by Diane Burke
It worked out better than any television show ever could.
Chapter
13
Diane
My brother is usually right. But, thankfully, not this time. The weekend I surprised Steve couldn’t have turned out better and was one of the happiest times of my life.
Barbara had invited both David and I to stay with her, but I respectfully declined and we stayed at a nearby hotel. She arranged to meet me at the hotel and drive me to their house about an hour before Steve came home from work. She knew if Steve saw a car with Florida plates anywhere on the block, he’d be suspicious and the surprise would be ruined.
I’m sure she was as nervous about meeting me for the first time as I was about meeting her, but it was totally unnecessary. I recognized her the second she got out of her car. When Barb and Kristin walked into the lobby, I went over to introduce myself. I don’t remember who hugged who first. Who cares? All I know is that, within seconds, we were wrapped in each other’s arms. From that moment to this one, we have been blessed to be not just in-laws but true, heart-felt family as well as friends.
Dave, who had run up to the room for a moment, joined us. A few more introductions and we were on our way.
Their home was beautiful. It sat on a lovely, heavily wooded property. It had a long, sloping driveway. As we approached the drive, my breath caught in my throat and a tear or two burned my eyes. The similarity hit me like I had just walked into an invisible wall and I needed a second or two to recover: the color was different and it wasn’t a split level, but this house—it’s heavily treed grounds, it’s sloping driveway, it’s size—reminded me so much of another house, the house in Kinnelon, New Jersey, where I’d lived when I graduated from high school. The house I lived in when I met Steve’s father. The house I left as a pregnant teenager and returned to as a grieving mother.
My thoughts flashed to my mother. I strongly felt her presence and wondered what she was making of all this.
We entered the house through the garage. The door opened into the kitchen and within seconds a teenage boy, just about eye level with me, appeared. He was bouncing around a bit and grinning from ear to ear.
“Hi. My name’s Kevin.”
I hugged him and was surprised to feel his entire body quivering with excitement. I had to chuckle. Nobody had ever been that happy to meet me before and I loved every second of it.
A minute or two after that, a tall young man, a bit more reserved than his brother, approached and introduced himself. “I’m Steven.”
I hugged him, too.
This entire situation seemed like a dream and I didn’t want to wake up. I was standing in the kitchen of my son’s house with his wife, stepdaughter, and sons. I was meeting my family—my family—for the first time since I’d watched my baby carried out of my hospital room.
God’s hand was all over this and I felt truly blessed.
Thank God I chose life over abortion.
Thank God I gave Steve the chance to live and love and have a family of his own.
My path, my individual road, had not been easy and had been filled with its share of pain. But God was giving me a chance to see that by not taking the easy way out, by giving my child a chance at life, it all worked out in the end.
Standing with David, Barb, Kristin, Kevin, and Steven, I anticipated the arrival of my son, Steve. I was almost over the moon with happiness. I knew with certainty that if I could go back in time, I would make the same decision for life all over again. The only word I can use to describe what I felt in that moment is joy.
The family knew before I did that Steve was home. The excitement level increased tenfold. Everybody scrambled to grab their cameras and get their videos set to go. Lots of “Shhh, shhh, he’ll hear us” was whispered around the kitchen.
Barbara suggested I stand just a little bit inside the door so that I would be the first person he’d see when he opened it. Dave stood right behind me. The rest of the family huddled in the kitchen area, cameras poised and ready.
Steve has a routine. When he enters the garage, he empties his ice packs out of his lunch box and sticks them in the freezer to reset for the next day. He leaves his lunch box on top of his tool bench. He takes his cell phone off his belt. Then, he gets out his wallet and his keys and heads into the house.
The entire routine takes a minute, maybe a minute and a half, but on that day, as we waited inside the kitchen, it felt like time had literally stopped and inside the kitchen we were going crazy.
Finally, Steve opened the door, stepped inside, and froze. He actually shook his head from side to side—like when people in movies see a ghost and they think maybe they’re imagining things. He just stood there. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just stared at me.
More time passed.
I couldn’t stand it anymore and I rushed toward him.
I said, “Hello, Steve.” Then I kissed him on the cheek and threw my arms around him. He fumbled to reach out and drop his keys on the counter and then he hugged me back. I could feel his arms holding me tight. I could feel his face buried in my neck. I was overcome with emotion and joy.
I didn’t cry. I was so happy, it would have been virtually impossible to manufacture a tear at that moment. All I knew is that my son was in my arms and I was wrapped in his. I didn’t want to let him go—not then, not ever again. But I did. I stepped aside and gestured toward David.
“Steve, this is your brother, David.”
My two sons reached out for one another. What happened next surprised everyone. David wrapped his arms around his brother and sobbed. He was crying so hard, he could hardly speak. He managed to mumble something like, “I’ve always wondered what happened to you and if you were even still alive. I am so happy to meet you.”
I started getting a little teary-eyed then. Every decision we make in life, big or little, ripples out and touches everyone else around us. I was just beginning to find out now how deeply this particular adoption ripple had impacted both of these men.
