11.

At this point, Bernie got honest with me, but I had to ask the questions first. He wasn't exactly a fountain of information, but at least he would answer my questions.

I waited a week to respond. The last email was a bitter pill to swallow, and after so much had already transpired, it wasn't easy. I didn't call them; I sent another email. That may have been the cowards way out, but I wanted it in writing. I wanted to see the words and hear them and be able to go look at them over and over and over again. And I was hurting. I didn't want to hear their voices. I missed my parents, but I was really angry. I was hurt. I felt betrayed. And I wasn't ready to just brush things under the rug like we always do.

When Bernie responded to my email the first thing he told me was that he and my mom were scared I would never talk to them again and they loved me very much.

Dad told me that because the legal proceedings were so serious and they had never encountered anything like this before, they took what the judge said to heart. They took an oath and the judge told them that no information was to ever be disclosed. Because my birth parents needed to wait two years until they were 18, my parents were scared every day for two years that I would be taken away if they broke any rules. All they wanted was to protect me.

Then he told me the story. My dad's older sister Joan and her husband Rob lived in New Jersey once upon a time. They were friends with a couple who also lived in Jersey. Bernie said "we did not know them intimately then or now but maybe met casually at a house party over a holiday...Over the years we had seen them a few times during other functions, [like your cousin's] wedding and Uncle Rob's funeral."

The story goes that Uncle Rob contacted Bernie and Maddie, knowing that Maddie was having so much difficulty conceiving. (Full disclaimer: I've always known that mom had trouble getting pregnant. They were pretty honest with that point my whole life, and when they told me I was adopted, my mom shared more. I know she struggled for 13 years to have a baby, so it wasn't hard for me to understand what a gift I was to her.) Uncle Rob knew "a teen that was 8 months pregnant, from a good family, and there was an opportunity to have a very private adoption which was designed to protect the identity of the teen parents and their families." Makes sense - in the 1980's, teen pregnancy wasn't as glamorized as it is now. So Uncle Rob made the match - he told my mom and dad about the situation, hooked them up with a lawyer in town 2, and Bernie and Maddie picked me up in the maternity ward. They never knew names, but Joan and Rob did. My cousins allegedly didn't even know what was going on, even though my one cousin went to school with Chris for a while.

At this point, I had been doing some digging on Anne's family, just trying to figure out names and see if I could find any information. I had Anne's parents names. Anne's mother has a very unusual name. And all of a sudden, it clicked. I knew her. I had met her. I had hugged her. I knew this woman, who was my biological grandmother. I emailed Bernie for confirmation on this point, and he confirmed it.

I read that email in the parking lot of CVS. John had taken me to pick up prescriptions. I ugly cried in the car at CVS in broad daylight.

Maybe for those of you who aren't adopted, this point is hard to understand. I've talked to many children of adoption over the years. Many of us have experienced - what I would call - trauma. From the people I have talked to, it's rarely intentional, but it happens. When you find out you're adopted, something can change. You have questions, but many adoptive families make it taboo to answer those questions. Maybe it's fear of rejection by the child, maybe it's fear that the child will leave to find their family, maybe it's something I can't even understand at this point. But children wonder where they came from. A friend of mine, at the age of 18, had a packed dropped in front of her at the dinner table with all of her biological family's information in it. She knew she was adopted her whole life - she had red hair and blue eyes, her first brother was black, her second brother had blonde hair and blue eyes, and her little sister had dark hair and dark eyes. As we grow, we always have to explain ourselves to people, like we are some kind of freaks. We are just like everyone else. We don't have extra appendages or some exciting back story. Many of us were born into situations where our biological parents couldn't handle things or didn't want to handle things. Maybe they were too young. Maybe there was substance or physical abuse. Maybe there was homelessness. Maybe they just didn't want us. But that point of not feeling wanted is so pervasive. It's a story I hear over and over when I talk to kids who are adopted. I don't understand why this point needs to be made, but hear me: kids want to be needed. Kids want to be wanted. Kids want to be a part of something. Adoption takes a little of that away from them. It's scary. Some kids handle it fine. Some don't. Lynn was one of the kids that handled it well; she never wanted nor needed to find out biological information on her family. At the same time, there was trauma in her life surrounding her adoption as well. I was one of the kids that didn't handle it well: depression and suicide attempts took over my life until I was able to come to terms with who I was.

So for me, finding out that the answers to who I was were sitting close to me for the past 30-some years was damaging. It hurt. It was another cup of salt in the wound. I tried to explain that to Bernie. I said, "Dad, I've met those people a bunch of times. Those people are my maternal grandparents. Did you know? Do they know who I am?" How I got that all typed out on a smart phone through all those tears still amazes me. My dad responded that he knew that they were my biological grandparents, but to his knowledge they didn't know. The story goes that they didn't even know Anne was pregnant until she was 8 months along. (Apparently, my family is not svelte. Thanks, mom.) But in looking at pictures of Hank and Anne...I look almost exactly like her. I have her eyes, and her face shape, and her smile. I got Hank's giant forehead and weird nose, but otherwise, I look like Anne. How could these people meet a young girl, about the same age as what their granddaughter should be and who looks so much like their own daughter not know?

I told Bernie I wasn't mad. That was a lie, but I needed to repair this relationship. I knew that the anger would fade as I was able to digest all this information. It's been 2 months since this all happened, and while I'm not still angry, I'm still hurting. It's hard for me to type these words onto this screen. I'm still fighting back tears. But I told him what I knew he needed to hear. I'm not mad. I told him that there isn't a handbook on how to go through an adoption, and I told him that I knew he did the best he could. And those things were and are both true. Bernie and Maddie did their best to give me every opportunity at the best possible life they could. And for that, I will be eternally grateful to them.