David tried to find his birth mother in the early 90’s in California. He received non-identifying information back then, but it wasn’t much to act on at the time. Later, in 2015, motivated by his wife and his “lifetime sister”, he embarked on an intense collaboration with his adoption search angel Priscilla. Together they discovered his mother’s name and her location. David found an incredible photograph of his mother in the public library’s archives and was hopeful he would meet her soon. Unfortunately, he was too late to meet her in person. But in the end, he gained a full blooded sister that he didn’t even know he had. They get along great, and wish that they had grown up together.

The post 015 – We Wish We Could Have Grown Up Together appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

David (00:03):

The very first link I clicked on the screen slowly, you know, was showing an image and it was my mother in her wedding dress. It was the picture from that article. There was a young couple next to me and I just looked over and I said, that's my mom,

Voices (00:26):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon (00:33):

This is Who Am I, Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. Hey, it's Damon. On the show today, I'm joined by David. He grew up in Southern California with one adopted sister whom he lovingly refers to as his lifetime sister. David remembers the day when his family went to pick up Jennifer when she was adopted and they both grew up knowing they were adoptees. He said he didn't really think about his biological family much until one day it just hit him. He didn't know anything about where he was from. His curiosity was peaked and fed by Jennifer's eventual discovery of her own biological father and urging from his wife to keep searching. In the end, David's collaborative teamwork with his adoption search angel, Priscilla, helped him learn more about his mother and father and connect to his biological sister. Here's David's journey.

Damon (01:42):

David grew up in Southern California and was perfectly comfortable with his adoption from an early age, but in his teen years there was a week where everybody was asking him if he was Irish. It turned out his adopted mother had a little bit of confirmation about his original identity.

David (01:58):

Grew up knowing my whole life that I was adopted. You know, I was told I, I don't know exactly at what age, but it was young enough that that's just what I knew and I didn't even know what it really meant quite frankly. I just kind of, I would tell people I'm adopted, you know, there was a period I was working, there was, it was shortly after I graduated high school and I was working at the grocery store as a box boy bagging groceries and stuff and the day shift. And so I'd have a lot of, you know, young mothers with their kids and stuff coming through. And in the period of like one or two weeks, I had three or four different people ask me if I was Irish. And I, I had never given it much thought I was raised Jewish. The family history of my adopted parents on both sides were a Russian immigrant who came to the U.S. Uh, my grandparents. So that was the only history I knew, which of course it wasn't my own personal biological heritage, you know, so I'd never given much thought about, you know, what nationality I was. And so I asked my mother, Hey, you know what, my nationality is? And sure enough, she said, yeah, you're mostly Irish and a little bit German.

Damon (03:15):

is that, right? People who are watching you on the street, we're spot on, huh?

David (03:18):

Yeah, yeah. You know, as a kid, when I thought Irish, I thought of like red-headed freckled and I'm not bad. Yeah, I guess it's Northern Irish. We have the dark hair and it's very common and stuff, but it's just something I really had never given a thought to. So that was kind of fascinating. And I asked my mother if she knew anything else. And again, I'm probably about 18 or 19 at this point. And she said she knew the last name on the birth certificate or whatever was Roby, but she, she said that, I don't think that was actually, you know, anybody related to you? I think it was my mother's first marriage, but she said she knew that I had two older half-brothers from her first marriage, a few years older than me. And I thought, Oh, that's interesting.

Damon (04:05):

How did she know that? Do you know?

David (04:07):

Well, yeah, I found out much later. She actually met my mother in the final signing off on the paperwork after I was born in court, you know, just kind of like formality and that was really all she knew. So that would have been like around 89 no, no. It'd been earlier than that, but yeah. And I couldn't do anything with that. Yeah, I think you had too much thought. Although I do remember one time I, uh, was with some friends and it was a beautiful day and I just kind of got really sad. I had like a whole thing about where the hell did I come from? I just suddenly felt alone in the universe. I felt like I have no idea where the heck I came from. I don't know why it hit me all at once. It was just kind of overwhelming.

