” I turned my head and looked at him through the opening between the front bucket seats. “I promise I won’t yell anymore.”
David looked me straight in the eye. “Nobody told me, Mom. Honest. I just knew.”
“How, David? Nobody just thinks up something like that.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I did. I swear, Mom. It’s the truth.”
Seconds of silence passed between us like an eternity.
He seemed so sincere, so genuine. Was it possible he was telling the truth? I know that it had been years since I had had any conversation with anyone about my missing son. It definitely wasn’t something he would have ever been able to overhear in my house.
And it didn’t make any sense that he would have heard it in Danny’s house.
Danny and I weren’t on good terms—it had been a bitter and a nasty divorce—but he’d have no reason to try and hurt me this way. Even if he had, I knew without doubt that he wouldn’t use his son to do it.
I had heard stories about twins separated at birth who still had some kind of intuitive ties to the other sibling. Granted, David and my first-born son weren’t twins, although they did both carry the same name and some of the same DNA. Could it be possible? Is there a spiritual tie between us that sometimes we’re not even aware exists? Is there some kind of invisible bond in families?
I didn’t understand what was happening in the van that day—and I still don’t today. I can only relate events the way they happened.
“Mom? Is it true?”
I looked into David’s eyes and saw hurt and confusion and maybe even a little bit of fear.
“We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
The light finally turned green.
Once home, I sat my sons down and I told them about their brother and the adoption. I told them I hadn’t wanted to give their brother away, that I wanted very much to keep him and that I missed him every day of my life. But I also told them that it had been the best thing for the baby, that I wasn’t in a position at that time in my life to be a good mom or give the baby a good life. I told David I had received a letter from the adoption agency telling me that the baby’s father was an engineer and his mother was a school teacher. That they had tried for more than five years to have a child of their own and couldn’t, so they were very happy to have David Brett come live with them.
“Is that his name, Mom? David Brett? Did you name me after him?” David’s stare was intense.
“I named him David Brett because it means ‘dearly beloved.’ I don’t know if his adoptive parents kept the name. But I hoped if they did, or at least let him know that that was his name on his original birth certificate, that he would discover what it meant and he would know that he’d been loved.”
I stroked my son’s head.
“Yes, honey, I did name you David. Just like people name their children after favorite uncles who passed away or grandparents that are gone. You help me always have a memory, a little piece of that baby with me. But I named you David Mark, not Brett, so you would always be your own person with your own name and your own identity.”
That seemed to satisfy him. The subject of adoption or lost brothers never came up in our household again. But I found out years later that, like all secrets, just because it wasn’t spoken aloud didn’t mean it had gone away. The subject was very much alive in our minds, our lives, and our hearts. When Dave did meet his brother, Steve, for the very first time, I’d find out just how much he’d thought of him as the years passed.
That conversation soon led to another one just as painful and just as difficult. I called my mother.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi. How are you? How are the boys?”
“Fine. Everyone’s fine.”
We spoke for about five minutes, exchanging pleasantries and catching up on the daily activities worth mentioning, as well as the weather and anything else that came to mind. It was like every other conversation we ever had—superficial, shallow, meaningless.
“Mom, David asked me a question the o
ther day. He asked me about his half-brother.”
The silence on the line was so thick, it reminded me of high humidity on a summer day, invisible but there, so uncomfortable everyone wished it would just go away.
“How did he find out?” The anger in her voice, the unspoken censure that I must have been the one to tell him, came across the line as if she had spoken those thoughts aloud.
“I don’t know who told him.”
“What do you mean you don’t know who told him?”
“Look, it isn’t important right now how he found out. What’s important is that he knows.”
“You could have told him it wasn’t true.”
“It is true.”
Again the silence. Heavy. Oppressive. Almost painful.
“I sat both the boys down and explained everything,” I said, my voice filling the uncomfortable silence between us.
Then came the storm.
“What’s the matter with you? Won’t you ever learn? Why would you tell them something like that? We went to all the trouble and expense to make this all go away. We gave you a clean slate to start your life over. But you just can’t let it go, can you? You had to make sure you told your brothers and sisters. Now you’ve gone and told your sons! Everything we did, we did for you, and you just keep throwing it away.”
“They have a right to know.”
“They don’t have a right to know!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “It’s over! It’s been over for years. Damn it, Diane, why can’t you leave it alone?”
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Because I can’t, Mom. I can’t. I lost my baby … and it hurts … and it never stops hurting … and I can’t find a way to let it go.”
Silence.
This time not angry and oppressive. This time defeated.
“Then find him. You’ve undone everything your father and I ever did for you, anyway. We tried to give you a second chance. We’ve kept your secret. You’ve gone and told the world. So if you miss him so damn much, then why don’t you go and find him?” She sounded weary and exasperated and maybe even a little hurt.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For two reasons. You burned the adoption papers. I don’t even know the name of the agency we used. I don’t have a clue how to even start looking.”
Silence.
“Besides, he isn’t my son anymore.” I heard the truth in my words and the pain was almost unbearable. “He has parents who love him, who are devoting their lives to raising him. I don’t have any right to show up on their doorstep unannounced and threaten the world they’ve built.”
Seconds of silence stretched like eons between us.
“Every once in a while you have a moment of maturity and sanity,” my mother said when she finally spoke. “I wish to God you would use it more often.”
“You don’t have to worry. I have no intention of ever hurting those parents. No matter what you think of me, I could never do that.” My voice took on a longing that even I didn’t recognize at the time. “But I’m telling you right now, Mom, if he ever looks for me … if he ever wants to know who I am … my door will be wide open.”
