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| "when she was normal" |
In adoption
related circles there is a term called triad that refers to the specter of participants
in an adoption, the adoptee, the birth and adoptive parents. For my whole life
as an adoptee, I have never thought much about the experiences of the other groups. My own orphaned
path with all of its implications and social stigma has been the only one that
mattered in my narrow narcissistic POV. Suddenly, through Facebook, I have
become friends with a host of birthmothers mostly from the baby scoop era that refers
to the boom of orphans given up between 1940 and 1970. I have chatted with many
of them who relay stories of having been coerced and assured that they were
doing the right thing for their unborn child. They were promised anonymity and
instructed to go on with their lives and forget the ordeal had ever happened.
There is a book written by Ann Fessler called The Girls Who Went Away that is a
compendium of accounts from the aforementioned birthmothers who describe being
sent away to institutionalized homes for unwed mothers where they were issued a
fake wedding ring to wear during their pregnancy to prevent gossip and scandal
from harboring. I have a friend whose mother was sent two states away to carry
out her pregnancy which she explained as being called to care for sick aunt. It
is a wonder that he was reconnected after they went to such lengths to prevent that from happening.
mattered in my narrow narcissistic POV. Suddenly, through Facebook, I have
become friends with a host of birthmothers mostly from the baby scoop era that refers
to the boom of orphans given up between 1940 and 1970. I have chatted with many
of them who relay stories of having been coerced and assured that they were
doing the right thing for their unborn child. They were promised anonymity and
instructed to go on with their lives and forget the ordeal had ever happened.
There is a book written by Ann Fessler called The Girls Who Went Away that is a
compendium of accounts from the aforementioned birthmothers who describe being
sent away to institutionalized homes for unwed mothers where they were issued a
fake wedding ring to wear during their pregnancy to prevent gossip and scandal
from harboring. I have a friend whose mother was sent two states away to carry
out her pregnancy which she explained as being called to care for sick aunt. It
is a wonder that he was reconnected after they went to such lengths to prevent that from happening.
My own birthmother doesn’t qualify as one of Fessler’s described girls who went
away although she was sent away for a different reason.
Kathy Domino was barely 30 when she gave birth to me at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in 1973. She had been there before just two years prior when she gave birth to my
sister. The first time she got pregnant
she and her boyfriend Tom were still romantic and googly—eyed enough to imagine
that they could become a family and raise the baby on their own but they were
deluding themselves. Tom said it became apparent in Kathy’s third trimester that
he could never marry her. The day he came home to find her sobbing surrounded
by broken dishes helped him make up his mind. Still, he did everything he could
to come to the hospital when he learned Kathy was in labor. Because he was barred at
the door and deemed a pariah, he went on his way and tried to forget. Back then being a birthfather of a “bastard”
was anathema to expecting custodial rights or consideration. When I asked her
family what they knew about him, I received a curt brush off as they claimed
ignorance. I later learned they knew exactly who he was but didn’t approve and therefore he ceased to exist. If Kathy had been normal and married a man
of her family’s station she would be hosting luncheons for the local Junior League
as wife to a stockbroker or something like
it. She was from old world immigrant Sicilian stock whose offspring had
elevated to leadership positions all over the South Bay in the generations
since the first WOPs descended the boat. Sicilians stick together and eschew
affiliation with the vile Italians they’re always being lumped in with. “We are
NOT Italian”, said my uncle Fred when I told him that was the only detail I was
allowed to know. The face sheet I was issued with splotches of white-out
clearly shows the word Italian stamped in the box describing my mother’s
nationality. My adoptive surname of Angelo scored me points when I introduced
myself as the long lost son of his schizophrenic sister but it didn’t hold. “What
can I do for you,?” he asked as if I was inquiring about a loan. Maybe
he worried that I was keen to their
mother’s lineage that produced the
corporate behemoth that became Contadina Foods. Kathy and Fred’s parents
divorced before she was three and their mother brazenly moved to CA as their father
faded to the background. Their father was a Chicago bar owner who was prone to throwing his 4'11 wife down the stairs. Their mother was descended from the founding families of Contadina Foods and used her connections to finagle a job in a California cannery in order to get divoriced and head west with the children. This was quite a liberating step in the years immediately following WWII. They lived in the comfortable Willow Glen
suburb and her brother attended Bellarmine,
the Catholic boy’s high school for future rulers of business and industry.
