ALIVE IN MY HEART
(A Reunion Story)
by Lori Carangelo
Introduction
I know, firsthand, the most awkward of all human relationships--that of estranged parent and child who are trying to find common ground on which to connect. I've helped many parents and adoptees compile their stories in their own words for publishers, newspaper features and televised interviews, yet my wastebasket is filled with my aborted attempts to self-describe the two most important events in my own life--losing of my two children and discovering my son.
An Unsolved Valentine Mystery
Valentine's Day, February 14, 1968, in Santa Barbara, California, should have been the happiest day of my life. That was the day I gave birth my baby girl. I had been raised an "only child" and looked forward to having at least two or more children of my own. Her striking jet black hair and perfect features prompted me to choose the name "Linda Valentina" -- "Linda" because it means "beautiful" in Spanish and "Valentina" for her Valentine birthday. I can still hear my doctor's words as she was telling me "I'm sorry, we did all we could." Linda lived only two hours.
I was in process of divorce and alone in my grief. My obstetrician who delivered my baby, Dr. Eldine Lorraine Kenniker, said she didn't know why my baby did not develop normally before birth; she tried to assure me it was a genetic error that I could not have prevented, and that I could have a normal, healthy baby "next time."
Years later, my mother told me Dr. Kenniker has said to her "It's better that it happened to someone like your daughter" -- as if my baby deserved the ultimate punishment for my unwed parenthood (I had learned I was pregnant after I left my husband and filed for divorce.)
It would be 23 more years before I gained legal access to the hospital record of my daughter's birth and death that had been withheld before California law permitted patients to receive their medical records in hand, upon their signed request, without a doctor's authorization. Dr. Kenniker had refused permission to release my daughter's medical record in 1968. Kenniker died in 1973 and her own records destroyed thereafter.
Among the many unexplained discrepancies, the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital record described my daughter as having "brown hair," though it was jet black, and weighing only "3.5 pounds" despite she appeared to be the size of a full term baby. The record described her perfect face as having severe "Mongoloid" deformities (now referred to as Down Syndrome) and absence of vital internal organs, yet she reportedly struggled to breathe for two hours. There is no grave, no remains to exhume for DNA testing....just an unsolved mystery. I discovered that Dr. Kenniker had been involved in adoptions, which raised another "red flag." In hope of shedding light on what rally happened 23 years before, I filed a police report of "suspicious circumstances." Local police were not happy at the suggestion of a possible "cold case" to investigate and did not do so.
I also spoke with every adult female born at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital that Valentine's Day 1968 -- including a young woman whose first name is the same as mine and whose mother's name is Linda. Consequently, I've been able to rule out an accidental "switch." And in October 2002, adoptee and searcher, Luanne Pruesner, identified and located the adoptee whose suspicious sealed birth record had been filed out of sequence. After a long phone conversation with that adoptee, and a lot of subsequent research, we were able to rule out that she could be my daughter. Consequently, I have peace of mind that I've at least tracked down every lead, so must put my Valentine baby to rest, although the many discrepancies in her records remain an Unsolved Valentine Mystery.
A Second Chance at Motherhood
Just before Christmas, in New Haven, Connecticut, ten months after my Valentine baby was born and allegedly died, my son Ricky was born.
While I was still in postpartum depression over the loss of my first baby and my failed marriage, and decades before Madonna made it seem fashionable, I had verbally contracted with a young man I barely knew, asking him to impregnate me. I was 23, divorced, held secretarial jobs and wanted to raise a child on my own. I promised not to hold him responsible for child support. We spent one night together at his Seal Beach apartment in California...That's all it took.
Mid-way during my second pregnancy, my parents and I moved back to Connecticut, driven from Santa Barbara by month-long swarms of earthquakes and my fear that I might lose another baby from being severely rocked in our home as my bed rolled across the room on its casters, and we were constantly on the alert, standing within the protective frame of a doorway at all hours, lest the roof collapse upon us in our sleep.
Ricky was declared a healthy newborn, and the Connecticut pediatrician gave me a gratuitous pat on the head as he diagnosed "new mother nerves" when I repeatedly insisted that my baby's intense and incessant cries meant "something is wrong."
