by Diane Burke
“Our records show they were sent.”
“Did you have the name of the adoption agency as the return address?”
“No. We don’t do that for privacy reasons. The return address would simply have been our street address, nothing more.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t remember ever getting any letter from you, let alone two.”
“Maybe you mistook them for junk mail and threw them away. Do you open your junk mail?”
“No. I just toss the envelopes in the trash.”
Is that what I did? Did I throw away the chance to learn about my son not just once, but twice?
What if this letter hadn’t come certified? It had said it would be the last attempt to reach me. My stomach clenched into a painful knot.
“That’s what you must have done, then.” Pat’s voice sounded happier now that she suspected I had thrown it away as junk rather than ignored it or just hadn’t replied.
“Can you tell me about him?” I wanted to know everything and anything that she was willing to share. She was talking about my son. This was so surreal. It was three months shy of forty-one years. How could this be happening?
“Yes, I can. He has already signed all of the release papers. His name is Steve. He works in a warehouse and drives a forklift. But his job is more complicated than it sounds. This particular job was not easy to get. Your son works very hard and works under stressful conditions but he is compensated well and has been at this job for several years. His title is Warehouse Specialist.”
My smile widened as I remembered working in a factory with his father. Watching his father jump between machines, trying to fix them when they broke down.
“He’s married. Has been married almost nineteen years. He has three step-children, two of the older children are adults now and live in New Jersey, one step-daughter lives with him and is attending college, and he has two sons. Steven is the oldest and Kevin is a year younger.”
I have more grandchildren. My heart leapt with anticipation and joy.
I’m sure I said something inane, something stupid like, “That’s nice.” All I really remember doing was crying.
“He doesn’t want to cause any problems for you. He doesn’t want to interfere in your life in any way.”
My throat constricted and I couldn’t speak. I merely waited for her to continue.
“But I promised your son that I’d ask …” She paused, as if she were waiting for me to give her permission to continue.
“Ask?”
“Mrs. Burke, your son asked me, if I actually had the chance to talk to you, to ask if you would be willing to talk to him on the phone just once. He told me that he will understand and he won’t bother you anymore if you say no.”
Before I could reply or do anything more than cry, Pat started talking really fast. “He also asked if you were open to a phone call from him that maybe there might be a chance you might be willing to meet him face-to-face just once … and if you would be willing to do that, would it be possible for him to bring his family with him?”
Now I was sobbing, deep, gut-wrenching, moaning sobs.
“Mrs. Burke … Are you all right?”
“Yes!” My smile was so wide, it barely fit my face. “Yes! Yes! Yes to everything! Please, tell me how I can talk to my son.”
Pat’s voice sounded as happy as I felt. “Well, he’s at work right now and with the kind of job he does, he’s not usually able to take calls so it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to call him at work.”
I nodded like she could see me through the phone.
“But I’ll contact him and tell him that you’d like to talk to him and see what I can set up.”
“I never wanted to give him up,” I said. “Make sure he knows that. Make sure he knows I can’t wait to talk to him and I just can’t believe this is happening.”
Pat laughed some more. “I’ll contact him now and try to get back to you in just a few minutes.”
Chapter
11
Steve
After the first letter from the agency went out, I thought for sure I’d probably hear something within the first two weeks. I was thinking that if my mother truly wanted to have a conversation with me or contact with me, then as soon as she got that letter, she probably would have raced to the phone to call the number.
When the first month went by, that’s when negative emotions began to creep in. For the first time in my life, I began to think about being unwanted, about being rejected. Those thoughts had never really crossed my mind before. I was beginning to realize that maybe I was going to be disappointed at the end of this search. I mean, there was no way she didn’t get a letter. Everybody gets a letter in the mail. What are the odds that this letter, maybe one of the most important letters of my life, got lost?
Then the second letter went out.
Pat called me and told me exactly when she was mailing that second letter, and I kept an eye on the calendar and my ear waiting for a call on the phone. Then another month or two went by with no response.
I was two to three months into this thing after they’d found her and had received no response whatsoever. I was really starting to believe those negative thoughts. I began to believe she wanted nothing to do with me. While all this was going on, my wife and step-daughter were going around saying, “Well, that’s her loss ’cause you’re a terrific guy. She doesn’t know.”
Of course, I couldn’t care less about that. I don’t want to raise myself up on a platform, saying that I’m a great guy or not a great guy—whatever, that’s for other people to judge.
But those feelings of rejection, those feelings that your mother, probably one of the most important and definitely the very first relationship in your life, didn’t want you—even though I’d been warned, it was still a bitter pill to swallow.
Then the certified letter went out.
I was satisfied. I figured at least one way or the other I was going to have closure because she would have had to sign for the letter. If there was still no personal response from my mother, then there’d be no question anymore about how she felt.
