The secret she kept 44 years -- it was a boy
Lilmtncbn
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051016/NEWSREC0101/510160308
Lorraine Ahearn: The secret she kept 44 years -- it was a boy
Article published Oct 16, 2005
Some other time, some other place, they might have rejoiced at the news
and tied a blue ribbon to the mailbox or a balloon proclaiming, "It's a
boy!"
But the only announcement of this birth would be an anonymous,
long-distance phone call and the cryptic voice of a stranger talking in
code to Nancy McFall's parents.
"The blue package," the voice said, "arrived safely."
It was 1959, and out-of-wedlock births were shrouded in as much secrecy
as Cold War espionage. Pregnant at 16, McFall had been whisked off to a
home for unwed mothers, across the state line, away from prying
neighbors and relatives in the small town of South Hill, Va.
Other than her parents, she hadn't breathed a word to anyone -- not her
best friend, not even the father of the baby, her fiance at the time.
Living at a Salvation Army home near Duke, she would exchange letters
with her mother, but always through an address in Atlanta. There,
someone would put the letter in another envelope and forward it on,
lest anyone back in South Hill find out.
"It was a small town, and it thrived on gossip. That's an ugly thing to
say, but it's true. There were no secrets," McFall said the other day.
"This was a sin. The worst possible sin. I would have been a bad girl,
a slut. My parents said if anyone found out, my life would be ruined."
So after giving birth at Duke and getting three days to spend with her
baby, McFall signed "relinquishment" papers for the child to be adopted
through the Children's Home Society in Greensboro.
And then she put it behind her, supposedly. She broke things off with
her fiance, and her mother had her burn any pictures or letters the
couple had shared. For years, she never attended high school reunions,
for fear that someone would ask about why she left town.
She married, moved with her husband's Army career, became a nurse, had
two daughters, went on with her life. But instead of the secret
becoming a lighter burden, it grew heavier.
For instance, there was each Sept. 14, her son's birthday. And each
time she saw a boy his age, older by the year. And the day she
accompanied a married friend who was adopting a child -- a boy, as fate
would have it -- McFall wore a frozen smile.
Finally, in the still of one evening in early 2004 at her home in
Danville, Va., well after McFall's parents had taken her secret to
their graves, the phone rang.
At first, she thought it was a telemarketer seeking donations. Then the
name registered, crashing in on her -- the Children's Home Society. The
son she gave birth to 44 years ago had won a court order for the agency
to call McFall. He wanted to meet his birth mother.
"To say I went all to pieces would be putting it mildly," McFall said.
"I said, 'My husband, nobody in the world knows about this.' "
On the other end of the line, the voice of veteran social worker Edith
Votta was calm. There was a reason McFall's son had been granted an
exception to North Carolina's closed adoption law, the nation's
strictest.
"He has health issues."
Who knows how long he sat there staring at her picture in the yearbook
-- Parkview High School, Class of 1958?
Two years and $10,000 spent searching, paying private detectives,
fantasizing about how this story would end, had all led Earl Moore to
the public library in South Hill.
>From a shelf of forgotten high school annuals people had donated, he
guessed at the year, and sure enough, there was the name, below the
most familiar looking stranger he had ever seen. He enlarged the
picture on the library photocopier before he left.
Then he changed his mind.
"I'd like to make a donation to the library. Here's fifty bucks," he
told the librarian, then tucked the yearbook under his arm and walked
out, headed next to the county courthouse.
Finding the marriage license, her address, the names of her other
children -- all that turned out to be the easy part. The fact was, she
didn't want to meet him. She had answered the health questions about
their shared history of hypertension. But as for that wall erected back
in 1959 when the case was sealed, McFall had no wish to remove it.
"For our health," she wrote in response to a letter Moore sent her --
once again, through an intermediary -- "it would be better if we didn't
communicate any further."
So this would have to do. A yearbook picture, a look at her handwriting
on the marriage license, a drive by her house in Danville, just for
curiosity.
What did he want from her, after all? It wasn't money. He'd been
successful down in Georgia, owned a couple of Best Westerns and some
Zaxby's restaurants in Asheville.
Nor did he want to shame her for giving him away. He was a big boy now.
And looking back on it, the teenage girl in the yearbook photo had done
the right thing. The Children's Home Society had placed him with good
parents. He had a great childhood, always felt wanted.
Still, even before they told him at age 12 that he was adopted, he'd
always harbored questions. He had red hair and freckles, but his mother
had olive skin. His adoptive parents, long dead now, had been old
enough to be his grandparents. And he never clicked with his father.
They were wired differently, like an Apple and an IBM.
For adopted children such as Moore -- one of an estimated 6 million in
the secretive years between 1939 and 1972 -- the story of the stork
delivering babies isn't all that far-fetched.
"I remember being in big crowds and thinking, 'What would she look
like?' It was always the great unknown. And the not knowing angered me
and frustrated me."
But that was that, he figured. After he got McFall's final letter of
rejection, he took the yearbook photo to a restoration artist, who made
an oil painting out of it using the "unidentifying information" the
adoption papers gave about his mother -- her auburn hair, her hazel
eyes.
Then one day, browsing on the Internet, he read an article about new
research being done on the genetic bond between mothers and babies.
Blood work had revealed a fact researchers at first thought couldn't be
possible: For many decades after giving birth, a woman carries in her
bloodstream immature white cells of her baby.
There it was -- a two-way bond, the blood flowing both ways. She wasn't
just a fantasy in an oil painting.
Maybe she had the same instinctive longings, the unfulfilled connection
that left such a void in his life.
He mailed her one more letter, his last shot. First, he had friends
critique it, and he even brought it to a psychologist to read. It was
only one page, but according to the log in his computer, it took him
912 minutes and 12 revisions to write.
It was his masterpiece.
She's 64 now. She nursed her father and her mother before they died.
She goes to church and to the beauty parlor, keeps a tidy house, looks
after her grandson in the mornings. Hers is a quiet, respectable life.
But something was never quite right, and her daughters sensed it. It
was sadness, something guarded and off-limits. She started seeing a
therapist in the next town over. Her parents' lingering deaths just a
year apart had taken a toll, the family assumed.
The truth? The therapist's office was where Earl's letters from Georgia
went. When McFall read the last one, the one he spent 912 minutes
writing, she had no choice. She called. They talked for two hours. She
had to see him, even knowing her family would disown her.
Then again, there's what you know and what you fear. She tried to break
it gently to her husband, Mac, then just blurted it out, 44 years of
anguish spilling out at once.
Compose yourself, he told her.
"I am not going to 'compose' myself. I have been composed for 44
years," she answered. "I'm through with the lies and the secrets."
Between sobs, she heard something.
"Nancy," her husband said. "Nothing has changed."
He even goes with her to the meetings at the Children's Home Society in
Greensboro, like the one last week where they screened "Loggerheads,"
the new movie set in North Carolina, about a biological mother
struggling against the arcane, vault-tight state laws to locate her
birth son.
And for once, the real-life story turns out better than the movie. They
take vacations together, talk on the phone every day, though at first,
Earl didn't know what to call Nancy McFall. "I don't care what you call
me," she said, "so long as you call."
Two weeks ago, Earl Moore had a heart attack -- a mild one, with a good
prognosis. His wife happened to be out of town. Scared, he dialed the
number in Danville.
"I just wanted to talk to my mama," he said.
She and Mac were getting in the car. He shouldn't worry. They would be
right down.
Who Cares
Thank you for sharing.
"Lilmtncbn" <lilm...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1129465658....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Julia
><sniff sniff>
Fabulous story Lil. A lovely way to start my morning :-)
Julia