Decades later, when I first viewed that physician's record of our visits, I would find no mention of any physical exam of my son, only the words "Divorced--Refer to Welfare Dept." In the Connecticut winter of 1968, everyone was snowed in by a heavy blizzard and weeks of gray gloom. Ricky and I succumbed to the Hong Kong Flu epidemic, as did my parents. My 18 months of continuous pregnancy, sleep loss, and illness, was taking its toll on me. The yellow flannel nighties I had hand-made for my baby and the many blankets seemed inadequate against the cold and I kept my baby close to me for added warmth. But weakened and without sleep, I feared for my son's safety with no one else to adequately care for him, and I yearned for California's sunshine and an opportunity to support my son.
And so it was, on January 7, 1969, while holding my crying 3-week old baby boy bundled close to me, my own tears lost in icy cold raindrops, we almost made it to the bus stop which would have taken us to the Greyhound Bus station for the first leg of a return trip to California. But my father, commandeered by my mother, caught up to us in his car, just as the last drop of energy drained from my exhausted body and I was about to collapse. That same day, accompanied by my father and holding my crying baby boy, I found myself seated in the office of Eunice Baker, a social worker at The Children's Center, a 200-year old foster care agency, in Hamden, Connecticut.
We asked for "temporary foster and medical care" for my son until I could get back on my feet.
"We don't provide temporary foster care," said a stone face, as if certain I did not know that was a lie. Instead, I was being pressured into signing a relinquishment of parental rights to The Children's Center, a United Way supported agency--"to assure his care," they said. I questioned the requirement, saying that I did not want to give up my son. My father shook his head back and forth and broke his silence only to say No, we didn't want that. The stone faced woman pretended to start to leave the room, stating "Did you expect the State to support you and your child?" My mind racing, my body too exhausted to try elsewhere, I knew that The Children's Center had medical facilities for children in its care, whereas we would again be turned away by doctors who were certain "nothing was wrong." In a moment's panic, believing we were about to be turned away from help again, I reasoned that, as in California, there must be a statutory period in which I could regain my son once I was back on my feet. But I had already refused to sign a relinquishment. In the twisted logic of what must have been delirium, I reasoned that I had to convince the stone face that I was agreeable to relinquishing my baby temporarily to The Children's Center so they would not to refuse him care. Distraught and choking on my words, I blurted out, "But he's not safe with me..." Still no reaction. As my son's cries got louder and sounded more pained, all I could think of was my baby girl suffering for two hours, struggling to survive. Determined not to again expose my baby to the frozen January chill outdoors, fearing my son would die from "unknown cause" as his sister did, and confused by desperation of a mother who believed her baby's only chance for life depended on her ability to convince The Children's Center to provide him medical observation and care that she could otherwise not afford, I resorted to a lie, "I don't love him." That was all the stone face needed to hear.
She didn't respond to me but talked through an intercom to a nameless, faceless person who promptly appeared and motioned me to hand her my son. A flood of tears blurred my last view of him being whisked away as Ms. Baker again handed me the relinquishment to sign. At no time did she disclose to me, nor did the relinquishment indicate, that the document is "irrevocable" upon signing it in the state of Connecticut.. Nor was I permitted a copy of what I signed--it was to be sealed in the court record. Nor did I know that my son would be placed in his permanent adoptive home within 30 days, his true record of birth withheld from me. Within 5 minutes of entering The Children's Center, I was permanently deprived of my son, and he permanently lost his mother. Somehow grasping that my son and I no longer had any means of proving our relationship, I fumbled through my purse to find the two small black and white newborn photos of Ricky that the hospital had provided. I handed one of them to the stone face "for his new parents."
Back home, I collapsed on my bed in tears. What had I done? Were they giving him the medical attention I believed he needed? The phone rang and it was the stone face asking whether my son had been having any medical problems. Alarmed that she was asking me instead of informing me, I told her I was coming right back to get my baby ....then passed out. When I awoke, I was in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, advised that no malignancy was found but that I should have my uterus removed--a partial hysterectomy--to prevent further hemorrhages.
The Search
The following eighteen years, and tens of thousands of dollars, were invested in my failed attempts to find and regain my son within and around the confines of the system which enabled The Children's Center to steal him.
Fast forward to 1990, when the US Supreme Court accepted for filing, but declined certiorari, the case of Carangelo, Schafrick v. O'Neill, State of CT and The Children's Center - a class action that I had argued for four years, pre-trial, in the United States District Court of Connecticut by "adoption affected persons similarly situated" -- a challenge to Connecticut's sealed adoption records statutes as "government protected child stealing under color of adoption secrecy statutes." The Supreme Court had also previously declined to hear ALMA v. Mellon and Yesterday's Children v. Kennedy -- a 1970's class actions by adoptee groups demanding their right to know their origins.