She hung up the phone without saying another word.
Steve
Throughout the years, I continued to keep most of my thoughts about being adopted at bay.
I fell in love and married a woman who was then, and is still today, my soul mate. No one has ever connected with me on every level of life as deeply or profoundly as Barbara. I don’t know how I ever was lucky enough for her to give me the time of day, but she did. We’ve been married for twenty years and I can’t imagine my life without her.
She was divorced with three children when we married. I became an instant step-father and took on the role seriously and happily. It was during these early years when the conversation turned to my birth mother.
My wife would tell me about her family history, particularly focusing on health issues. She had grandparents who had lived into their nineties and one had lived to one hundred.
I couldn’t be as forthcoming.
I didn’t have a clue who I was. I had no history. I had no idea what diseases, like diabetes or heart disease or cancer, ran in my biological family. I had no idea what signs to watch for or what annual screenings to have done. It hadn’t ever bothered me before, but now that I was married and we were contemplating having a family of our own, the fact that I was adopted took on a totally new importance.
It didn’t sit well with me or my wife that I might not be able to protect my family because I didn’t have the common information that most other families had at their fingertips. My wife suggested I might want to look into searching for my biological mother if for no other reason than for health information. I listened to her suggestion and I even thought about it for a little bit.
But life was good.
I was happily married to my best friend, raising three wonderful kids, and both of us were working our butts off trying to provide our family with the American dream. A biological mother who had given me away more than two decades ago was not a priority to me. Not yet.
When I held my first-born son, Steven, in my arms, I felt a wave of emotion. This was my flesh and blood, my biological son and neither one of us would ever have to pretend otherwise. I thought of my biological mother. I wondered how she had felt when she’d held me for the first time or even if she had held me at all. I wondered what circumstances could have made her carry me for nine months through all the discomforts of pregnancy, endure the pain of labor and delivery, only to turn around and give me away.
For the first time in my life, I thought about my mother as a real, live human being and not a fantasy in my mind. I’d just watched what my wife had endured giving birth to our son. How could any mother go through what my wife had and then go home with empty arms? I was surprised at the emotion rising up in me. I felt sorry for my mother. I did. She was the one who had experienced a loss, not me.
I was fine.
I’d had a good life.
I didn’t feel I needed my birth mother in my life. I already had a mother. I didn’t have any conscious desire at that point to find her. Not yet, anyway. Those thoughts and plans would still be years away.
But for the briefest instant when I looked down into my son’s face, the first niggling thoughts crossed my mind about what it might entail to actually start a search. I wondered if I could find her, and I wondered how it might change my life if I did.
Chapter
8
Diane
In the years following my divorce from Danny, my life slowly took shape.
I remarried, again not a love match, but this time a warm, affectionate companionship with a much older gentleman who cared about me and my children. He wasn’t financially successful in his life. He worked at various sales jobs selling solar panels or timeshare and made barely enough to get by.
Once Bill retired, he was able to draw a very small social security check that barely covered his medications, placing the responsibility of earning a living on my shoulders. But that was okay. I didn’t marry him for his money. I married him because he was my best friend. He understood me better than anyone else ever did. And he loved me, unconditionally.
That was a novelty for me. I truly hadn’t had very many people in my life ever make me feel loved or special. During our marriage, I managed to put myself through college. It took me five years instead of four since I had to work during the day for the first three years to help support us, but eventually I earned my degree in occupational therapy, which allowed me to build a lucrative career.
I also took an interest in writing. I joined Romance Writers of America and became active in the local Volusia County Romance Writers chapter in Florida. I made friends there who have been with me through good times and bad. I am proud to say they are still my friends today.
Bill loved the idea that he was married to a potential author. He’d read all my
work. He’d travel with me to the annual romance conventions. He’d brag to everyone and anyone about his wife, the writer. Bill believed in me long before I believed in myself. It has always been my one great regret of our relationship that he didn’t live long enough to see that dream come true. He was my staunchest supporter.
But with God, all things are possible, so who knows? I’d like to believe that somehow Bill was there when I got the call from the New York office that Harlequin wanted to publish my first novel. Maybe he even put in a good word for me upstairs and helped it happen.
During our marriage, minus a few years when we lived in Tennessee to take care of Bill’s mom before she died, we made Florida our home. My sons were grown and gone in 1998 when Bill and I moved into a senior mobile home community. We lived there until Bill died in 2007 from pancreatic cancer. I lost my best friend, my sole companion, and my hope.
Again, I plummeted into depression, this time my deepest one to date. This time I didn’t just wish I was dead, but I actually made a plan and put things in motion to assure I would be.
But God intervened.
In July 2007, I had started going to church at the request of my husband and my youngest son. Dave, by this time, was a recovered alcoholic/drug addict who was a born-again Christian and devoted to the Lord. He kept in touch with me frequently. He was strongly pushing me to discover the world’s best kept secret for happiness and success—a personal and real relationship with God. Dave had picked up the pieces of his life. He was living in a new state and dating a wonderful Christian woman who knew everything about his past but loved him anyway.
Dan and his family lived a little more than an hour away. They had spent Christmas with me just the day before. But I knew it would be months, probably Easter, before he would visit me again.
The days and the nights of my life were empty and unbearably lonely. I suppose when a person hates themselves then the worst thing you can possibly do to them is put them in solitary confinement where the only human being you see or speak to day after day is yourself.