I didn’t realize the intensity of my feelings about finding my son’s biological father until the day before my wife, our 3 1/2 year old son, and I were to leave on a cross-country drive. I knew that our route would take us through the city where I thought he lived. I also knew his name. What I didn’t know was if he wanted any contact with our family.
On the medical form he generously provided to our lawyer at the time we adopted his infant son, Drew noted that he was open to being found when our son turned eighteen. But half a year later, we received a letter that invited earlier contact. If he could just see and hold Espen once, he wrote, it would give him some peace. Our positive reply generated no further correspondence, and subsequent letters and pictures we sent came back with “no forwarding address” stamped on them. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a message for us.
Contact with Espen’s birthmother has always been open and supportive. How had the situation with Drew become so different? Perhaps his own issues about the adoption played a role. Perhaps the details – largely unknown and uninteresting to me – about the ended relationship with Espen’s birthmother led him to think it was best to withdraw. If he actually did have thoughts like these, they were probably compounded by the fact that ours is a “family adoption” – I’m related to Espen’s birthmother. Perhaps that made him wonder if we were sincerely open to contact with him.
I felt that I had let my son down by losing track of his biological father. Suppose Espen would want to meet Drew later. Could he do that without some persistence on my part now? I had to try to reach him.
So I called, with hope, but also with trepidation. Not only had our letters come back, but my attempts to reach Drew on the phone over the preceding days had been frustrating and unsuccessful. Eventually, though, I got a tip on where he worked, and shortly thereafter, I was speaking with my son’s biological father.
The tone of his voice immediately put to rest my concerns about making an unwelcome intrusion. I heard his excited questions about Espen, and his rushed explanation of how we had fallen out of touch. I heard the pride in his telling of his own marriage and impending fatherhood. And I heard his gratitude when I proposed a meeting.
As two families with a strong mutual interest, namely Espen, our dinner together the next day was comfortable and relaxed, a meeting of new friends. Drew and his wife had some carefully selected gifts for Espen, and we had put together pictures and information that we thought he might like. It was heart-warming to see Drew and Espen interact, even if it suddenly made me feel terribly old to see my little boy fully engaged with a man fifteen years my junior. My normally reticent son and his beloved stuffed Bunny Rabbit were quickly up on Drew’s lap, elaborately recounting the day’s unpleasant driving conditions, enhanced by his vivid three-year-old imagination.
” … and it was so cold that some of the snow was coming down like ice, and then the road got so slippery, and one time we even started to spin around.”
“Wow, Espen, that sounds exciting. Were you scared?”
Espen lowered his voice and leaned in close, as he does for revelations from the heart.
“Not me, but Bunny Rabbit was.”
As my wife and I expected, parentage was never in question that evening. Drew’s comments and actions all revealed respect for our family, and for our role as Espen’s parents. I wanted to acknowledge his role, too. There were times during the dinner when I couldn’t avoid withdrawing to look at Drew for traits that I might see in Espen, either now or later. Of course I noticed the brown eyes and dark wavy hair they share, not to mention the full set of dangerously charming dimples. But, I wondered if parts of Drew’s personality would come through in Espen, too. I’ll feel fortunate if – 20 years hence – I sit at dinner with my son and meet a young man as kind and friendly as the one I watched sitting in front of me on that day.
In my reflections following that dinner on the sometimes confused world of relationships which adoption can create, I find a certain peacefulness in acknowledging that there is another man out there who also my son’s father. Maybe that’s just because a club with two members is much more interesting than a club with only one.
But, I think the peacefulness I experience with this is fundamentally about my adoration for my son, and my desire to be the best father I can for him. Knowing Drew will make me a better father because I’ll be better equipped to talk to Espen about the realities of his situation, if he cares to ask. I’ll be a better adoptive father because I can completely free myself of any small fears I might have unconsciously picked up. The realities of our meeting, with the intuitions one feels through personal contact and the trusting relationship we are building, far outweigh the fear-mongering of over-simplified journalism about adoptions gone wrong, and drown out the voices of prominent but uninformed critics of open adoption.
From the stories I’ve heard about the value adult adoptees place on re-established contact with their biological families, I believe that keeping this door open for Espen will spare him some of the struggles others have had. Now I know that I can facilitate contact between my son and his biological father, should Espen desire it, and I know that he will be met with a safe, genuine, and loving response.
It seems to me especially important that fathers, adoptive and biological, connect, and when that happens, we must tell each other about it. Gender surely does matter in some complex ways. If our wives can best understand and explain to our children the feelings of their birthmothers, perhaps our role as men and fathers includes helping our children understand the actions of their biological fathers, not only the actions to avoid emulating, but also those that deserve praise. Yes, Espen’s birthmother made the mature decisions that shaped his destiny; her involvement with us is incomparably greater than his biological father’s, and it probably always will be. But, Drew could have hindered or blocked Espen’s adoption. Instead, he let Espen become part of our family. He made a choice which has given me the single most satisfying experience of my life, the experience of fatherhood.
Drew thanked me and my wife so much during our meeting that I almost felt guilty, like I did when we first got Espen; it reminded me of that old this-is-too-good-to-be-true feeling which many adoptive parents must recognize. His expressions of gratitude also brought back the conclusion of our conversation on the phone the previous day, when I heard my son’s biological father use the same words he had written to me more than three years earlier.
“One more thing I wanted to say: thanks for being Espen’s Dad.”
You’re welcome, Drew. But, really, thank you.
This piece about adoption is not a usual topic on my blog. It’s therefore located a little differently on the site, but you are absolutely welcome to link to it, refer to it, cite it, or even publish it — with attribution, under the usual Creative Commons conditions. I originally published this in a now defunct adoption magazine called Roots and Wings, in their Fall 1998 issue.
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