My Adoption Story - Part 1

For a long time, now, I've hinted that I would tell my adoption story here. Well, the time has come, since I finally feel up to telling it.

Most people who've heard this story think it's fascinating in the sense that there seems to be an underlying notion of circumstances conspiring for my biological mother and I to have eventually found one another. Maybe, maybe not. Because on the other side of the fence, where my biological father is concerned, circumstances were purposely created and orchestrated for the express intent of his finding me, and yet it never happened. Life is like that.

It's difficult to decide how to tell the story - in linear fashion or should I hop around between past and present? Do I tell it from my perspective, or do I act as a narrator who tells the story of all people in involved from an objective distance? It might end up being a jumble of all the above, plus.

Note: When I speak of my Mom and Dad, or my "parents," I am referring to the people who adopted me; the adoptive parents.

My Mom and Dad got married in 1967, having met at a major Wisconsin university. Because they were at a school that was infamous for civil rights protests and other hippy-era type social and cultural manifestations, they claim that they always felt open to adopting a child. You know, the whole "save the world" or "help the disadvantaged" kind of thing that started to bloom on 1960's campuses.

Soon after they got married, my Mom experienced a miscarriage. And not long after that, she had a stillborn child (a son). This experience was very hard on my Mom, and as a result, my parents decided to go forward with their previous resolve about adopting a child.

I don't know why they chose Catholic Social Services, but I suppose the fact that my Mom was Catholic had something to do with it. Also, by that time, they had moved to northern Wisconsin, very close to Green Bay, where there was a regional Catholic Social Services office.

I was told that they had the choice of receiving a boy or a girl, but that they stated they were happy with whatever was given to them. I'm also under the impression that they were given the additional choice of accepting or rejecting a child born with special needs. My parents apparently chose, again, to receive what was given to them. And so the story goes that once they were accepted as candidates to be adoptive parents, they were told that they had been matched up to one, specific pregnant woman. In other words, whatever that woman gave birth to, my parents would receive that child - boy or girl, sick or healthy.

My parents were generally aware of my due date so that they could prepare. One funny story is that when my Mother received the call telling her that I had been born, she got so excited that she hung up, forgetting to ask if I was a boy or a girl! Well, obviously she got that information shortly thereafter.

Exactly 7 days after I was born, on a Friday the 13th (which my parents always said was their lucky day and which we still celebrate on a yearly basis), my parents drove to Green Bay to pick me up. (Note that such a short timeframe no longer exists today. In fact, it was about a year later that the short timeframe was done away with, by law. I have very strong opinions about that, which if anyone cares to ask, I'll share. I do NOT agree with newborns being placed with foster parents for months at a time before being placed in their final, adoptive homes.) So anyway, when they picked me up, the Catholic Social Services workers made my parents tell me to my face, that day, that I was adopted. And they encouraged them to always tell me that I was adopted from that day forward. (Which they did.)

When my parents got home that evening, my Mother freaked out because the bottles of formula that she was given by the agency had another child's name on them. Let's just say the name was Heidi (it wasn't, but I want to keep the name private.) So she called them back and was told that no, there was no mistake, she had the right bottles. And with that one mishap, my Mother unfortunately had figured out what my biological mother had named me at birth. I've always wondered how she felt about that knowledge? If she resented it or didn't care? (I should ask her some time.....)

Just about a month or two before I was born, the Catholic church my parents attended had a change in pastors. There was a new priest there - a fun, young and hip guy who had a goatee and liked folk music and was open to celebrating mass in people's back yards, etc. My parents took to him right away, and he to them. (I remember this priest, as he was an often visitor to our home in my early years, and he was the priest at the Catholic school I attended in first grade.) So anyway, this priest, who I'll call Father A., was aware that my parents would soon be getting an adopted child and he was also in the know as to the approximate timeline in which this was supposed to happen.

Now jump ahead about 2 1/2 years. My parents decide to have a cocktail party at their house and they invite Father A. Who gets rather drunk at the party. He pulls my Mother aside and takes a photo out of his pocket. It's a wedding photo of a bride and groom. He shows the picture to my Mother and says the following: "This couple just got married recently. Don't you think the woman's nose looks alot like Charlotte's?" My Mother claims she didn't really know what to say and that she didn't really see any resemblance. And that was that. Other than the fact that my Mother, almost like the Virgin Mary, stored away this incident in her heart for many years.

Now jump ahead even many more years to where I'm 18 years old. There's this girl who I eat lunch with everyday in the cafeteria at school who is adopted too. She doesn't get along with her parents real well and she is constantly complaining about how if she was with her REAL parents, she KNOWS she wouldn't be so miserable. This constant complaining gets me thinking: Who are MY real parents? Oh, I knew a few bits of harmless information that my parents had been made aware of before I was born, like for example, how old my biological parents were at the time of my birth. But nothing of real relevance.