Damon (04:55):

Several years later after David married his wife, Diane, she suggested he might want to try to locate his birth mother. I asked David why she made that suggestion and whether he thought she was seeing a need in him to search.

David (05:08):

I'm a musician. I didn't mention that, but I've had some lyrics that I've written, a whole song that wrote, Oh, gave me life, which is about that and some other songs where I've made reference to that. And so maybe that might've been one of the reasons.

Damon (05:24):

So you weren't overtly speaking about it, but your, your lyrics were showing some deep emotion and some thought in the background about it, huh?

David (05:31):

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, my whole childhood, I never thought about it and maybe maybe it was back there, but I really don't have recollection of wondering until you know I was an adult.

Damon (05:42):

Makes perfect sense. So your wife has begun to urge you. What did you think? Were you still in the sort of just like, nah, I'm good. Or did you say, yeah, I'm starting to feel it.

David (05:51):

That's what I did kind of want to find out. And I found an organization in Southern California that helped adoptees and again this is the early nineties so it's preaired internet and really having the ability to do much on your own. But one of the things that they told me is that you can send to the state for non identifying information and you know they told me what to do. I filled out the form and sent it in.

Damon (06:17):

It was the early nineties before internet searches to locate people was as fruitful as they are now. He found that in Southern California he could submit a form to the state to receive his non identifying information. The results he received were fascinating for David. He learned about the makeup of his biological parents families, about some of their hobbies and interests and began to trace traits that he learned about them back to himself. He still didn't know how to find them. Then he got a random clue about his biological mother out of the blue.

David (06:50):

And I got two pages of information, which was actually really valuable information. Although again, at the time there wasn't a lot I could do with it, but it still was fascinating cause it it what it is is this information that both parents fill out and I found out my mother was born in New York, my father was born in Texas and she was one of eight kids and Catholic and it did say Irish. My father was the oldest of five boys, so it's two large families and my family that I grew up with with me and I had a younger sister who was also adopted, my younger sisters, Jennifer, and she was three half years younger than me and I actually remember going to pick her up. It was just kind of cool. Yeah. I just remember kind of getting out of the car in the parking lot and going somewhere. Next thing we know I have a sister.

Damon (07:46):

Wow. And you knew at that time already that you were adopted even though you didn't quite know what it meant, but now you sort of had a personal experience, you watch someone else's adoption happen.

David (07:56):

Exactly. And it was interesting because in addition to that, one of the things that it said was that my parents were not married and they had lived together for a couple of months and decided they were not going to get married and that's the reason they've put me up for adoption. The other thing that was kind of neat was it had it listed their jobs at the time and you know, education, it also had some medical background. It also told their ages that she was 27 when I was born. I think my father was 30 something like that. It also had like, their like hobbies and interests.

Damon (08:34):

Wow.

David (08:35):

My father with sports and playing bridge and building model airplanes.

Damon (08:40):

Oh that's so interesting.

David (08:41):

I've always been into sports, more of a fan that actually a participant and I did play bridge as a kid. Something I learned with my family, but I was really into models. I used to love to build, especially like space models and planes too. So that was kind of interesting. And my mother also was very artistic. She liked to paint and draw and I like to draw and things like that so that, that was kind of neat.

Damon (09:10):

Yeah. And you're an artist as a musician as well, so you're the artistic side of your brain, you know, seems to resonate with your mother's side, huh?

David (09:16):

Yeah. Yeah. And so that was kind of neat to find out. Again, this is like 92 I think. And you know, again, I said I still didn't have any real direction on what to do with this and it was kind of weird. I got a phone call one night from a woman at this organization and she said, your mother's maiden name is Edmondson. And I was like, cause I had never heard that name before.

Damon (09:41):

Right.

David (09:42):

I was like, okay, what's her first name?

Damon (09:45):

Right

David (09:46):

Well, she said,