If You Could See Me Now. Michael Mewshaw

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Sometimes has hives

      Good health

      College graduate & graduate school in Law & CPA

      Government advisor and consultant

       Mother

      53 years old 5'4" tall

      124 pounds Reddish brown hair Brown eyes Medium coloring Allergic to fish and coffee College and Graduate school Judge—news field—real estate—acting Brother

      25 years old 5'11" tall

      165 pounds Black hair Hazel/green eyes Medium coloring Good bone structure but light weight In college

       birth father

      27 when you were born Born in Texas Caucasian: German/English

      6'2" tall

      180 pounds Good build Brown hair Brown eyes Medium coloring College graduate Advertising business

      No known medical problems in the family

      Good health

      Protestant

      Single

       family

       Father

      About 58 years old

      5'8" tall

      Grey hair

      Brown eyes

      Medium coloring

      Military career

       Mother

      About 50 years old

      5'3" tall

      118 pounds Dark brown hair Brown eyes Medium coloring

      Junior College

      Homemaker Sister

      29 years old 5'2" tall Petite build Brown eyes Auburn hair Ivory coloring Junior College Homemaker Four children

      I read and reread the pages, testing the meaning of individual sentences and phrases, scanning lines as though they were modern poetry that almost completely eluded interpretation. In some ways, it was a bit like reading my own obituary or thumbing through a diary kept by a coldly objective acquaintance. It bristled with double-bladed statements, some of them stingingly painful even at this remove in time.

      "Your birth mother felt that your birth father got her pregnant with the hope of pressuring her into marrying him. . . . The personality traits that were most unattractive to your birth mother about your birth father were that he was not a creative or spontaneous person. . . . Her boyfriend, not the birth father, came to California with her, expecting to marry her and help her through her pregnancy. . . . The decision to place you for adoption was made harder for your birth mother because of three proposals of marriage. . . . Your birth mother was quite sure what she wanted to do with her life. She did plan to go to Europe with her grandmother, your great grandmother, after returning home."

      But perhaps the most startling aspect of this supposedly "nonidentify

      ing information" was the voluminous amount it divulged about Amy's birth mother and father and their families. The physical descriptions of her biological parents may not have been much help in her search. But the high-profile professions of Amy's grandparents—a top assistant to a U.S. cabinet member, a judge, a retired two-star general—might have suggested that all these people resided in Washington, D.C., or its suburbs.

      This was an impression that could only be reinforced by the fact that the birth mother had been a runner-up to Miss Maryland.The rules of the Miss America pageant stipulate that contestants have to be residents of the state they represent.This narrowed the search to Maryland. More crucially, given the mother's age at the time of Amy's birth, an investigator could focus on a few years of the Miss Maryland pageant and zero in on a handful of runners-up.

      Had the Children's Home Society revealed this inadvertently? I wondered. Or did it regard arranging reunions as its current mission?

      Yet, to my amazement, with so much information at her disposal, Amy had somehow taken a false turn that had led her first to Karen and only then to me.The giveaway details about her birth mother appeared not to have influenced her at all.While I now accepted that Amy was probably the person she claimed to be, I still didn't care to admit anything until I had spoken to her adoptive mother.

       C h a p t e r F o u r

      Now in her late sixties, remarried and residing in one of the most distant exurbs of Los Angeles, Mrs.Woodson (as I'll call her) was more than willing to answer my questions. Some adoptive mothers might be hurt that a child had decided to reconnect with her biological family, and jealous or resentful of a man reappearing after the hard work of child-rearing had been finished. But Mrs. Woodson was thoroughly positive, warm and outgoing, and took obvious pride in talking about her daughter.As she recounted how she and her first husband, George, had adopted Amy, the full story required her to tell how they had adopted their first child, a son named Jeff, who had been born four years before Amy and on the same day, Christmas Eve.

      "In 1960, we did some research," Mrs.Woodson said, "and learned about the Adoption Institute, which was supposed to have the shortest waiting period for prospective parents. I remember we went to an orientation session, and people at the agency advised us of possible prob lems such as the adopted child might have health issues. And they emphasized that as husband and wife we had to be in this together.We both had to want it, which George and I did. So we completed the forms and expected it could be a year or more before they finished the home visits and verified our financial situation and our employment history and interviewed our families and friends, then found a baby for us. George and I had both had top-secret clearance from the National Security Agency—he used to be a cryptographer and I had been in the navy— and this process reminded me of that.They didn't ask how many times a week we had sex, but they wanted to know our religious beliefs, and they interviewed our neighbors, asking was there anything they knew that might make us unfit parents.

      "I guess we passed because after only four months the Adoption Institute called to say they had a baby boy.Would we like to see it and decide whether we wanted it? I thought that was strange. It sounded so cold. Like we were comparison shopping. But I fell in love the instant I saw Jeff."

      A couple of years later when she and George decided to adopt a second child, Mrs.Woodson had no preference, but George had his mind set on a daughter. A girl baby was available in 1962, but Mrs.Woodson had just had a hysterectomy and felt weak and fragile."I just didn't think I could handle it then. It was terrible to think I might not have another chance."

      By 1964, when she felt well enough to cope with a baby, the Adoption Institute had folded and its records had been transferred to the Children's Home Society of California. So the Woodsons made an application there and started the familiar ritual of interviews, home visits and background checks.This time, the agency had another source of information about the Woodsons. Jeff, now going on four, got to give his opinion of their parenting skills. Again, they must have passed, as Mrs. Woodson СКАЧАТЬ