The Broncle, a Curious Tale of Adoption and Reunion. Brian Bailie

first name, Dad’s father’s name, is Thomas. A good solid-sounding name, and my grandfather was someone I really admired, (although he died six years before I was born, he’d been a successful entrepreneur and politician and reformer, and everyone who had known him only ever had good things to say about him). My middle name, Mum’s favourite uncle’s name, is Brian. Uncle Brian was a doctor in Comber, and he was also a very popular and well-respected man; everyone loved Dr Brian Henry.

      But despite owning two precious family names, I still don’t feel like a Brian, or a Tom or Tommy or Thomas. I don’t know what name would suit me. I ask my Claire what she thinks, and (guess what) she says I look like a Brian, (she’s obviously still blinded by infatuation).

      You know the way most people look like their name? Well, personally that never worked for me, I think. And then I finally discover the names my birth-mother chose for me, and I’m so disappointed. Eric James? Eric Adair sounds like a geeky technical manager, thin hair and thick glasses (no offence intended to balding, bespectacled technicians), but it’s just not me. James, Jim, Jimmy; that’s not me either. I’ve never felt like an Eric or a James (and I don’t feel like an Adair, either). (Pillow talk with my Claire, I asked her if I looked like a Jim Adair: that woke her up, laughing.)

      If you had to pick your own name, what would you choose? Chances are that you’re happy with what you’ve got. I don’t think mine is a problem with being adopted, or with adopting another family’s choice of names for me. My brother has a great name: ‘Paul’ is such a clean sounding, honest and reliable name; ‘Brian’ sounds like a henchman.

      Names are important to me. When our kids were born, Claire and I took a long time to consider good names for each of them. Claire wanted to call our first boy Brian, but (yes, you guessed it) I wouldn’t have it; so we sort of way named him after her, and he’s called Blair. Then we had a daughter, and I agreed to do the same sort of thing and we named her after me, and she’s called Briar. Then, when we found out that our third child was going to be a boy we had a couple of months to think of a name. I wanted to give him a manly yet gentle-sounding Celtic name, and we eventually chose to name him Bowen.

      Our kids tell us that they love their names, and sure enough they all look like their names suit their personalities. But I don’t feel like I suit Thomas or Brian, or Eric or James. At school I was called Bailie, which would’ve been okay had it been pronounced “Bay-Lee”, however a typical Ulster accent pronounces the name more like, “Bee-Alee”, and I didn’t like that either.

      I was so disappointed when I saw what my birth-mother had chosen for me; perhaps she knew it didn’t matter because my names would be changed anyway. I don’t know what I was hoping for, I’ve yet to hear a name that I’d like to go by. (I know, stop moaning about it – it’s just a name.)

      Our birth-mother had named Hilary, ‘Emily’. Hilary likes that name, and she prefers it to Hilary.

      Hilary had been corresponding with our birth-mother through a social worker since 1993. She had shown me the letters from our birth-mother, and the photographs. The letters were short generalised chit-chat, but the photographs spoke a thousand words and fascinated us the most, and we examined every detail of every face for a similarity to ourselves, (no harm to them, but they did look like a bit of an odd bunch).

      Sure, I’d like to have written to my birth-mother too, but the correspondence seemed so slow and complicated. Making direct contact between adopted children and estranged birth-parents wasn’t considered a good idea for lots of sensible reasons, so everything went through this social worker who, I guess, censored our correspondence before forwarding the mail in a brown envelope to our mother. And it worked the same way in reverse. It seemed so unnecessarily nosey and slow and inconvenient. (And what would I write, anyway? “Hi, how are you? It seems like a lifetime,…..”)

      Although we only had a nutshell synopsis of the circumstances surrounding our origins, Hilary and I had had a long time to accept what the social worker had told us about our natural parents, and I kind of liked it: it’s fun to realise that I’ve a father sixty years my senior, (the old scallywag).

      But for my birth-mother’s family, receiving my letter five months after their mother’s death must’ve been a really shocking revelation that turned their whole world upside-down. My letter interrupted the lives of this blissfully ignorant family, and shocked them with a story that contradicted the established memories they enjoyed of their recently departed mother, and their grandfather.

      Slowly, (more slowly for some than others), the rest of their family began to accept the facts.

      They had enjoyed one unshakable memory of their mother; they thought that they had known her and understood her personality, and I’d shattered all that in the time it took to read half my letter. They’d never even suspected that their mother held a secret, and certainly not a secret like me, nor another like Hilary.

      They had adored and respected their mother. And they had worshiped their grandfather. How had I affected their memories and ingrained opinions of such very special people to them?

      THE PREFIX

      Identifying my birth-parents within this story is important to me, because I don’t want to imply any disrespect to the parents who adopted me and raised me and loved me and called me their own.

      But adding the birth- prefix every time that I mention my birth-parents is tiresome to continue reading. So from here on, patient reader, the parents who adopted me, (the Bailie’s), are identified as my mum and dad. And the parents who fortuitously created me, (Laura and her father-in-law, Billy), are identified as my mother and father. I’m dropping the birth- prefix.

      And on this point, (having been adopted), (and having been foster-father to eight children), I think I’m qualified to reinforce the point that being a mother or a father is a world apart from being a mum or a dad.

      Most reasonably healthy people have the ability, the gift, to reproduce another human being and become a mother or a father. But being a mum or a dad is something much, much more special.

      As a foster-father, I’ve seen the effects of poor parenting; I’ve had to work very hard to help the children of loveless, abusive, and neglectful parents. It takes a whole bunch of unconditional love and a heap of patience to readjust a child, to undo enough of the emotional damage so that they have a reasonable chance of realising their full potential.

      There is a world of difference between the ability to be a parent, and the talent to be a good parent; there’s a world of difference between a father and a dad; a world of difference between a mother, and a mum. If I sound annoyed it’s not because I feel that I need to differentiate between my father and mother, and my dad and mum; I’m just upset when I think of some of the abuse that my foster-children suffered at the hand of their own parents. I’m sure that offering me for adoption was a very difficult decision for my parents to make; but it was a decision made in my best interests.