The rest of the weekend consisted of talking and laughing and eating unbelievably delicious meals that Barb provided—she’s a fantastic cook—and talking some more. The only time we separated from each other was for a few hours each night to grab some sleep and then first thing in the morning we were back together and talking again.
What did we talk about?
Everything.
The first thing I remember talking about was the agency. It was at this point in the conversation when I discovered that the letter I had received from the agency forty years ago had been riddled with mistakes. They’d called my baby Brett in the letter. His adoptive parents had named him Steve. Clerical error, number one. They said his father was a mechanical engineer and his mother an English teacher. His adoptive father drove a milk truck and his mother was a part-time freelance florist. Clerical error, number two. Fast forward to present day. They had searched for me for almost three years and couldn’t find me. The investigator did. And last, but certainly not least, was the subject of those two letters I assured Steve I had never received.
For all intents and purposes, there were so many things wrong that it was amazing this meeting was even taking place.
But I firmly believe that everything that has happened to Steve and I both before and since are signs of God’s work in our lives. This was His plan and it was happening in His time. We didn’t have to worry about clerical errors anymore.
I had already given my son, Steve, a brief synopsis of my life over the phone this past week. Now he was getting a full, no-holds-barred version in even more detail than appears on the pages of this book. I don’t know why I did it. Most people would have been more reserved and would have introduced the information in little bites slowly over time, if at all. That’s how I would have done it, too, with anybody else. Who wants to air their dirty laundry the first weekend they meet somebody? There are several things I told Steve that no one in my family knows yet today, things that even David was hear
ing for the first time.
When I met Steve I opened my arms … but I also opened my heart … completely. I opted to trust him with the most intimate details of my life, with the deepest levels of my pain. I wanted him to know his mother and, I guess, I was trying to fill in forty years in a marathon weekend.
The conversations weren’t all dark, deep, and maudlin. There were many funny stories that had all of us laughing and shaking our heads. There were informative stories. Where did you live at various times in your life? Where did you go on vacations as a child? As an adult? Surprisingly, as we discussed the geography of our lives, we discovered that we were never far away from one another, almost like we were circling in each other’s orbits but not connecting.
One of the questions Steve asked me, I answered without reservation. However, when I asked him a question in return, the answer surprised me and took my breath away:
“Mom, do you mind if I ask if you and my grandmother ever talked about me? I mean after the adoption.”
“Your adoption was not openly discussed by anyone in my family,” I said. “Not by my siblings and definitely not by my father. But there were three very brief conversations with my mother when the subject of you came up.”
I went on to tell him the story of how David had asked about his existence decades ago in the back of our van. As bizarre and unusual as the story was, David, who was sitting with us at the table, confirmed the facts.
Everyone made their various comments on the strangeness of David’s questions as a child and then I told Steve about the subsequent telephone call with my mom.
He nodded and looked like he was trying to process the information. “You said there were two other conversations.” Steve looked at me and waited for my reply.
“When my grandmother died, my parents flew in for the funeral. One afternoon my mother and I were alone in my apartment. I remember that I was folding towels and putting them in the linen closet. Out of nowhere, and I mean nowhere because we hadn’t been having an intimate conversation about anything, my mother turned, pointed her finger at me, and said, ‘Maybe what I did wasn’t the best thing for you but I know it was the best thing for the baby and if I had it to do over again, I would do the exact same thing.’
“She was visibly upset. On some deep level, I knew that this was my mother’s way of apologizing to me. I looked her right in the eye and said, ‘You’re right, Mom. It wasn’t the best thing for me.’ Then, I went back to folding clothes and we never discussed you again during that time.”
“And the final conversation?” Steve asked.
“The last time we spoke about you I wouldn’t really call it a conversation. My mother had Alzheimer’s disease. She suffered from it for thirteen years before she died. In the last three years of her life when it didn’t matter to her anymore where she lived, Dad moved her out of her Oakland dream house and brought her to Florida so my sister and I could help with her care.
“At this stage of her disease, she didn’t seem to recognize anyone by name except my dad. It was sad, really, and bothered my sister the most. After all, my sister had been her favorite. Now, to my mother, she was just a sweet girl. When my sister would try and tell her that she was her daughter, my mother would laugh and say she couldn’t be her daughter because she wasn’t old enough to have a daughter her age. It really hurt my sister to have lost that relationship with my mother. I had already lost my mother years ago—if I’d ever had her in the first place. But it was still sad to watch what had once been a vibrant, intelligent, well-read woman deteriorate in this manner. Thankfully, my mother recognized my father up to the day she died.”
“Anyway, my mother and father moved into a doublewide manufactured home right around the corner from me. I hadn’t seen my mother in three, maybe four years, so I walked over to welcome them. My sister and father were already inside the kitchen with my mother when I arrived. When I walked in the back door, my mother took one look at me and said, ‘Where’s the baby?’
“‘What?’ I asked.
“‘Where’s the baby?’ she repeated.