Fred went on to become district attorney after graduating University of Santa
Clara. Kathy went to Europe when she was 15 to study art and had visions of
painting professionally. Her high school graduation picture is tragic in the
way it suggests what could have been. It was displayed on the church altar at
her memorial service and I balked upon seeing it. “That’s when she was normal,”
said her brother wistfully. I had never allowed myself to imagine or consider
that there was once a time that she was normal. The schizophrenia was at the forefront
of everything I thought or dreamt about her since I was conscious. It was the
first thing revealed in the letter I received from Santa Clara County the first
time I inquired about where I came from. “Based on your mother’s diagnosis of schizophrenia,
you were given up for adoption…and she was conserved”. The schizophrenia obscured her identity and
parental claims. It was evident in the
way she drifted from one tangent to another unrelated topic in every attempt at
conversation. “Tell me about the day I was born,” I once said to her. “It was a
miracle… miracle… Miracle Worker, ..Helen Keller… Who played Helen Keller in
the Miracle Worker,..” went one tangent. |
| Tom and Kathy courting |
“Patty Duke,“I interjected…now back to me… " I became better at redirecting her focus and
learned to tolerate her unorthodox public persona and then appreciate it as
star quality. When she rubbed elbows with winos and hit them up for a spare
cigarette and some change, I didn’t bat an eyelash since it was the first thing
she had said to me the day I found her. The velveteen baby doll dress may not
have been age appropriate for her generation but it complimented the plastic
bow hair barrettes and streetwalker makeup that she liked to reapply in windows.
After her death, I came across a letter she had written to my father two months
before my ninth birthday when she was 39, the same age I am now. “I never ask
much of you or my brother,' it began 'but I need you to send me a picture of our
8 year old son Thomas Charles." I froze when I saw my original name and immediately hijacked
the letter from my father[‘s pile of memories. He would have never let me have
it but I deemed it mine as much as my sealed birth certificate was mine. Kathy’s
fragile mental state had led to her becoming convinced that my father was
harboring pictures of me when the reality was he knew even less about me than
she did. He wasn’t near the hospital when I was born and didn’t believe I was
his until he saw a picture years later. It made absolutely no sense that he
would have a set of current pictures, but
there it was in ink under an ancient coffee stain on springtime themed
stationery. “I’m still eating to curb the loneliness, up to 150 lbs.” That was
the last line she wrote before signing off, “Love Kay” which I imagined people
calling her as short for Kathy. It is an eerie timestamp of evidence that she
never got over giving me or Trista up.
Her brother told me she would ask about us years after the adoptions. “Where
are my babies,” she would cry. “They’re with families who can take care of
them,” was the stock answer. I don’t
think she ever completely comprehended what became of us. I was left in foster care
for over a year as she refused to sign
my relinquishment papers. “She would have eventually been forced to…It would
have been disastrous (if she had kept us),”
said my uncle. Kathy’s mental state had absolved her of any hope of claiming parental rights. She was relegated to eternal mystery as they erased her name from my records. I was born
in 1973, the hallmark year of Roe vs. Wade and it escapes me why she neve exercised the option not to have children. She gave birth to another boy 7 years after me from another
man although she claimed for years that we were all from the same father. My
half-brother David’s adoption was handled out in the open as his foster parents
knew the people who adopted him and Kathy was able to visit him regularly until
he was 5 years old. He always knew where he came from unlike Trista and me who
were as good as left on a doorstep for the information we were given.
Sometimes,
when I’m in the company of other adoptees, someone usually points out how my
case was different from the majority because Kathy was schizophrenic. “Your
mother had a reason to give you up. Not like us,” they chime. This detail sets me apart from the norm in my
circle of commiserating lost bastards. The pool of orphaned adoptees I usually
affiliate with have been predominantly female and have struggled with why they
were given up. I have been described as lucky to have escaped all that
rejection because Kathy was schizophrenic. I just nod and smile when accused of
this because my reality hasn’t been any easier to accept knowing that her hand
was forced. She may not have been an unwed teenager but as a ward of the state
who was free to avoid medication and pursue random relationships on the street
she suffered consequences that only
alienated her further from her family.
By the time Trista and I met her,
the closest confidante she had was
the batty bag lady she battled with in the bed next
to hers in a sleazy halfway
house. My sister and I couldn’t comprehend
what we were witnessing the first time we saw it.
When my name was changed and record sealed it was to prevent such a scenario and I blew all that to pieces the minute I started asking questions deemed “none of my business”. As a self-described bastard with the good fortune to have crossed from lost to found, I am outraged that scores of others like me exist who were conditioned to believe their identity was none of their business. “You don’t want to open that can of worms,” said a concerned high school counselor when I brought the subject up 22 years ago. I can’t make up the time I lost post-reunion that wasn’t spent embedding every possible detail into my brain for posterity because only the outline remains. Because I ultimately rejected the rewards of my reunion for 15 years, I wasted what could have been a relationship with my mother and father. As a gay man who grew up indifferent to the options available to me for father figures, I never considered it a great loss that my birth father remained in the shadows. Suddenly, on the cusp of 40, it matters. I think back to the many times Tom Smith made overtures and attempts to know me and the way I brushed him off as a nuisance. After my inquiries blew the lid off the case and reunions ensued, my sister was able to spend quality time with both parents because she lived in the same geographic vicinity while my location and distance only furthered the chasm. I am just now really feeling the absence of a father/son dynamic that I never missed growing up. After that initial meeting on the porch of our mother's halfway house, my sister was able to know Kathy and revel in the sacred mother/daughter bond that girls should have. Kathy was sent away years before Trista nee Sally was born in 1971. “We didn’t know what else to do with her,” said her brother when I met him for the first time.” “Kathy was always a little weird,” said
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| Agnews Insane Asylum built 1885 |
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| me and my bio dad Tom -the day we met 1997 |
