When Susan Anthony opened her e-mail on Jan. 13, 1997, she was stunned to see a note from the daughter she had given up for adoption nearly 30 years earlier.
"I sat there in a state of shock with my hand over my mouth," the Madeira woman recalled. She couldn't move for more than an hour. Four months earlier, Susan posted information on the Internet that made herself available if her birth daughter wanted to find her.
Her daughter, pretending to be an intermediary, had written: "What are your intentions and why, after almost 30 years, are you now searching?"
Her intention, Susan responded, was primarily to give her daughter the opportunity to learn more about her background.
"I've spent a lifetime wondering and praying for (your) happiness and well-being," Susan wrote. "Giving my child away was the hardest decision I have ever made. It left a hole in the center of my being that remains to this day."
That hole in her life was filled six weeks later when the two women embraced at a Boston airport, a reunion that never would have occurred without the Internet.
Susan
F
Susan Anthony, 52, is a program consultant for Catholic Health Initiatives in Delhi Township. In 1966, when she became pregnant with "Emily," she was an unmarried, 20-year-old journalism major at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
She wasn't in love with the baby's father, also a Marquette student, and she had no intentions of marrying him. She contacted the Milwaukee County Welfare Department about giving her daughter up for adoption. "You had to understand the culture back then," Susan said. "Coming from a strong Catholic family, it was just shameful. People didn't keep their babies."
She gave birth to Emily on July 4, 1967, in Miserecordia Hospital in Milwaukee.
The next day, she asked to see her daughter. Babies of unwed mothers were kept in a separate nursery with curtains closed to protect the mothers from emotional pain.
A supervisor at the hospital tried to talk her out of it seeing her baby, but Susan persevered. She hadn't signed any adoption papers yet.
Satisfied once she had seen Emily, Susan left the hospital and her daughter three days after she was born. She regretted her decision but promised herself she would never interfere in Emily's life. The next year, Susan married Lawrence Anthony. She hadmet Larry two months after Emily was born. They have two children, Paul Anthony, 28, of Columbus and Maria Anthony, 26, of Hyde Park.
While they were dating, she told Larry about Emily, but she never told her children.
"I had made the commitment not to interfere in her life," Susan said. "Why give them information about a sister they'll never know or see? Maria always wanted a sister. Knowing her heart, she would want to find her."
While open adoptions are common today, adoptions were shrouded in secrecy in 1967. Sealed records were considered the best route. The child would be placed with adopted parents, and everyone would get on with their lives. The birth mother would forget.
Today, though, experts know what Susan could have told them 30 years ago: A mother never forgets.
"I remember my mom crying every Fourth of July," said Maria, Susan's daughter. "She'd say, "I'm just emotional.'
"Now I know why."
Susan used to dream about Emily, too. Still, she honored the commitment she made when Emily was born.
Then, in early 1995, Susan's best intentions were thrown into a tailspin. Her sister informed Susan that she had told her daughter,(Susan's niece), about Emily.
Susan was furious. It was information she had not shared with her own children.
"It became very clear to me I could not leave this planet with her knowing and them not knowing," Susan said.
Susan's sister had opened the door to the past. Susan turned to adoption Web sites for information. She discovered how important it is for adoptees to at least know their roots and medical history. Her research also revealed that sealed records made it almost impossible for Emily to find her.
She told her children about Emily in the summer of 1996. They and her husband supported her desire to make herself available if Emily wanted to find her.
In August 1996, she put a waiver of confidentiality in Emily's adoption records in Milwaukee, giving Emily permission to contact her. She also put her medical history in the file, so if Emily didn't want to contact her, she would at least have that information.
Next, she registered with the International Soundex Reunion Registry (ISRR), based in Carson City, Nev. Adoptees and birth parents complete information by mail, and the ISRR checks if the information matches anyone who has registered.
Susan turned to the Internet to register at several sites, including BirthQuest, an adoption reunion registry. Those who register can view information and contact each other through e-mail if something matches.
The BirthQuest form asks for a description of what the child might look like. Susan guessed Emily's height at 5-foot-3 to 5-foot-5, with blonde hair, blue eyes, medium build.
It was a perfect description of the daughter she had left at the hospital 29 years before.
Susan Anthony and her daughter, Kristen Delfeld share photographs from Kristin's childhood.
| ZOOM |
|
Kristin
Kristin Delfeld, 30, grew up the only child of an engineer and teacher, now retired, in Milwaukee. She graduated in 1989 with majors in psychology and business from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She doesn't remember when her parents told her she was adopted, but knows she was young. It wasn't startling.
"I truly felt I won the lottery when I was adopted by them, because I couldn't have had a better life," Kristin said.
She never thought about her birth mother until she got older. "It wasn't so much wondering about her, what she did or why she gave me up," Kristin said. "It was more wondering about who I am, genetically."
While in college, Kristin decided to search for medical information, but had no intentions of finding her birth mother. She needed the name of the adoption agency, but felt uncomfortable asking her parents and dropped the whole thing.