An August 4, 1977 letter reply from the late Governor Ella T. Grasso had given me hope that, under Connecticut's Public Act 77-246 enacted that year, a procedure had been set to permit Ricky to find me when he reached legal age....but that was 10 years away and I had no proof that the baby I surrendered to save his life was even still alive. Ricky's 18th birthday in 1986 passed without a "match" of names on either International Soundex or ALMA's adoptee-parent reunion registries that had registered my information.
Eighteen years of correspondence with The Children's Center and its attorneys had not elicited any guarantee that my son was actually adopted, nor that he was even alive and well. There is no follow-up once an adoption is finalized, so little is known of most adoptees' outcomes. Until recently, no state or agency was obliged to provide either the parents or the adoptive family with any available pre-adoption social and medical information. To this day, no post-adoption medical updates are transmittable from parents to adopters or adult adoptee in Connecticut, even through an agency or court. In 1986, Connecticut Probate Judge Glenn Knierim, said no to my request that Knierim inform my son or his adopters of my physician's letter regarding my newly discovered, inheritable and life-threatening cardiac disorder and inheritable allergies to the prescription drugs commonly used to treat the condition. In response to Knierim's indifference when he wrote that Connecticut statute "did not compel him to do so," Yale Law School professor, Attorney Stephen Wizner, suggested that Knierim could do so "as an administrative procedure." Knierim again refused. So much for adoption being "in child's best interests."
On Sunday, December 14, 1986, three days before Ricky's 18th birthday, the New Haven Register placed my paid advertisement--my son's newborn photo which was identical to the one I had given the stone face at The Children's Center 18 years before, with the caption over it "Missing 18 Years!" and beneath the photo, "He's 18, Dec. 17." Because most newspapers still rejected ads that appeared to be soliciting reunions between adoptees and parents, I used the term "missing" - It accurately described the loss that any parent feels who has never been declared "unfit to parent" yet is deprived of their child through sealing and falsification of birth records and secrecy as to their child's fate. That Sunday evening, Chris Janis, a reporter on the New Haven Register, telephoned me to discover the story behind the ad. I brought her up to date on my search for my son. The next day, Monday, December 15, 1986, the Register's front page headline read "Mom Hopes Ad Will End Adoption Mystery."
It was the first in a series of installments covering my search for my son, the problems with adoption law and procedures, and my lobby efforts to amend Connecticut's adoption secrecy laws. As result of the initial feature story that included my home phone number which was then in Palm Desert, California, I began hearing from and networking with other searching Connecticut parents and adult adoptees. There was also a hoax call from a young man claiming he was the West Haven Mayor's adopted son who believed he could be my son. In a follow-up story, "Mother's Search for Son at Dead End," Janis reported that I tried the phone number he offered and found it to be a non-working number and that the Mayor had no adopted son. I could not help but wonder whether the young man was mentally ill as result of his own adoption and the secrecy imposed on his origins. And I wondered if my own son would hate me for losing him. On April 12, 1987, Janis reported in "Mom Hunts for the Son She Gave Up" that my efforts to contact my son had been thwarted by a legal system that prohibits a biological parent who gives up a child from ever contacting the offspring or his adopters--even in medically urgent situations such as I presented. Janis interviewed Judge Glenn E. Knierim, then the state's probate administrator, documenting his statement that "under state law, he has no authority to take such action." The Children's Center and its lawyer declined to comment. Knierim claimed "Ms. Carangelo's case has highlighted something that should be attended to...And we had begun looking into the problem before we heard of her case."
Legislative bills that sought to permit exchange of medical updates between birth and adoptive families, post-adoption, were pending in Connecticut's legislature when Chris Janis reported that I had provided extensive documentation in support of the bills. The bills did not pass due to one Connecticut legislator, an adopter, successfully blocking them. Not much has changed since. Nationwide, parents still have less rights with regard to custody decisions than one would have in transferring ownership of a used car.
