Growing up Deaf - Part 4

Adoption part 3 - Birth mom and I meet

We met up at her place in Arizona a few months later. The reunion was nice and quiet, one long hug in the baggage claim in the airport. Her husband has said I'm like a son to him. He's taken me on buggy rides through off-road trails in the Arizona desert.

Shortly after our second or third visit, her previous husband, my birth dad, called her and they talked for awhile. I'd still like to get together with him sometime, somehow. Through her current marriage, I have three stepsisters, and a few others that I've not yet met. Unfortunately, due to other circumstances, she and her husband are now divorced.

Through all this, adoptive mom has been very supportive.

A couple interesting things I found since moving to the DC area. When adoptive mom was in DC a few years ago, she mentioned that my first adoptive dad, the California highway patrol officer, has his name listed in the National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial. He's buried in another state. I looked around and found a brochure on the Memorial and found it was on top of the Washington Metro's Judicial Square stop. She hasn't been there with me yet. When birth mom was in DC for a conference, we went to where her parents, who would have been my grandparents, are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

I've been to both places. The first time I visited, I wasn't able to leave either place with dry eyes.

I know many other deaf people have tried finding their birthparents. What were your experiences when you found them or they found you?

Next - Hearing loss diagnosis.

Growing up Deaf - Part 3

Adoption part 2 - Birth mom finds me.

My birth mom beat me to the punch by finding me first, shortly after 9/11. Shortly after that, my Geo Metro was totalled after returning from an event in the late evening. It had 166,500 miles on it. Someone went in front of me at an intersection and I hit their rear passenger door. I wasn't injured, thankfully, despite the 35mph hit and things from the back coming forward. I managed to stop at the intersection's corner, engine fluids leaking a path. As I got out of the car, someone asked me how I was. "I'm fine. The car ain't." Exiting the car, I found my fire extinguisher got stopped by a few things, resting between my headrest and side of car. It could have been painfully worse.

As it turns out, I wasn't at fault, since I had the green light. I had no chance to avoid them. For some strange reason, they were parallel to and just about on the white stop lines in my travel lanes. Going into the median or or down a hill on the intersection's corner probably would have been worse.

The accident was a major factor that got me deciding what I was going to be doing next. Was I going to attend two local training programs, the local community college, or Gallaudet? The local community college won out since my applications to the training programs were lost in the mail when the anthrax attacks hit DC. One could say it was an interesting time for me.

I received something in the mail forwarded to me from adoptive mom in KY, since I had moved to VA a year earlier. It was from an investigative agency in Texas that said my birth mom had been searching for me and had certain pieces of information about me at birth. Responding to it via email, the investigator put me in touch with her.

After a couple emails, I asked her a few questions that only she would know. She answered them accurately. When I told adoptive mom about it, she said she nearly threw away that piece of mail. Had she done so, birth mom and I most likely would never have found each other, or we would have given more time. When I mentioned my hearing loss, it didn't matter to her. All she wanted to do was find her long-lost son and she did.

(Note: Rather than weekly serial posts, I'll be posting twice a week. If I get enough requests, three a week.)

Next - Birthmom and I meet.

Growing up Deaf - Part 2

My Adoption

Up to my birth, birth mom was, in her words, a recluse in her home, going out for her classes and meals. She took vitamins and that kind of thing. All this most likely kept her healthy enough to keep us from having rubella. Unfortunately, she gave me up for adoption right after birth. Even worse, her mother, who would have been my grandmother, never approved of her marriage to my birthdad. Birth mom and dad were students at a local community college.

It was two months later when my adoptive parents took me home. Adoptive dad was a California highway patrol officer who passed away in the line of duty a year later and it made front-page news. Then adoptive mom married my second dad and they were married for nearly 25 years until his passing in 1990 in Kentucky. She attended a grief support group, and met someone there. They were married for nearly two years til he passed away of a recurring illness.

I'm wondering how my life would have been different had birth mom not given me up for adoption. Would my health have been better? Would I have been hearing rather than deaf? What would I be doing now?

Adoptive mom had told me around a younger age about my adoption. Fortunately, she had all the papers and I went through them many times over the years. I didn't start searching til much later. I spent a little time at the library and the bookstore doing some searches including online searches. That plus some via email, but this one person wanted a bit too much money to check some things. Every time I searched, I went a little further than last time since there was more information available.

Fast forward to right after 9/11. Birth mom found me.

Next - How birth mom found me.