Paige didn’t even know that searching for her birth family was an option until she learned about it on local tv as an adult. The topic of adoption was closed her whole life, partially because of how her parents understood and portrayed her closed adoption to her. Fortunately, Ohio law allowed her to access her original birth certificate (OBC). Receiving personal information about herself ignited a passion to learn more and set her off on a voyage of discovery. Paige was lucky to find her birth father’s name in the papers, a which doesn’t always happen for adoptees in that era. She connected with him one time, then he vanished. When he resurfaced, Paige was able to complete her journey because he had finally decided to be honest with his family about his past.

The post 043 – When I Looked At Him, I Could See Things About Me appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Paige (00:05):

And I just knew don't push certain buttons. It's not worth it. There's no point in making a 78 year old guy embarrassed about something from 1961. That's right. Now he married the right person for him.

Damon (00:27):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Paige. She lives outside of Cincinnati, Ohio growing up Paige, never talked about her adoption with anyone. The topic of adoption was closed partially because of how her parents understood and portrayed her closed adoption to her. But as a young married woman, she saw on TV that Ohio actually did allow her to access her original birth certificate, receiving personal information about herself, ignited a passion to learn more and set her off on a voyage of discovery. Paige was lucky to find her birth father's name in the papers, which doesn't always happen for adoptees. In that era. She connected with him one time. Then he vanished when he resurfaced, Paige was able to complete her journey because he had finally decided to be honest with his family about his past. This is Paige's journey. Paige was born in Ohio in March of 1961. Her understanding is her birth mother went into labor early. So after her birth, she spent a month in an incubator before being adopted. 13 months later,

Paige (01:56):

I was born in Ohio at, at the time. Um, and my parents didn't my parents who raised me, did not understand the law really well, or it was one of those, you know, how people hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see and think what they want to think. Their understanding. I don't believe they lied to me in any kind of direct way. Their understanding of the law was since it was a closed adoption, that meant I could never, ever in my entire life of lives ever find them because it was closed the way the law in Ohio was. And my parents didn't bother to keep up on these things because they basically got what they wanted and were like, we're done. We're done here. Right? Um, law in Ohio at the time was changed in 1964. The records were open.

Paige (02:47):

Now. I wouldn't have been able to get them until I was in adult, but the records were open. Some law was passed at some point that made it so that as long as you were born prior to January of 1964, your records were open when you were an adult. So since I was born before that time, I was able to get my records eventually. Now I never knew that because I trusted what my parents said until I realized, Oh, they see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. And then I'll ask a lot of questions and you know, me growing up in the sixties and the seventies and part of the eighties is question everything, listen to rock and roll and question everything.

Damon (03:32):

Paige talked a little bit about her adoption and her childhood. She highlighted that adoption was a closed topic in her home. So she was left to develop her own understanding about what adoption means by herself, without adult support and guidance. She says her parents were operating under the assumption that they were not able to conceive. Her father had been in the army and test suggested he wouldn't be able to reproduce. So he wrote himself off from becoming a father. Naturally,

Paige (03:59):

they go get married. They think they can't conceive. And they decide when it's time that they want to have a kid, they go out and adopt me. And then six years later, they have my brother biologically.

Damon (04:14):

And what did they do for you? Do you remember that? Like, did you always know you were adopted and then what did it mean when your mom was pregnant?

Paige (04:21):

I knew I was adopted and I had a rough idea what it meant as a kid, as it, especially as a small kid, I kind of equated it to like, Oh, like when you went in, you picked out a puppy out of the litter and we got a dog, you know? Yeah. And then, you know, say that sometimes the joke is the fastest way to conception is go adopt a kid. So they're, you know, there we got my brother. So I knew that he was coming into the world in a different way than I did. And I think one of the hardest things was all the people who went and on and on and you know, Hey, there's the miracle of life be. He's a boy, carry on the family name, you know, see, it makes my dad look like a big macho man. Cause he of all things, he produced a guy too, you know, they told me I couldn't have any and I'm irritable and all the talk about how much he looked like everybody ancestor people, grandparents, great grandparents.

Paige (05:19):

He looked like my daddy, my mom had this. He had that, his toe looked like this. You know, his lip looked like that, all these things. And I'm just sitting here, like what about me? Um, yeah, he gets born, but at least they bring me a present. I rather had been told how much I looked like somebody and knew it was the truth. Then be handed whatever little gift thing but yeah, I did get some presents when he was born. But yeah, I, I would have rather have been a biologically born natural kid. Born like everybody else. I, there was no kid to my knowledge because nobody talked about it back then. No kid in my school or my neighborhood or anywhere else in the family. That was an adopted kid that I could hang out with or bond with or discuss with not around.

Damon (06:11):

Yeah. No topic is off the table. Back then

Paige (06:14):

the topic was off the table. Right, right. So yeah, even if they were, we were all like people under undercover yet out in the open, you know, there was just nobody I could talk to about it.

Damon (06:31):

Paige chose to shut down her thoughts about her adoption. She chose to fake it til she made it as she put it. She didn't talk to anyone about adoption at all. Not even her closest girlfriends. And she developed a bit of a shame in her mind being an adoptee. She felt weird and isolated sometimes partially because there were also no other children in their family at all, just Paige and her brother, her mother was an only child. So there were no aunts and uncles and therefore, no first cousins, her dad had one sister who had a baby, but the baby died. The first person Paige told about her adoption was her high school, sweetheart. Who's now her husband, Paige was adamant that she could only marry a guy who would accept her as an adoptee.