Within days of sending that certified letter, I got a phone call from the social worker while I was out in the parking lot on my lunch break. Pat informed me that not only did my mother sign for the letter, but that she called right away, couldn’t wait to talk to me, and that she wanted me to know that she had never wanted to give me up.
My whole world changed that afternoon.
I was ecstatic, but still very reserved. I was probably numb more than anything. From the time I was six years old, the questions had slowly crept in and grew harder to ignore as I got older and older. You’re talking about thirty-four years of knowing that your parents are your parents, but, then again, they’re not. Your family is your family but isn’t really.
When you become an adult and can analyze the situation, those questions become a challenge to your intellect. Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my nationality? Who are my family? What was the situation that caused my adoption in the first place? All those things, every question that an adopted child could possibly come up with, all those questions that had been building up for the past thirty-four years, were now just a phone call away from being answered.
It was almost like being in a dream.
At that point, the social worker had set up a phone call for seven o’clock that night between my mother and me. Within just a few hours, I would no longer live in a fantasy world.
That’s how I used to describe my life to people: it was a fantasy world. I would look at my brother-in-law and my wife and my friends and I would say, “You all know who your mothers are. You’ve had your mothers from the time you were infants. Can you imagine being a forty-year-old man and never knowing who your mother is? Not knowing who your brothers or your sisters are? Not knowing who your grandparents were? Not knowing where you were supposed to live or who you were supposed to be?”
I always felt alo
ne.
I really truly believe this contributed to my personality, of my being a solitary type of person in a lot of ways. It was always just me. I was the only true link to that parallel life before these answers came. I am not a true Orlandi, but I just didn’t know who I was.
I was myself. And that’s all I knew.
People have a hard time imagining what it was like to be me. To be three months short of forty-one and yet have never met your mom. It’s crazy.
People who aren’t adoptees and don’t go through it can’t relate. If you’ve had your mother from Day One, if she’s taken care of you when you were sick, when you had a scraped knee, or any of the million other things that mothers do, then you gradually grow into loving your mother and knowing everything there is to know about her. You arrive at my age with a life-long history between the two of you.
Not me.
I was going to talk to my mother for the first time that night at seven o’clock. I didn’t even know at forty-years-old what my mother’s voice sounded like. Can you imagine that? All those questions were going to be answered at seven o’clock.
So, again, I settled in to wait.
Diane
After the social worker hung up, I stared at the phone while I waited for her to get back to me about setting up a phone call that night. My son wanted to talk to me. My son had been looking for me for more than three years. My son wanted to meet me.
Thank you, Lord. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. This is more than I ever asked for. This is more than I ever believed could be.
Even though I’d been staring at it, when the phone rang it startled me and I grabbed it right away.
“Steve wants to know if you can call him at his home tonight at seven o’clock?” Pat asked.
I agreed. She gave me his telephone number.
Then she asked, “Mrs. Burke, I’m not at liberty to give him any information that I have about you because you haven’t signed any of the release papers. But is there anything you want me to tell him? I’m sure he’s anxious to know something. What would you like me to say? How would you describe yourself?”
What did I want to say? How could I summarize almost forty-one years in ten seconds? What did I want my son to know about me?
“Tell him that I had a hard life with many challenges. Tell him that I put myself through college at the age of forty. That I am a published author. That I worked hard to turn my life around and that I am very proud of the person that I have become.” I paused for a second and considered if there was anything else I wanted to say. “Pat, tell him that I am a survivor.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Before she could hang up, I stopped her. “Oh, and Pat, at least tell him my first name is Diane. I wouldn’t want him to think I’m a telemarketer when I call and have him hang up on me.”
“I’ll tell him.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “I hope the call goes well. And remember, we are here to help. If there is anything we can do to make this easier for either of you, please let us know and we’ll be happy to try and help.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up the phone and almost danced around my bedroom. Then, I picked up the phone and started dialing every living soul I knew. Of course, I began with my other two sons. To say they were astounded that their brother had contacted me is an understatement. I can truthfully say both of them were very happy for me because they knew how much it meant to me. They’d been eyewitnesses to my sense of loss and pain all their lives.
Then I settled in to wait.
I was going to talk to my long lost son.
Tonight.
In less than seven hours, I would hear the grown up voice of the baby I had last seen in the arms of a nurse as he was carried out of my hospital room.
My son had found me. He had cared enough to search and he had found me.
I stared hard at the hands of the clock and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to will the time to fly.
Steve
That five- or six-hour stretch at work, which I still say was the longest day of my life, was unbelievable. The reality of the situation was almost overwhelming. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even allow myself to get euphoric and emotional and happy. I was just … there. I had no emotions left because this was so important, so mind-blowing, that I didn’t know how to handle it.
