by Mike Milotte
‘Well, all my life I’ve lived knowing there’s a woman out there somewhere in Ireland who gave me up,’ Kevin said.7 ‘A father never entered into the picture. I almost thought I was born by immaculate conception. Then I learn of Michael’s existence and I think, gosh, what am I going to do now? I’ve waited all these years to know who Mary was, how am I going to cope now with knowing Michael? Having given birth to me, and then relinquishing me, there they were in Ireland, married. It’s amazing that I wasn’t in that family.’
And while Kevin wondered who his mother was back in Ireland, Mary never stopped thinking about the child she had given away. ‘You know, this was our life all along – where is he? How is he? We would see American soldiers fighting wars around the world and we’d sit glued to the television wondering – is he in the Army? Is he one of those soldiers? Has he been killed? It never left us. And of course it was a secret between us. No one knew until very late on. And a lot of it we never talked about even between ourselves. It was too painful. You just lived with it inside.’ It took a serious toll on Mary’s health over the years, but after finding Kevin she said she had begun to recover.
It was January 1995 when Kevin flew into Dublin. ‘The flight over was surreal,’ he said, ‘knowing I was leaving a part of me behind in America, but also finally getting back to Ireland, to a place where I thought I was destined to be, a place where I felt like I belonged.’ Meeting all his brothers and sisters – ‘people that looked like me’ – was an emotional experience. ‘All through your life if you are adopted you look for people that look like you because you want to find some type of identification. So this reunion was just an amazing revelation. It was such a good feeling to finally feel like I belong somewhere, and they wanted me. And I wanted to be there with them. It felt like I’d never left them before. It was remarkable. And we were all so alike, our temperaments were so similar. We all laughed and smiled the same way.’
But such a resolution to their sundered lives was not always in prospect. Finding each other had not been easy and St Patrick’s Guild seems to have been a part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Mary first started to look for Kevin in 1980. ‘Well of course I was looking for Kenneth because I didn’t know what his name had become since he went for adoption,’ Mary said. ‘I could never really accept that he was in America. I secretly hoped he was in Ireland all along, Cork, Donegal, I didn’t mind where because Ireland is small enough to find someone. But America’s not only far away, it’s so big as well. How could you ever find someone there? I suppose that was the thinking behind sending him to America, that we’d never find him again. But I really secretly believed he was in Ireland.’
When she started inquiring, the first thing Mary was told was that she would have to tell her mother about the baby and the adoption. But her mother was quite elderly and Mary could not tell her after all these years. She was also told that she would have to have counselling. ‘It was just like shutting doors in my face. It was a big setback and I didn’t do anything more for over a decade.’
In the meantime, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, Kevin had commenced his search. ‘I wanted to trace, to find out if my natural mother was okay, and let her know I’m okay. It was an innate feeling, something inside. I couldn’t really describe all the reasons why, other than to move on in my life. I was 30 years old when I decided to search in earnest.’ In April 1991 Kevin went on vacation to Ireland. ‘One day,’ he recalled, ‘I got a chance to visit Sister Gabriel, the senior social worker at St Patrick’s Guild in Dublin. It was a short meeting, maybe 20 minutes. My goal was to find out did anyone know where Mary Cunningham was. Sister Gabriel brought a file to the meeting, but she didn’t let me see it. She’s a woman of very few words, communicating when I asked questions but she never came out openly and volunteered information. She did give me some snippets of non-identifying information: my natural mother was a nurse, my natural father was in banking, that was all. She said she didn’t know where Mary was, and, whether she knew it or not, she certainly didn’t say my mother and father had married. I think there was a lot of information there I wasn’t being given.’ Kevin asked a lot of questions but got very few answers. ‘In the end I gave her my address in America and said to get in touch if Mary ever came looking for me.’
