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 put it.Within five months the Children's Home Society notified them that it had a baby girl.
"I remember they told us, 'The birth mother's a lovely woman.And this is a beautiful girl like her mother.' Of course, that didn't matter to me," Mrs.Woodson said."Just as long as she was healthy and I could have her, that's all I cared about."
I interrupted to ask Mrs. Woodson if she recalled the offices of the Children's Home Society.
"Yes indeed," she said. "We were there a couple of times during the application stage and a couple of more times to meet Amy. Then we came back to pick her up."
"Could you describe the place?"
"It was a big white wooden house. It had columns and a gravel driveway. I remember the sound of that gravel as we drove in, then walked across the parking lot."
I remembered it too—the grinding sound of pebbles under tires, then under the feet of a couple walking toward the house.
Mrs.Woodson went on to describe her first glimpse of Amy."They took us into an office.A plain room with a desk and a couple of chairs where George and I sat.They brought Amy in. She was six weeks old then and wearing the cutest little dress. A foster family had kept her temporarily, and they provided us with typewritten notes about Amy's sleeping habits and her eating schedule. It was all very clear and formalized at the CHS, and the foster family had had plenty of experience.
"The first thing I noticed was that Amy had a rash on her chest. I thought I knew what to do for that. She had dark hair, plenty of it, and her eyes were already turning brown. I held her, then George held her, and she never cried.There were two or three people from the agency in the room, but I don't remember the face of anyone except Amy. I just remember thinking, I want to get some cream on that rash."
I appreciated Mrs.Woodson's relish in recounting her memories of Amy. I understood how she felt. I found that I had surprisingly strong feelings about Amy myself and liked hearing about her early life.
"The night before we picked her up," Mrs.Woodson said,"I couldn't sleep, I was so excited. The next morning, we crunched up that driveway to CHS, and this time they took us into a beautiful paneled room with a fireplace. I don't remember whether the fire was lit or not.That's how nervous I was.Amy was in a carved antique crib.We had been told to bring clothes for her.We had to undress her and redress her so that the clothes she was wearing could go to the next adopted baby.
"On the ride home, we made a mistake. Jeff was with us, and he sat in the backseat. George drove and I sat up front holding Amy, and Jeff must have been feeling ignored. He said, 'I'm not sure we're doing the right thing, having a new baby.' I said,'Let's give it some time.'Then when we got home, I let him hold Amy, and after that everything was fine."
Compared to the lengthy and expensive tribulation that adoption has become, this sounded blessedly short and cheap.As Ms.Woodson recalled, the total fee for Jeff 's adoption amounted to $900. For Amy it was $1,200. "We were very lucky," she acknowledged, "to adopt at a time when there were lots of babies, and we could afford it. Nowadays, it would have been a hardship on a couple with our income."
The mention of money prompted a digression. Familiar with the "nonidentifying information" in the CHS file, Mrs.Woodson was sensitive to the economic and social disparity between her daughter's birth family and her adoptive family. In the majority of cases, especially these days, adopted kids come from low-income backgrounds or from deprived or even destitute foreign countries.Their adoption represents a step up, a promising new start. But Amy, whose birth parents were from wealthy families, had been raised by people of modest means until she was six.After that, her adoptive parents divorced,