We talked for a few minutes, where I lived, what I did, small talk. The she asked if she could call me right back. I said OK, but I was a little surprised. I would’ve expected her to keep talking to me, to need to keep me on the phone so I didn’t disappear again.

I hung up and waited. And waited. And waited. Was she trying to send me a message that I shouldn’t have called? Was that it? Was that the only conversation I would ever have with her? Would I never find my Mother? I was starting to panic. I called her back.

She was out of breath. She had been in the attic, looking for an Atlas, so she could see where Somerville, MA was located. Where 74 Pearson Ave was in Somerville. Where her Grandson lived. This was my first foray into the fairly eccentric world of the Harris family. The family tree and the 20-year-old pamphlet on how to bowl tenpin like the pros came later. The 50 pounds of oranges and grapefruits sent UPS overnight in a crumbling box to my new home in Seattle came after that.

She had held me for 30 minutes on July 12th, 1969, sitting in a rocking chair at the hospital. Then they came and took me to my parents. She had hugged me and cried on me, and said everything she could think of to get me started on my life. She had kissed me. We had met before. For 30 minutes.

She wouldn’t give me Nancy’s number. She wanted to call. I was eager, but I understood. No need to give two Harris’s heart attacks in one day.

Before I go on, I want to make it clear that this is not a fairy tale. This is not the reunion story that adoptees fantasize about. Have I met or had contact with my Birth Mother, Father, and Brothers? Yes, Was I invited into the fold, where I am safe and secure with my new family? No. I do not want to be. I have a family, and one thing that seems to be forgotten or overlooked by adoptees and Birth parents is that the people that you search for and long for, and love in the abstract are strangers. You do not know them and they don’t know you. Before my reunions, I had it stuck in my head that I would pull into the driveway, or step off the train, and they would run to me, tears in their eyes, and hold me, hug me.

"Welcome back, son, you’re safe with us now, and we’ll never be apart again."

This is a farce. When you meet your Birth family for the first time you meet people that you don’t know. You meet people, and are met by people who could never live up to the 20 or 30 years of utopian scenarios that your imagination made true. In my experience, my Birth family were very nice to meet, but I got more from the names and the photographs than I ever did from the people. This is not meant to be bitter; it’s simply what happened.

Nancy didn’t want to talk to me when Helen told her the news. Birth Mothers feel so guilty about giving up children they were unable to care for. Birth Mothers feel they abandoned their children Birth Mothers assume that we hate them for "rejecting" us. Nancy was no different.

In fact, I find the opposite true. Let’s walk the timeline. Nancy was pregnant. Nancy went through all the discomfort and pain of pregnancy, knowing that she would receive no reward for her pain. Nancy endured the stigma of an unwed pregnancy in 1968-1969, maybe the whispers as she passed by, maybe the jeers, definitely the alienation. Nancy had morning sickness, and stretch marks and maternity clothes, and probing doctor’s visits. Nancy endured the pain of childbirth.

At the end of all that, she loved me enough, a Mother loved her son enough , to put her own needs and desires aside, and do what was best for me. Even if it meant a lifetime of guilt, pain and loneliness. If there is a better example of true pure love for a child, let me know. Birth Mother’s should be proud of their deed, of their expression of parental love.

Helen and I talked often while Nancy prepared herself for the inevitable contact. I would talk to Helen, and as soon as I hung up, I am sure they would be rehashing every word said. I sent, and began receiving pictures, family trees. I was given the history of the Harris family. Nick Nolte has left the gene pool! Helen and Gene Harris had one child, Nancy, who after me, though married twice, never had another child. Helen had never been a Grandmother until the day I called. She was the opposite of Nancy in her reaction. She was excited, and very pragmatic about the whole situation. She was a bit standoffish, but that is just her personality. She is the type of mother you would call Mother or Grandmother, rather than Mom, or Nana. She is very New England, very proper. When she was widowed at a fairly young age, she didn’t, and probably had no intention to remarry. She is big. Very tall, very strong. Not fat, but large. She looks like an older version of the girls in my high school that played field hockey. Practical white hair that you can tell was originally blond. She wears pants, and no makeup. She is who she is, and if you don’t like it, she doesn’t care. I think she would be described as snobbish, but that is a mistake. She is indifferent. She is herself. She is Helen. When I met her for the first time, I think I am the only person in her life that was able to shake her up a bit, to make her lose her composure.

I was finally given Nancy’s phone number in St. Petersburg Florida. This was the pinnacle of my search, and I was terrified to call. But I did. I am so glad that she was scared too. Nancy has never been a Mother. Everything she knows about mothering she learned from proper Helen and TV. In our first conversation, we skirted many of the questions I had.

Who is my Birth Father? Did you marry him? Why did you give me up? Do you miss me?

We just talked, and I remember that in her nervousness, and in her need to make a good first impression, she talked to me in that Leave it to Beaver, My three sons mother voice. She kind of sang her words. It was like having a conversation in Gone With The Wind. She had a kind of poetic justification for the end of each paragraph of our discussion. She was so scared, so guilt-ridden, and hid it so well.

She had been married to an extremely prominent lawyer in the South, and had recently divorced him. She now lived with a retired cop named John. John was dying. She stayed home to care for him. He seemed like a great guy, and as we talked more often, I could tell that he truly loved her, and she loved him. Then he died. Nancy seems to be passed over by luck at every turn. She cannot win, and she is a sad, sad woman. Not bitter, just someone who has given up, someone who knows that "it" will never happen for her, regardless of what the "it", is.

Though she and I talked often in the beginning, we never really connected. She was very open talking about people and things, but her feelings are something private for her. She does not talk about them. She tells the story of my conception, my birth and adoption, of her life almost in the third person. The physical details, the facts, are told bluntly, even the embarrassing ones. The affair with the much older, married cop, the pregnancy, the birth. She leaves no details out, but she is reading a story, a report, and the emotions are completely withheld.

She was eighteen, and found boys her age immature. She was a secretary, and a handsome cop, age 33, would come into her office and flirt with her. She knew he was married, but he was mature, he was what an eighteen-year-old girl would consider worldly, manly, desirable. They had secret dates, they had sex, she got pregnant, she stopped returning his calls, he showed up at her work to charm her back into the affair, She gave him the cold shoulder, and never told him about the pregnancy. She had me, she gave me up, the end.

His name is Don Johnson, thankfully not THAT Don Johnson. He is not a nice man. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was a 33-year-old man that wooed, dated and fucked an eighteen-year-old girl. He was charming and used his charm, and his uniform to get what he wanted. When I was conceived, he had four other children at home, and the wife that he is still married to today. We have had one conversation, and here it is.

"Is this Matt?"
"Yes."
"This is Don Johnson, I hear you want to talk to me."
"Yeah, you’re my Birth Father."
"So I hear. This isn’t a good time, can I call you back?"
"Sure."
"OK, I’ll talk to you."
Click.

He never did call back, and I can’t say I am disappointed.

Matthew Grolnic, Copyright 2001-2003