Reunion
The Reunion On May 18, 1987, reporter Anthony Borders reported in The Press-Enterprise (Riverside County, California) "Mother's 18-Year Search Ends" - as follows: "Mother's Day, a crowded airport terminal and Lori Carangelo is trembling as she dials a phone. She is calling her son whom she has never seen nor heard from in 18 years. She remembers him only as Ricky, wrapped tight against the Connecticut cold as he was turned over to a private foster care and adoption agency. She thought about her son almost every day. To find him, to know about him, became her passion. There were private investigators, letters to legislators, newspaper stories and advertisements.....There was no success until, 'like a miracle' Carangelo connected with underground channels...A woman called promising information on Carangelo's son--for $2100 cash sent cross-country in a Federal Express envelope."
The informant provided me with my son's adoptive name, his residence and place of work, and a copy of his legally falsified birth certificate bearing his date and time of birth--a match to his hospital record of birth. I tried his home number several times that week but he was never home to answer. Uncertain whether I was on another wild goose chase, and out of respect for the woman who had raised my son, I spoke with her to clear the way. Talking quickly but carefully, I explained in detail the bizarre circumstances which led to the call from California.
The woman listened and wanted to know more. Lois said "her son" had always wanted to know about "the mother." Her primary concern, however, was that she did not want her adopted son, or me, to be hurt if I was not his mother after all. My companion and I were holding non-refundable airline tickets for a long awaited vacation in Italy the following week, but I did not want to leave now that I'd found my son. For the time being, it was out of my hands. Reluctantly, I agreed to mail Lois my documentation and wait for her to verify names through The Children's Center. She urged me to go on the trip--that by the time we were back, she would confirm what she needed to confirm and I could then speak with my son.
It was the longest week of my life. I could not enjoy a moment of our travels but tried to collect picture postcards and photos of the small towns where my son's ancestors originated in order to provide him with as much family background as possible when we did finally meet. And so it was that, one week later, on the way back to my home in the California desert from Italy, I found myself standing at a Dallas airport terminal on Mother's Day, dialing my son's number where he worked. I only knew his name was now "Tommy." The phone rang, he answered, and we talked awkwardly for only two minutes, exchanging brief biographical information....He said he had accompanied his adoptive mother to The Children's Center and verified who was whom...and that, despite the extensive social and medical information I had provided The Children's Center, the only background information that the caseworker offered about me was that I am "Italian and short." Tommy assured me, "I'd very much like to meet you" and with that, I promised to fly to Connecticut soon after my return home to California.
After we hung up, all I could think of was "I have a son, a grown son." I never had another child. At the time I found my son, I was writing and publishing cookbooks and my son was working at his first job in a car wash near his Meriden, Connecticut residence, not far from his New Haven birthplace.
On June 20, 1987, Chris Janis did a follow-up story caption "Tears of Happiness and Frustration Mark Reunion." I did not feel I should identify my son to media because his adopter was upset at learning of the previous stories and the extent to which I had been searching for my son. But by December, just before Tommy turned 18, which when the stories began to appear, Tommy had been making inquiries at The Children's Center. Despite that I had been a thorn in the flesh of The Children's Center's staff for 18 years, and they knew of my whereabouts and newspaper stories, according to Tommy, they told him only that, when he turns 18, he would have to file a court petition, pay court fees, and, if his request was granted, he would then have to pay The Children's Center a "search fee" of several hundred dollars to "locate" me... and "if" I consented to contact they would "counsel" him and determine if contact could be facilitated. Just prior to my locating him, Tommy's adopter told me that a caseworker from The Children's Center had phoned her to ask if I had made contact with her--but never divulged the life-saving medical information that Judge Knierim and The Children's Center's attorneys refused to share with him or his adopters -- information that had been on the front page of the New Haven Register but which they continued to withhold.
Our reunion took place at Hartford Airport. Ron Frieborn, my companion of three years accompanied me on the trip for moral support. Tommy had seen photos of me that I had sent his adopter, but he said he didn't want to send me his photo before our meeting "in case a photo should satisfy you." So the only mental image I had of my son, as I searched the faces of passengers in the airport terminal where he said he would be waiting, was that of a newborn baby with perfect physical features and incredibly long eyelashes. Was he short like me? Or did he take after his taller, heavy-set Polish father? Would I recognize him? In a Connecticut airport terminal, there were many Italian-looking faces that resembled my maternal relatives. I asked one, then another, if they were waiting for someone...and each in turn said no. A young couple approached me--He was with his childhood sweetheart of many years and said my name.