Mary did come looking. It was early in 1994, as she recalled, just three years after Kevin visited Sister Gabriel. ‘I phoned several times but I was always told Sister Gabriel wasn’t available, she was at a meeting, or she was away. Eventually I got an interview with her. It was quite startling. She told me my son had been to see her in 1991. And I asked, “well, what’s his name?” “Oh,” she said, “I can’t give you that.” So I said, “didn’t he leave his address with you?” And she said “he did, but I can’t give you that.” And I said, “couldn’t you just give me an idea of whereabouts he is in the States?” And she said, “Oh no I can’t do that.”’
It was a huge blow to Mary. ‘I came home really downhearted. What could I do? Sister Gabriel said she would write to my son, so I rang her every few weeks after that to see was there any news. Eventually she said she had written to him and the letter had come back – he had moved house. I still kept ringing. It was heartbreaking. There was no news. “We’ll keep praying, just keep praying,” she’d say, “something will happen if we pray.” But nothing happened.’ Mary felt devastated, frustrated and angry all at once. ‘I wasn’t getting anywhere and here was my son looking for me and here was I looking for him. We both wanted to meet. There were no secrets any more. And still nothing was being done, and I couldn’t understand this.’ After each call to Sister Gabriel she was left feeling drained and dejected.
‘I just wonder why I wasn’t contacted after Kevin’s visit to St Patrick’s Guild back in 1991.’ Mary said. ‘Three years had passed before I found out he’d been there. I mean Ireland is a small place and it would have been easy enough to find me if anyone had bothered to look and say: “your son wants to meet you and here’s his address”. I can’t understand why that wasn’t done. They might say they were protecting me, but I believe Kevin had a right to know regardless of me. After all, I had given birth to him. He wanted to know his roots. He was in pain and he was left in limbo.’
Michael decided to join in and see if he could move things along. Three of his sisters were nuns, so he was both experienced in dealing with them and sympathetic to their vocation. ‘Mary was getting so frustrated we decided I’d go with her to see Sister Gabriel,’ he said. ‘We knew she had our son’s name and address, and the purpose of my going was to at least get that and then we could do our own searching. So up we went and she was very nice to me, very helpful, except she wouldn’t give me what I’d come for. I asked her several times – just give me his name and last known address. All she would say was, “Oh, you’ll be pleased to know it’s a good Irish name”. Now whether Bates is a good Irish name or not I don’t know, but that was hardly the point as she wouldn’t even tell me what the good Irish name was. I found it very difficult to accept that here she was sitting in front of us with his file in her hands and his name and address right there and she wouldn’t give it to us.’
To Michael it seemed that Sister Gabriel was working under some rule or other. ‘She wasn’t emotional about it or anything, just clinical. There were rules she had to abide by – that was how it appeared – and nothing but nothing was going to make her break those rules, whatever they were. In our case, of course, it was well known and documented that both sides wanted to find each other, and we were all mature adults, so why she didn’t show some flexibility I just don’t know. Anyway, we came away empty-handed.’
It was on Michael’s mind that if he had Kenneth’s new name, and a fairly recent address, he could have gone to the United States himself. ‘I was retired, I had plenty of time. But she wouldn’t tell us where to begin. She did say she would do everything she could herself. But nothing happened. Nothing at all.’
Finally giving up all ho
pe of progress through St Patrick’s Guild, Mary made contact with a woman in Dublin called Enda who helped people trace lost relatives. Enda carefully took down all her details. Back in the States, Kevin too had taken a new initiative, bypassing St Patrick’s Guild. ‘I got information from my computer, names and addresses of people who helped adopted people trace their roots. So I sent a letter off to a woman in Dublin, Enda, and she telegrammed me straight back. I was out of town on business for a few weeks, and when I got back and saw this thing in my mailbox, I thought it was a telephone bill, so I just left it lying there until the end of the month. When I finally opened it, it said “I’ve good news, call me.”’
It was an astonishing coincidence that Kevin and Mary had been in contact with was the same woman, Enda. ‘Well, I talked to Enda early in the morning,’ Kevin recalled, ‘and she said she had found my birth mother, Mary, and she said “you’d better be sitting down for this bit – your birth mother married your birth father and they had a family. You’ve got four brothers, two sisters, a dozen aunts and uncles, and 38 first cousins and they can’t wait to meet you.” I was shocked, as happy as a person can be, just overjoyed, very emotional. The tears were flowing.’