How do you handle it?
How do you handle being forty years old and knowing you’re going to talk to your mother for the first time in your life? How many people in the world go through that? Certainly a very small percentage. Although I know there are a lot of adoptees out there, the majority of the population is not adopted.
My wife, Barb, was ecstatic. She texted everybody ever listed in her phone and then asked me if she could text anybody else. I laughed and told her to text the world. I was at work, where I have hardly any time for any personal stuff, and my phone was pinging away from all the texts coming in from my in-laws and my friends. I did approach two of my best buddies at work and told them that my mother made contact. All in all, it was a crazy, communicative day.
The social worker had also told me I had two brothers, which is something that I had always wondered about, and that information was going around inside my head, too. A whole new world was opening up for me. I remember thinking, Like it or not, here it comes. I had gone from being myself alone in this world to being a member of a family—my DNA, my blood, my clan—in just one afternoon.
I did a terrible thing to Barb and Kristin that night. This was April 10. They had been up in New Jersey the beginning of the month and had just recently come home. When I came in the door, they were both excited and happy as they anticipated tonight’s call. The second I walked in the door, I grinned at them and said, “April Fools’! Ha, ha, ha. Just ’cause you weren’t here doesn’t mean you get out of being fooled.” Then I headed upstairs to take a shower.
I have a wicked sense of humor and I tease the people I love unmercifully. This was one of those times and it was driving both of the girls nuts. Because I pull pranks all the time, they weren’t sure which one was the prank. Was I really going to talk to my mother that night? Or was it a not-so-funny April Fools’ joke? I could hear them downstairs freaking out, knowing I was pulling a fast one but honestly not sure which one. The more time that passed, the more upset they became.
Mean? Sure, but also a heck of a lot of fun. I could hear them from upstairs and I was laughing my butt off. In hindsight, I think that joke just might have been a way for me to relieve some of my own stress, maybe to show the world, even myself, that this wasn’t really any big deal when, in truth, it was the biggest deal in the world to me.
I was going to speak to my mother.
Downstairs, Barb and Kristin were doing everything they could think of to figure things out. They tried checking my cell phone to see if any of the recent numbers were from the social worker. They kept talking between themselves, weighing the pros and cons to whether I would have encouraged them to text the entire family for just a silly prank. When they realized I was home fifteen minutes early, they finally put the pieces together. I am a creature of habit. I like routine and order in my life and I rarely step from it. Coming home early gave them their answer. By the time I’d come back downstairs, they were armed and ready.
“You’re lying,” Barb accused.
“You are getting a call, aren’t you?” Kristin asked, in an equally accusing tone.
I nudged past both of them and said, “Can’t talk with you right now. I have to get out to my swing so I’ll be ready when my mother calls.”
To this day, we still get a good laugh out of that one.
What was I going to say on the phone? I played with it all day long. How was I going to greet my mother? I knew her name was Diane. So the easiest thing would have been to say “Hello, Diane,” but I remembered what the social worker had told me, that my mother was excited about being able to talk to me, that she’d never wanted to give me up. Those
were very important things that my mother had wanted me to know right away.
Having that information, I assumed my mother might be open to a different greeting. I knew what I wanted to say. I just kept second-guessing myself as to whether it was a good idea.
Diane
I spent the afternoon calling every living relative and friend I had and my voice was already getting hoarse. As seven o’clock approached, I sat at my computer desk and alternated between staring at the phone and staring at the clock. At exactly seven, I dialed. He answered the phone before the end of the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Is this Steve?”
“Yes.”
“Hello, Steve. This is Diane.”
“Hello, Mom.”
A floodgate of tears burst from my eyes and my body literally shook with sobs. I was crying so hard, I almost missed the next thing he said.
“It’s so good to hear your voice after all these years.”
This deep, rich, warm, masculine voice on the other end of the line was my son. I couldn’t believe it was truly happening.
My memory is sketchy about what we talked about. Everything important and nothing important. I remember giving him a synopsis of the events that had led to the adoption and that was probably the heaviest part of the conversation. The rest of the conversation covered topics like what state I currently lived in and where was I born and was I a cat person or a dog person?
On his end, he told me all about his job and I soon discovered that Pat hadn’t been kidding. It was much more complicated than simply operating a fork lift. He told me about his wife, Barbara, and there was no question by the things he said and the loving tone in his voice when he talked about her that even nineteen years later, he was still madly in love with his wife.
He told me about his children and his step-children. That Kevin loved hockey and was a Flyers fan. That Steven was going to graduate from high school in six weeks. That, although the other step-children were grown and living in New Jersey, Kristin was still living with them and attending college.
We talked about everything and anything and it was wonderful.