Startled, I looked at him only long enough to see a teenager of small stature with unexpected long hair and a small tattoo on his upper arm revealed by his sleeveless "muscle" shirt...before we automatically hugged our hellos. He introduced me to Fran and I introduced him to Ron as we debated where to go to talk. I invited them to join us for dinner and his face lit up as he suggested his favorite local pizza restaurant. Ever since I was about 5 years old and my great uncle John first treated me and my parents to a real New York pizza at Pepe's in New Haven, pizza was a staple of my diet that I still craved. What a hoot to watch my son enjoy slices of pizza, his favorite food also. There was so much catching up to do as we compared facial features and interests. I had forgotten that my nose originally had a typical Italian deviated septum (bump) before it was straightened by surgery when I was 16--until I saw my nose on my son's face. He was such a good looking kid and seemed to know it as he and his girlfriend wise-cracked about his prowess in the area of romance. We took many photos and time slipped by too quickly; I had to check in to the motel reserved ahead.
We met again the next day -- He had got his hair cut and was wearing his "Sunday clothes" when he showed me the house in which he had lived since his adoption, and where he worked, and he introduced me to a couple of his buddies. On one of the four days of our visit, I brought Tommy to meet my two half-sisters--my father's daughters from a previous marriage--who I discovered existed when I was in my 20's. On the first day of our reunion, I asked Tommy when I could meet Lois, the woman he had called "Mom" all his life. He replied "maybe next trip" because she could not bring herself to meet me. Fran said Lois was worried that I might lure my grown son away from her and I sensed Fran had the same concern about possibly losing her boyfriend to his newfound mother, but Tommy interjected that while it might have been a possibility a couple years before, he "didn't need another mother" now. Besides, he said, Lois has an 18-year "investment" in him. Investment? Is that what my son represented to her? And had someone at The Children's Center poisoned her mind about me or about risking a relationship with her son's mother?
The next revelation confirmed my 18 years of "knowing something was wrong" when Tommy was born. He informed me that he had been born deaf from punctured eardrums. His deafness--often missed in newborns, and undoubtedly painful--is what made his cries sound abnormal to me; he could not hear himself cry. It was from a mother's instinct to save my son that I was willing to risk losing him rather than risk what I sensed must be his suffering. But The Children's Center's doctors did not diagnose him. Just after Tommy's placement, but before finalization of his adoption, Lois took him to a doctor who informed her and her husband that Tommy was deaf. They did not tell The Children's Center for fear The Center would declare him "unadoptable." Fortunately, the surgery his adopters provided restored his hearing. But, like most adoptees, he grew up knowing only that his biological parents had apparently abandoned him and so he could only believe they must not have wanted him. As with many adoptees, the burden of presumed rejection led to behaviors described by psychologists as "adopted child syndrome" behaviors that got him in minor trouble with the law. By my paying attorneys and helping him deal with his creditors, I kept him out of jail. I wanted to help my son in ways that would benefit him in the long term, such by financing a college education. I also wanted to be more than a cash register to my son. But all he would let me do for him was buy him cars and loan him money knowing he could not be repay it, and it did not buy anything of lasting value for him. Adoption and money became sore subjects that placed a wedge between us at times, making post-adoption reunion a roller coaster ride.
During the first several years following our first meeting. my son and I exchanged numerous cross-country visits, each of us attempting to set up residence closer to each other for varying lengths of time. But his adopters, who divorced when he was 10, have refused to participate in any sort of post-adoption relation ship with me. Yet, when Tommy and his wife and his first wife, Fran, were only 18, they and their infant daughter Rebecca--my first granddaughter--stayed with me for seven months, obtained their GED certificates, while Tommy held a job and they discovered all the sights to see and things to do in California until they became homesick for their friends in Connecticut. After their divorce, Tommy visited me with a girlfriend. He later fathered another daughter in Connecticut with another girl, but did not marry the under-age mother. I have never seen my second granddaughter. Both of my son's daughters have been adopted by their step-fathers and, to date, he has fathered no other children that I know of. Although, in the beginning, Tommy had hoped that Lois and I would become friends, when it was evident that Lois was unwilling, Tommy kept his relationship with me separate from his adoptive family relationships. Four years post-reunion, I attempted to meet with Lois anyhow.