I ask my Mom about this and she says that if I want to contact the State to get non-identifying information about them, she's all for it, and she will help me. No sooner does this idea come up and I have an envelope in my hands from the State of Wisconsin. I learn lots of interesting things about my biological mother and father. But what intrigues me more is the story my Mom also tells me about the time Father A. got drunk and whipped out that photo.

I start campaigning to my Mother to track down Father A. (since we no longer live in the Green Bay area and have lost contact with him) and make him explain why he did that. My memory on this isn't clear and I think(?) my Mom may have put up smokescreens to my trying to get to the bottom of the story. But eventually, she relented. She tracked him down and she got him on the phone. I have a vague memory of that day, as I sat at the kitchen counter across from my Mom, as she talked to him, and my trying to read what she was writing down on a piece of paper.

What she relayed back to me from Father A. was a story that really didn't make any sense to me. He told my Mom about a woman he knew from one of his former parishes, but why are we asking? No, he didn't remember showing anyone a photo of a bride and groom, and why are we asking? No, he doesn't talk to that woman anymore, and why do we care? It was kind of like "Yeah, I know something, but I don't. And I'm not gonna cooperate with you."

Interestingly enough, and in very UN-Char fashion, I let it go there. My fascination with my biological parents left as quickly as it had come, as do many things at that age. Well, at least for a couple of years.

When I was 21, I got pregnant. And then had a miscarriage. And then thought deeply about the fact that (at the time) I felt abortion was a suitable answer to my dilemma. (Thank God I was spared from making that decision!) And as I thought about how that pregnancy might have "ruined my life," it occurred to me that my biological mother might have felt the same way too. Suddenly, I felt I was very connected to her via our mutual out-of-wedlock pregnancies and I felt an extreme urge to find her and thank her for going through with it all.

And by then, my critical thinking skills had been sharpened enough that I could put 2 and 2 together and recognize that Father A. knew something for sure. So again, I turned to my Mom for help, which she freely gave and which she had always promised me. I campaigned for her to get Father A. on the phone and pick his brain again, convinced that he held the key.

She complied and came back with a report of a woman from the Fox Cities (an area of Wisconsin that spans between Green Bay in the north and Fond du Lac in the south) who was now married with three sons. She had converted to be a Jehovah's Witness and subsequently became such a burden to Father A. in her efforts to convince him of the wrongness of his Catholicism, that he stopped talking to her all together a number of years before. He also mentioned that she was a public school teacher. Most important, Father A. gave my Mother a name - her supposed maiden name - which was "Katherine Spool." Note that Father A. was reportedly very annoyed by this call and kept questioning my Mother as to why did we care? What good could come of this? And he's not even sure why he's telling us what he just did, as he doesn't see any connection between this woman and me.

So off I went on my search for Katherine Spool. It helped that at the time, I happened to be going to college in the Fox Cities. Thus, I had immediate access to all I thought was needed in order to track this woman down. I scanned dozens upon dozens of early-mid 1960's high school and college year books from the area, looking for the last name Spool. I never found anyone with that last name. I checked phone books, old and new. Nothing. I checked obituaries. Zip. And I'd like to mention that all this research was an iffy prospect, seeing as I was sacrificing precious study time in college to pursue this hunt. I was literally obsessed, staying late at area libraries until they closed and kicked me out. I even double-backed and rechecked sources I had already searched. I came up with nothing.

Finally, I decided that the only option left open to me was the Jehovah's Witness lead, which I didn't really want to follow, but knew I had to. I very clearly remember the night I decided to do something about the lead. I was standing in the dark at an outdoor pay phone on campus. I had mapped the Fox Cities and determined that the city of Appleton was smack in the middle, so I got the phone number of the Appleton Kingdom Hall and called the number. No answer, but a message that said if there was no answer, to call a different number. Which I did.

An old lady answered the phone and I told her my name and that I was looking for my biological mother and that I thought she was a Jehovah's Witness and I thought her name was Katherine Spool and she's a school teacher and she has three sons. And I'm sure I spouted out that little speech about a mile a minute. And then I heard dead silence on the phone. And then I heard the old woman just sigh heavy and sputter and try to talk, but she couldn't get anything out. Finally, she said, "Here, you need to talk to my husband."

The husband gets on the phone and I go through my whole speech again. I remember him saying something like "Whoa, whoa, slow down" and "What? Her name is what?" After a few minutes of conversation he told me that he would take my name and phone number and get back to me. And he also told me that he could not promise that he would be able to help me.

So, I'll stop here for now.

And here's a clue for you: Father A. knew way, way more than he ever let on to.

Oh, and that older Jehovah's Witness woman I got on the phone? There was a reason she was so flabbergasted by the phone call.