“Everybody in the kitchen froze. There was the heaviest silence between my dad, my sister, and me. Finally, I looked at my mother. ‘I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know where the baby is.’
“I took it, at the time, that even in her Alzheimer’s state on some deep level, she still thought about you. She still wondered what had happened to you and, even though she denied it, I really believe sometimes she regretted the decision she forced on me. You were her first-born grandchild. She had to wonder about you over the years and that last day in the kitchen, her befuddled mind let us all know that she had.”
“I wish my grandparents were still alive,” Steve said. “I wish I could have met them. I wonder what they would have said, what they would have felt if they could meet me now.”
“Me, too. I particularly wish my father could have lived long enough to meet you.”
There was a few seconds lull at the table as we were all lost in our own thoughts when I asked my question.
“Steve,” I said. “I’ve been wondering. The social worker looked for me for almost three years and was not able to find me. Do you know how the private investigator did? Did he find me through my books? I have bios and books on the Internet. Or did he find me through income tax returns or what?”
“He found you through Grandma’s obituary,” Steve said. “It listed your name and the names of all your siblings. He went from there.”
The breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. My mother—the woman who had done everything she could to keep my son and me apart—had given him back.
During that first weekend, I had the opportunity to meet Steve’s adoptive parents. On Friday night, Steve had only been home about an hour when his adoptive mother, Nancy, called. I heard him say:
“Hi, Mom. Yeah, everything went fine today. Matter of fact, I’ve had an unbelievable day. You’ll never guess who is sitting at my kitchen table. My mother and my brother.”
I could hear her screaming through the phone. She sounded so happy and excited.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am going to be able to find out about her. I’ve already found out a lot. Like the fact that she’s a liar.” Then he went into an imitation of my voice, “Sorry, Steve, but I’m going to be away at a writer’s conference in south Florida this weekend.” While he was saying this on the phone, he was also standing beside me and gesturing that I had a long Pinocchio nose.
We all burst into laughter. That was the first dose I got of Steve’s sense of humor. He sprang it on me several times over the weekend and both David and I not only laughed until we cried then, but laughed over and over again after we were home when we would recant to other family members some of the things he’d said.
His mother, of course, wanted to meet me, too, so she said she would drive over to the house the next day. Saturday afternoon, Nancy walked in the door. She was carrying a bouquet of pink carnations and dragging a large case behind her. She dropped the case, handed me the flowers, and hugged me tightly.
“Thank you,” she whispered in my ear. “Thank you for giving me something that I could never have had any other way.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Thank my mother. It wasn’t something I wanted to do.”
I wasn’t trying to be mean or unappreciative of her words. Truthfully, I was very moved by her kindness and touched by the flowers. But the truth was the truth. Although I was grateful for the excellent job she’d done raising “our” son, I wanted it to be very clear to everyone in that room that I never wanted to give my baby away and had paid a fierce price for that decision.
Nancy had rolled a container on wheels in with her. Within minutes, she was putting one picture after another in front of me as I sat at the kitchen table with the rest of the family. Steve’s baby pictures. His first, and subsequent, birthdays. Christmases over the years. Steve on a sled. Steve playing in the snow. Steve riding a toy
motorcycle. Every occasion mothers take pictures of their children.
“Here, these are for you,” Nancy said, handing me a small packet of pictures. “Every birthday I had a duplicate set made up just in case you ever contacted us. These are the only ones I have with me, but as soon as I get time, I’ll sit down and pull out the rest.”
I held the pictures of my son, leafing through the pile, watching him mature from infancy through his grammar school days and eventually into his teen years.
I loved seeing the pictures and was grateful to Nancy for sharing them with me. But for the first time, I also felt a wave of sadness sweep over me. As I gazed at the laughing, happy face of my son, as I flipped through all the pictures of his life, I realized that I had missed it all.
Late Saturday afternoon, Steve, Barb, and I drove to the hospital to visit Steve’s adoptive father, who was going to need a skin graft on his leg due to diabetic complications. The visit was short, but accomplished what it had intended. Steve’s dad and I got to meet and exchange pleasantries.
As we were leaving the hospital, I started thinking about the past week.
Between our telephone conversations and this weekend visit, I had told Steve every single detail of my life both good and bad. I filled up with tears and turned to face him in the corridor leading to the parking lot.
“Steve, can I ask you a question?”
He stopped, glanced at Barb and then back at me. “Sure. What?”
“Now that you’ve met me. Now that I’ve told you everything there is to tell about me. Are you sorry you searched?”
I held my breath while I waited for his response. He took a couple of steps toward me, looked at me, and said, “No, Ma.” He stared right into my eyes. “No. Never.”
I hadn’t been wrong to trust him. We had a bond between us, a bond that over time was going to do nothing but get stronger.
It was hard to say good-bye that weekend. I’d just been reunited with my son and I couldn’t get enough of him. I loved listening to the deep, rich tones of his voice. I enjoyed listening to him tell me stories that he wanted me to know about his life. I loved watching him clown around and tease me. I particularly loved watching him interact with his family, knowing now that I was a part of that family.