Although Tommy had shown me photos of Lois, seeing her in person was a shock. It was like looking at one's twin. In the 1950's and 1960's, adoption agencies attempted to "match" not only the ethnic and social backgrounds of adopters to the adoptee's biological parents, but also the physical appearance of the "two mothers." This was to support the deception of the "as born to" myth and the falsified birth record identifying the adopters as the child's "parents" from date of birth. Despite that, in the 1960's, social work theory had changed from "Don't tell if they don't ask," to "Tell the child of his adoptive status when he is mature enough to understand," the practice of "matching" continued so that adopters would appear to the world to be genetically related to the adoptee. It also permitted adopters to deny the fact of the adoption if they so chose. It apparently hadn't occured to the social worker community that the genetic pull of personality traits and permanent birth bonds might belie the most carefully crafted hoax. Lois was Italian, short, had my profile and we could be taken for sisters except that I have brown eyes and hers are blue. As the light of recognition showed in her eyes, Lois screamed at me to "Get out!" saying she hadn't changed her mind and didn't want any contact with me. I could only mumble that I was sorry she felt that way and that my only purpose was to thank her for what she had done for him and that I wanted the opportunity to help my son. Lois had never told him he was adopted -- He learned that fact from a neighbor when he was 10 -- and it seemed she was still in denial as to that reality.
Post-reunion, my son has spent most holidays with his adoptive family. I was not invited to either of his weddings. After many years, he spent one Christmas with me. He was then married to an adoptee who only recently found her "birth" mother through my referral and with whom she is in contact and they are apparently getting along well. Since their marriage, his contacts have been infrequent. He is caught up in his life, running a retail surplus business, travelling to auctions -- a life that I could not be a part of. My son does not like to express his feelings to me about his adoption, nor his opinions on adoption issues, but has indicated that he and I do not agree on important adoption issues including open records. Twice in 15 years, he stopped communicating with me for extended periods. he first time it was over money he borrowed from me, until I enlisted his buddy to help us begin a dialog. Although the phone conversations we do have usually end with each of us saying " "Love you," and although, I believe he understands, intellectually, the circumstances that led to his forced relinquishment, and knows what I have tried to do for him post-reunion, emotionally we know that nothing can make up for the lost years in which he believed that he had been by abandoned by a mother who did not want him.
Compelled
Losing my son, searching for him, and finding him, consumed and defined me for half my life. I had spent the the time between our visits responding to requests from other parents and adoptees for help with their "impossible" searches for each other, and lobbying nationwide for open records reform as Americans For Open Records (AmFOR). In the years since our reunion, I have researched and written a over a dozen published books and over 600 published articles on adoption issues. I've also assisted over 14,000 adoptees and parents, to successfully "reconnect" - free of charge - and I still advocate for abolition of the unnecessary, cruel and unworkable system of adoption, in favor of more equitable expressions of custody. My controversial web-site at AmFOR.net draws traffic, inquiries, and comments posted on a Petition by adoption affected people, helping professionals, attorneys and researchers worldwide. The web-site includes a page on "Human Rights and Adoption," which contains a form for reporting adoption abuses to the United Nations. The "Opposing Viewpoints" page juxtaposes pro-adoption views, such as that of Milton Berles' adopted son, Bill Berle, against the anti-adoption view. The growing Donor Offspring/Parent Registry is the first worldwide online reunion registry of its kind for matching searching Donor parents and their searching adult children. The Adopted Prisoners page provides free photo web pages for incarcerated adoptees, some of whose case histories are also included in my book, "Chosen Children: Billion Dollar Babies in America's Foster Care, Adoption and Prison Systems." Many of the adoptees who I included in Chosen Children have been abandoned by their adoptive families and want assistance in discovering their "birth" families. I have helped some of them to reunite with their supportive "birth" families, which, in turn, has helped some of them to turn their lives around. The Ultimate Search Book: Worldwide Adoption, Genealogy and Other Search Secrets, has also garnered many wonderful reviews.
I know too well the ups and downs of the most awkward of all human relationships. Yet it was so difficult for me to tell this story all these years, perhaps from pride. Having helped so many adoptive and "birth" families to establish positive relationships, I considered my roller-coaster relationship with my son and my inability to win over my son's adopters a failure on my part. But my procrastination is mostly due to the fact that post-adoption relationships can't be adequately viewed as a "freeze-frame" in time. It's an ongoing experience which has to come full circle before it can be clearly seen. My perceptions, decades ago, are quite different from my perceptions today, and will undoubtedly be subject to revision in the future. I suspect it is the same with my son.
There are no words to adequately describe my ongoing relationships with the son I found, and with the daughter for whom I can ony passively search -- because those relationships live in my heart.