Paige (07:16):

Yeah. We were seniors in high school and kind of going through that whole senior year. And what if we never see each other again, stuff. And you know, we were in love and all those things, you know, and we were riding around in his car and I thought, well, yeah, this is going to make or break the relationship. Cause I thought it's up to that point. Any other guy? It was almost my truth meter. You know, it was the one little benefit that came out of it was like, if I'll never tell a guy that's not, the guy want to marry, you know, I will never get married before I tell anybody. And I didn't even want to have a kid if my own, I had no motivation for any of that, um, for, for years. Um, but I thought when I, when I met him, I was like, if there is any guy in this world that I will ever marry, this is the guy that it's going to be.

Paige (08:10):

Because if I can't tell them the truth about being adopted, well, you can't have a baby with somebody and all of a sudden bammo you have no family history. You know, I'm sure people have done it, but I, I couldn't do that. So it was like, you know, this is the deal maker or breaker with this guy. And he was like, well, I got two adopted first cousins, no big deal in my family. But I was like, but it's a big deal to me. So don't even tell your mom and dad, I don't want anybody to know because they'll ask me dumb questions that I can't answer. They'll treat me funny. They'll look at me sideways. I know. I don't want anybody to know. So he was like, okay, you know, whatever you want, I'll never say a word. I'll never bring it up. So the only reason I'm telling you is because we're kind of like at this point in the relationship, you know, and then that was that. So, you know, yeah. We go through

Damon (08:57):

test him kind of like it,

Paige (08:58):

it was like a test. It was a guy test. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He passed. He passed.

Damon (09:07):

Paige said that in 1987, she was at home with her husband watching a local television program. The IRA Joe Fisher show, when a commercial came on, promoting the show, it advertised that the next episode would feature adoptees and a social worker. She said, watching that show triggered her curiosity. It provided a mailing address in Columbus, Ohio to apply, to receive her birth certificate. Paige was confused because her parents led her to believe that a closed adoption truly meant closed.

Paige (09:37):

I was like, but my parents said my adoption was closed and I couldn't do this. But the TV they're saying it doesn't matter. Your record is open as far as Columbus goes, cause you're an adult. So the lady on the show that they interviewed was a lady running a support group here in town for Cub concern, United birth parents. We had nothing for uniquely adoptees, but Cub was covering everybody that wanted to come. And it was adoptive parents, birth parents adopted people. So I went to a meeting and they were like, write to this address, send them a copy of your social security number and your driver's license copy. And you know, your marriage license. Do they see your name change when you got married, they'll send it all to you. $20 check. So I did. And a month later I got my paperwork and I opened that I had in there, there was a copy of my amended birth certificate that looked like the one my parents raised me had.

Paige (10:35):

And then there was the amended one and the decree of adoption in there. Then there was a name change form that said they were changing my name from what my birth mother had originally planned to name me to what my parents have raised me, decided they wanted to name me instead. So I'll tell you, this is really weird. I had this really spooky feeling like somebody was watching me. I felt for lack of a better term, spooky ghosty. When I opened that thing, like who's what's going on here? You know, who's watching me. I mean, it was, it was, it was creepy. Yeah. It felt like something wrong yet. Not wrong. It was going on. Yeah.

Damon (11:13):

Do you think you had that feeling because you had just not been able to openly talk about your adoption, so going seemingly behind your parents' back, I guess.

Paige (11:22):

Yeah, it was, it was a forbidden thing. What I've been told was forbidden my whole life and here I've got the power of God in my hands for the most part, you know, and my birth father, his name was on my birth certificate. Usually the birth mothers never put the man's name on there, especially if they don't want any the man to have anything to do with it. Or if they are mad or feel cheated by the birth father. And the people at Cubs said, well, if she wrote his name on there, she probably, you know, wanting to have a relationship with them and attached to him in some kind of way. If she, she felt she had nothing to hide by putting his name on there. So I'm like, Hmm.

Damon (12:05):

Paige was a school teacher. So while she acquired her personal information in April during the school year, she was way too busy to start a search until her summer break until then her mind wandered. And she racked her brain to try to remember if she had taught any children over the years with either her birth mother or birth father's last names. It's one of those things we adopt these do. Sometimes when we get a little bit of information we search for even the tiniest connection to where we might have crossed paths with someone we're biologically related to in our past, back in the late 1980s, there were no internet searches. So Paige investigation into her biological family required patients. She scoured library microphages and made long distance phone calls on old school landlines.

Paige (12:49):

Yeah, 1987, I ran up a $360 phone bill making some long distance phone calls, which I guess would be about 800 bucks in today's money.

Damon (12:58):

She even requested courthouse records. Fortunately Paige had her birth father's first and last name. And with the luck of accurate information in those records, she found him in no time,

Paige (13:09):

you know? So I go down there and start looking and I found him lickety split, mainly because he's a man and men don't change your last name when they get married most of the time. And then once he has housing address, when he bought a real house, his wife still owns the house today. I mean, they've been in that house 50 something years. Wow. So I found him first and what I learned just from the way I snooped. It took three days to make sure I had the right guy and all my facts about him because...