The same day Enda contacted Michael and Mary and told them she had found Kenneth, now Kevin. Late that night Mary rang her son in America. ‘Kevin answered. I felt so excited. “Hello, is that Kevin?” “Yes, who is this?” “This is your mother.” I can’t tell you what was said. It was so emotional, the relief on both sides, you could feel it 3,0 miles away.’
Kevin recalls their first call like this: ‘She rang. I picked up the phone and she introduced herself. “Hello this is Mary, this is your mom, how have you been?” Although I’d already shed so many tears earlier that morning after talking to Enda, I was choking up inside. What do you say to your mother after 33 years? I never really imagined that I would ever find her. And on top of that to find I had a father and a family as well. It was all too incredible.’
Mary believes her positive experience in reuniting with Kevin holds out hope to other mothers who gave a child up for adoption and who are now worried about the prospect of confronting that child as an adult. ‘I’m sure all mothers who gave a child up for adoption are aching – part of their heart is gone like mine was. And 3,000 miles of ocean between mothers and children who were sent to America is an added complication. But don’t give up. I faced up to Kevin expecting to be rejected, expecting to be given out to, expecting him to say “you dumped me”. And I was prepared for him to say “now I’ve found you, you can go to hell”. But he didn’t. He was thrilled. And all those children need that, and the mothers will find relief too. For each one just knowing the other is alive, hopefully well, and not bearing grudges, that’s a great relief.’ And now, fifteen years after their reunion, Mary says it has all gone ‘swimmingly’: they talk regularly by phone and she and Michael have been to visit Kevin in Virginia and he, too, comes to Ireland to see them.
When Kevin thinks back to the circumstances in which he was placed for adoption, any grudges he harbours are most certainly not against Mary. ‘Thirty years ago it was a different world. I don’t think Mary had any choice. I don’t think Mary felt she had the power to keep me, she felt forced to give me up. It was a control thing and I don’t think that was fair. I know it has been a very painful experience for Mary not to have seen me grow up and to have lived with the guilt of giving me up and being powerless to do anything about it. That, I think, is the worst part of it, and we can’t go back and change that. For me, there was a spot in my heart that was empty for years. You’ve lost your roots, you’ve lost your heritage, all the possibilities of another life that has been denied. You lose your identity, the foundation of who you are, the person you are supposed to be.’
These feelings, Kevin made clear, did not arise because of any unhappy experiences in his adoptive family. ‘I’ve had a great life in America, my parents loved me dearly, but there is a deep sense of loss, very deep inside me. As much as my life has been happy and wonderful, there’s a sorrow at not knowing where you came from. And then there’s the pain in trying to reconcile these two aspects of your life. It can exhaust you sometimes. I think that like many other adopted people I’ve been on a journey. We all have different roads. My journey was to find my natural parents, and my goal was to fill the void inside my heart. I know I’m one of the lucky ones.’ Mary agrees: ‘We are the lucky ones. How many mothers are out there wondering where their child is?’
And it was no thanks to St Patrick’s Guild that Mary, Michael and Kevin turned out to be among ‘the lucky ones’. Yet in a statement issued in response to questions, Sister Gabriel pointed out that St Patrick’s operates a professional tracing service which aims to help reunite adopted children with their natural mothers. She quoted figures. St Patrick’s Guild had placed over 4,000 children with adoptive parents, 572 of them children who were sent to America between 1947 and 1967. Since it began offering a tracing service in 1981, Sister Gabriel said 1,513 of the adoption files had been opened, 113 of them relating to American adoptions. But just 12 of these had resulted in reunions – half the rate of domestic reunions.8
‘It is the policy of St Patrick’s Guild to help adoptees and birth mothers in any way we can, within our very limited resources,’ Sister Gabriel said. But ‘until funding is put in place it is inevitable that there will be long delays in satisfying people’s requests.’
