week 2 - beginning 18th december 2000

note to readers
In England once Adoptees reach the age of 18 they have legal right of access to their adoption records. This has been the case since the 1970's.

monday
Spent the afternoon looking at adoption web sites to get an idea of what’s out there. Found a UK site with a message board so put up a message saying I’m looking for Tom and Mary Morris. I was a bit shaky as I wrote it. Excited. Can’t believe there are thousands of adoption Web sites, the Internet is amazing! Can’t believe I’ve put a message up. Although I do wonder why anyone who knows my birth parents would happen to be looking at this message board. Feels like such a long shot but even if I get no response at least I’m being proactive. At least I’ve started. 

tuesday
I realise that as long as I write this diary regularly I’ll notice how actively I’m searching. In the past I’ve been able to forget for months at a time that I am looking for anyone at all.

I wonder why I’m more determined to find my mother this year? I have tried unsuccessfully to find her before but I was too half-hearted to get very far. Maybe I was ready to look but what’s different now is I feel ready to find her. Lately I’ve been myself more and people still like me. Seems like I’m an okay person after all! Maybe that’s what I needed to realise in order to be ready. In order to believe she might want to meet me.

Now I’ve written that down I’m having second thoughts, perhaps I’m deluding myself. How can you ever be ready to find the woman who carried you in her body for nine months and then 'gave you away'? How can a human being be given away?

wednesday
Check my email in the morning as usual, no thoughts of adoption in my head. Jump at the word Morris in the subject line. They’ve found me already! Don’t be stupid, calm down, maybe someone knows someone who knows someone who knows…………It's from Bob.
I don’t know anyone called Bob so guess it’s someone who saw my message on the adoption notice board, it is.

Hi Emma
I have an oldish version of Info-Disk which is a CD-ROM containing
names/addresses based on our electoral register. I think the data is from 1997 so is at least 2/3 years old. I have listed all Tom Morris’ and Mary Morris’ that I can find.

The lists are below - there are no phone numbers but you can
always check the BT site for them.
Regards, Bob

So this is how you start searching. I’m so excited. I've looked at the list and there are over 500 Toms! My Dad has two middle names the first starts with A the second with E but which one would he have used? There are 37 Tom A's but none in East Sussex where I was born. Then there are 25 Toms with the initial E. It’s a pity they only register one initial. So where to from here? I guess write to all the Tom A’s first? 

I wrote an email thanking Bob and told him I’ll keep him posted.

thursday
Checked my email - there’s another one with adoption in the subject line, again from someone I don’t know.

Hi Emma, I had a look on the electoral roll for any Tom and Mary Morris’ living together. I could only find one and they live at 31, Chester Rd, Kidderminster. They both are listed with middle name initials if that is any help. Mary’s is S and James’ is E. Obviously a long time has passed and the connection between Brighton and Kidderminster looks dubious, but it is worth giving it a try. I hope this info helps you.
Regards Mark.

I’m amazed at people’s kindness, two people I don’t know helping me out. Now this is exciting there can’t be too many Tom and Mary Morris’ living together – (well according to the electoral role only one). I'll write to them even though the initials for Mary are wrong, my mother's second name is Barbara, but maybe it's just a typing error afterall I make them all the time. I wonder what to write? Do I say who I am or fabricate some story? I could say I’m an old school friend of Mary’s. That won’t work I don’t even know which school she went to! I will have to ask someone what to do.

My birth parents got married when my mum was 18, two days before my second birthday. When I saw their marriage certificate last year at St Catherine’s house in London, all I could think about was how could they get married so close to my birthday. How could they do that? How could they celebrate? Had they forgotten me? Later I realised that I might have full siblings, brothers and sisters that look like me! I was excited about that. On the certificate it says my mum was a shorthand typist and my dad a painter and decorator. I used to be a painter and decorator. The adoption papers say he has gold hair and blue eyes, I take after him in that too. It also says he was ‘good looking’. They didn’t say it about my mother. Is she ugly? Who was judging? Then it says ‘Tom was stated to be irresponsible’. What does that mean? He didn’t use a condom?

Now I’ve written about it I can’t get away from the idea that they forgot about me. I rang Christopher. He said no one forgets. But that people can be hypnotised by society. They are told that they will soon forget. How else could you persuade mothers to give up their babies? Social workers probably say it thinking they are easing the mother’s transition into being a mother without her baby. But the effect is to make any grief they do feel taboo. It would be too easy to think there must be something wrong with you to be feeling so sad when you've been told over and over that mothers soon forget. Who do you turn to? Not your family who wouldn’t support you to keep your baby in the first place..... Your boyfriend trying not to feel his own grief? Your friends? Who could understand except other birth mothers who did the same as you, but how do they get together when they are all supposed to have forgotten and be getting on with their lives? And then how do you handle the fact that you're relieved as well. Relieved that you can go back to school and hang out with your friends. Relieved that your parents seem to have forgiven you or at least they've stopped looking at you in that funny way. And then there's the guilt they simply forgot to mention that at all. It's the future that has to be looked to not the past, the gain for the new family not the loss for the birth mother or her child.

Of course I was told by my new parents that I'd been chosen and that meant I was special. How come I never felt special then? So many adopted children are told the same thing in the hope that it’ll distract them from the realisation that someone appears not have wanted them. So many images of parents-to-be wandering down rows of cots peering in at the tiny babies until they see one that feels special, the one they simply can't leave behind. Later I found out it wasn't even true. My Dad said that he and Aline (my dead mother) were told by the adoption agency that just because they got a boy the first time they adopted they mustn’t expect a blue-eyed fair-haired girl this time. "Well", my dad said, "when we turned up who were we given but you with blonde hair and blue eyes", he chuckled at this memory while the lie that I had been chosen seeped out of my body leaving me empty but still smiling at my father. They just wanted a baby, not me, any baby would have done. Although of course when birth parents want a child they are not actually wanting you in particular! They just want their own child. A baby. Even when it's their own it's not always the one they wished for. My step mother's father wanted a boy and she grew up knowing he was disappointed in her. A disappointment to someone she adored. He had no time for any of his children until fourth time lucky a boy was born and for the first time he celebrated.

friday
I got up late and wondered what time I was separated from my mother? Was it in the morning? I always feel terrible in the mornings. It would be more likely to be the morning than the evening. And then what? Did my new parents come and collect me from the hospital waiting room soon after? Or was I fostered? Taken to a children’s home perhaps? Who touched me during the time I wasn’t with my mother or my new parents? Who came to me when I cried?