Adoption and Me
Chosen and Loved
I am adopted. I have always known I am adopted. Being adopted has been as much apart of me as my green eyes and straight hair. It is something I have accepted without question. It is only recently, as my interest in genealogy has deepened, that I've had any desire to learn of my origins.
My parents, Frank and Ruth Donovan, married somewhat late in life. With little chance of having children of their own, they decided to adopt. So, they contacted the Catholic Charitable Bureau (as it was known then) of Boston in Massachusetts. After undergoing several interviews and filling out the required application and forms, they anxiously sat back to wait.
It was July 8th, nine months after their second wedding anniversary that they received the telephone call that they had been awaiting. A healthy, alert, baby girl of three months could be theirs if they would come to the office. When they arrived and were brought to see the child, the baby smiled up at them and they knew she was the one for them!
As a child, I never tired of hearing the story of my adoption. It was like a wonderful fairy tale and made me feel very special. My mother penned new words to the song Grandfather's Clock which let me know how happy they were to have me as their child. She would sing it to me whenever I asked. I grew up knowing I was not only chosen, but loved.
Perhaps it was due to my comfort with being an adoptee that it did not seem urgent to seek out the people who were responsible for my existence. I had two wonderfully loving parents and a supportive extended family -- why should I seek my birth parents? It was only when I began genealogical research that I began to realize that, interesting as my adoptive family is, there was another family to which I had blood ties.
As I documented the marriages of my cousins and the births of their children, I became increasingly aware of the physical similarities of the cousins. There was no mistaking they were all part of the same family. I began to wonder if there was someone in the world who looked like me!
Amazingly, I did bear a resemblance to my adoptive father. We would chuckle when people would remark that I was truly his daughter. And, in all respects, except biological, I was. However, it was that genetic link that was becoming more troubling to me. Still, I had no great urge to find my birth parents.
Then, one sunny summer afternoon while sitting under the shade trees of my aunt's back yard, she asked me why I was researching this family. Why not trace my own family? She told me that the laws regulating closed adoption records in the state had been revised. During the times that I had wondered about my origins, I had never considered that I might have my own family or be able to find it! I began to wonder if the knowledge long denied me might now be available and provide me with answers to the growing questions about my birthright.
