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Last summer, Pat Curry had only a single copy of the announcement of her final adoption hearing—more than four decades prior—referencing her as Baby Mitchell. "I knew Mitchell wasn't the name of my birth father, but of the man my mother was separated from when I conceived."
Curry, a journalist from Georgia who has written for USA Weekend, Working Mother, and Consumers Digest, and was named a finalist in the Best Online Article category of the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Awards in 2009, says that single document was, however, enough to launch the search "for my birth parents."
She filed the necessary paperwork with the Florida Post-Adoption Services Unit to request non-identifying information about her birth family, signed up with the state's adoptee reunion registry—where Curry found no matches—and started searching through microfilm of legal ads from 1962, the year her adoption was finalized.
"I got nowhere," she said. Or so she thought.
"Three days before Thanksgiving, a letter arrived in the mail from the Post-Adoption Services Unit. In [that letter] was [another] letter that I've virtually memorized," she says.
"My birth mother was born in the summer of 1936 in a southern state. That meant she was 24 when I was born in September of 1960 in Ft. Myers, Fla. She completed high school and had a six-week course at a business college. Most of her employment was as a cashier or waitress. My birth father was the first of at least three husbands of my birth mother...I was conceived when they met to talk about a reconciliation. When she learned she was pregnant with me, [he] asked to remarry her. She refused his offer because of his excessive drinking and previous abuse when they were married."
And there was more. In the note was this:You have an older half brother, Joseph, who was born in the summer of 1959 and a full sister, Tina, who was born in the summer of 1958.
Curry read the words again, and burst into tears. "I couldn't breathe; I was beyond ecstatic. Not only did I know they existed, I knew their names." She has since learned that like her, one of them was given up for adoption. Their mother was divorced from Mr. Mitchell by the time she was born, and remarried before her adoption was finalized in 1962.
"It has been a heady experience to learn their names and their ages. I have prayed for them by name, asking God to bless them and their families. Just saying their names makes me smile," Curry says, and that she would be doing cartwheels if she knew how.
Learning of the siblings she didn't know she had fueled Curry to continue her search. "If, for whatever reason, they can't handle having a new family member with some odd connections, that's okay. I'd be happy with just knowing that they're happy and healthy. But if they're searching for me, too, I want them to know that I have had a wonderful life—nothing lavish, but certainly nothing lacking—and I am so grateful to our mother for having the strength to make such a hard decision.
About being adopted, she adds, "I don't remember a time when I didn't know I was adopted, and I was made to feel special and cherished. In fact, my adoptive father has dementia now, and he talks about the day they brought me home every time we're together. It clearly is one of his happiest memories."
‘"You were a gift from heaven,' he says."
"I feel the same way these days about my sister and half-brother. I know they're out there and I know their names," Curry says.
Curry recently wrote to tell me she's heading back to Ft. Myers at the end of January to do some more research. "I've been in touch with the pediatrician who took care of me-he has two adopted children and is going to help me get into the records at the hospital I was born at. I'm also going to look for information on my siblings, which I didn't have the last time I was there."
I think this must mean that every step closer is a gift. No matter when or where you begin. That love waits.
Photo credit: Flickr/Susan2008