‘There seems to be a lot of holding back or putting off, and what’s that going to do for all these mothers and adopted children?’ asked Mary. ‘It’s the adopted children really who are attempting to get to their roots and they are being prevented from doing it. But we’ve moved into a different age. Surely now is the time to let everything come out into the open and not be coming back in 30 years time and saying yes, it should have come out.’
13. Maureen - Seek and Ye Shall Find (But Don’t Hold Your Breath)
‘When you know that the church has all the information, they have your file sitting right there in front of them, and they won’t tell you anything, that’s very frustrating, and very hard. It’s a control thing. They separated you from your mother in the first place. So they are going to try and keep you apart now. They might think it’s for the best, but they have no right to make those decisions on behalf of adults’.
Maureen, 1996
Maureen Rowe found out she was adopted when she was about seven years old.1 ‘I was playing in my parents’ room one day and I remember opening the bottom drawer in their dresser looking for something and there was this silver box. Of course being a child I opened it and it was full of paper. What caught my eye – I’ll never forget it – was a newspaper clipping, pictures of babies, with a headline like “these babies need homes.” The children looked really desperate. And there were other papers, letters, documents, more pictures, photographs of a baby girl. There was an Irish passport – although of course I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time – and an airline ticket. I saw my name on some of the papers and I knew this had all something to do with me, but I didn’t know what.’
Maureen took the box downstairs and asked her mum and dad, Dorothy and Jim. That was the first time they acknowledged she was adopted. They told her a shocking story about a car crash in Ireland in which her real mother and father had been killed. ‘They told me I had been thrown clear and landed on some grass and I had no one to love me so they had brought me to America and had become my mum and dad.’ My first reaction was confusion then grief, like my real mum and dad were both dead and I’d never known that before. It was terrible, just terrible.’ But the Rowes must have decided their invented story could cause problems in later years, for shortly afterwards they told Maureen a different story: that her natural mother wasn’t dead but just hadn’t been able to look after her. ‘I thought, great. I was so glad she was alive. I suppose it was then a seed was sown, you know, that I’ll find her one day. But of course as a kid that’s just fantasy.’
Maureen’s early childhood was full of conflicting images and impressions. ‘When you’re adopted it’s like you’re there but you’re not fitting in. I was blonde and blue-eyed and all my family were dark. I didn’t look like anybody. And I was very outward going, quite extrovert and carefree really, but my parents were the exact opposite, quiet and reserved and very strict and proper. Well, her more than him really. There was a basic clash of personalities, certainly between me and my adoptive mother. We were so totally different.’
The whole thing about being Irish was also a source of confusion. ‘Well, from what they told me about Ireland I had this vision of a desperately poor third world country where children were left to starve. But from the Irish in New York, and especially from St Patrick’s Day, I had this image of people who just got drunk. It was awful because no one explained anything to me. I suppose my parents didn’t know. They didn’t know about Irish history and culture, they had no Irish background at all. So I was left with this picture, from St Patrick’s Day really, of the Irish as people who dyed their hair green and drank green beer and ate green cakes. It was weird. I was kind of repulsed by it and yet I knew this was where I was from.’
But if her Irish identity remained a source of anguish for Maureen, Catholicism served her no better. ‘Church was the big deal. I knew a lot more about the whole Catholic tradition than I knew about Ireland, that was for sure. My parents were very Catholic, very, very Catholic. It was church, church, church. And of course I went to a Catholic school. You could say I was steeped in Catholicism.’ But Maureen never found the doctrine easy to accept. ‘In school, I was always raising questions, like about the wealth of the church and how that fitted with Jesus overturning the money changers. And about priests drinking. And just why this and why that. I never accepted anything without asking why, and of course they didn’t like that. I was made sit in the corner and told I was a sinner and to stop asking questions. I’d get banged about a bit as well. I remember before confession once, saying I didn’t have any sins to confess and being told to make a few up. Of course when I said that would be telling a lie and a lie was a sin, I was in big trouble. You couldn’t question anything. It was all very controlled, very strict. Every area of your life they tried to control. I just couldn’t take it.’