"The one thing you never want to do is hurt your family," Kristin said. "I felt bringing it up would be hurtful."
Ten days after college graduation, Kristin and a girlfriend set out for Boston. She worked for Fidelity Investments until May 1997, when she returned to Milwaukee as a retirement investment consultant for Fidelity.
While living in Boston, she started looking at the Internet out of curiosity. On a lark, she plugged in the word "adoption" and found BirthQuest.
She clicked on Wisconsin, but didn't see her birth date. She closed the Web site. It was August 1996, about four weeks before Susan registered on BirthQuest.
Kristin didn't give the Web site another thought until Jan. 9, 1997. She was at her desk at work when she again checked out BirthQuest. She found Wisconsin. This time, her birth date was there. She clicked on it, and the two-page questionnaire Susan had filled out popped up.
Kristin discovered some matches: all the physical characteristics Susan described (Kristin is 5-foot-4 1/2), same hospital, same doctor's name.
"I was trembling," Kristin recalled. "If anything, I kept going, "Naahhh, can't be. There is no way this is her.' The one thing that struck me was she described me to a T."
She called her parents that night. They were quiet, she said, as she read them Susan's Internet inquiry. But, they helped her verify some information.
Her parents, as well as thousands of other parents who adopt children, had been misled by the sense of security of sealed adoption records, Kristin said. "Back in 1967, no one knew the Internet would be what it is today. They were shocked and sad."
The Internet, home to hundreds of adoption Web sites similar to BirthQuest, is opening the door for more adoption reunions. While adoptees and birth parents still need basic information and the desire to find each other, the vastness of the Internet increases their chances for success.
"The Internet now makes confidential files a moot point," Kristin said. "There is no confidentiality on the Internet. If you want to find somebody, you can do it."
Her parents helped her write questions in the Jan. 13 e-mail that would further identify Susan as the birth mother. They knew the father was in Navy ROTC at Marquette. Susan confirmed it when she e-mailed her back that same day.
"I just started bawling," Kristin said. "I was sitting at my computer at work. I just freaked out."
They began e-mailing each other daily and talked to each other, for the first time, in a three-hour phone conversation Jan. 27, 1997.
They continued e-mailing and talking by phone two to three times a week. But Kristin still had doubts. A discrepancy in the time of birth bothered her. She needed legal verification.
With Susan's permission, she successfully petitioned the court in mid-February to open the file. One month after she sent the first e-mail to Susan, she got legal verification. Her birth mother was Susan Anthony.
The reunion
Susan flew alone flew to Boston on Feb. 21 to meet Kristin for the first time. It was Kristin who spotted Susan first at the airport. "It was kind of like the movies," Kristin recalled. "We ran to each other. We just hugged and held each other and cried. When we pulled away it was like I was looking into a mirror. When I looked at her eyes, I felt like I was looking at my eyes."
Kristin met Susan's entire family that Easter in Cincinnati. "It's turned out to be a wonderful reunion," said Susan's husband, Larry, assistant academic director at the University of Cincinnati. "We consider her part of the family. We, sometimes, have to walk on eggshells a little when it comes to that, because we realize she is part of another family."
Susan and Kristin believe their reunion was spirit-led. Credit that spirit -- or the Internet. Either way, Kristin has two families who love her.
"(Susan) is awesome, and her family is awesome. I have a brother and sister now," Kristin said. "Those guys, from the very beginning, accepted me as family. We love each other like siblings."
And while Kristin loves her birth mother, she calls her Susan, not Mom.
"She is more of an aunt figure, or better yet, she's like my best friend's mother. She's someone I like to be with, someone I like to talk on the phone with, someone I like to visit. She's more of a friend."
Though Susan and Kristin have gotten together about 10 times in the past 15 months, her parents aren't ready to meet Susan and her family.
(Kristin's parents declined to be interviewed for the story. Susan would like the two families to meet but is not pushing to do so out of respect to her parents.)
Some adoptee cyber friends tell her that her adoptive parents will come around. It's a concern for Kristin, who plans to be married in a year or two. She wants to invite Susan and her family to the wedding. Susan describes her relationship with Kristin as solid and unfolding. "It's like any relationship. It takes time. We're so much alike in every way."
Right down to their looks and personalities:
- They both overanalyze.
- They are both strong-willed.
- Neither takes "no' for an answer.
- They're planners.
Catching up
Susan, angry initially over her sister's indiscretion, has forgiven her.
"I'm gratified to my sister that she blabbed. Even though I felt angry and betrayed and boxed in that I had to tell my children, that led me on the path."
A piece of her died the day she walked out of the hospital without her daughter, but the reunion has reinvigorated her life.
"It's been incredibly healing," she said.
Kristin, Susan and her family have spent the past 15 months fast forwarding through 30 years. "It's almost like we're going through the stages of growing up, but you're doing it at warp speed," Susan said.
There was the baby stage when Susan first met Kristin in Boston. The terrible twos when Kristin wanted her way during a visit last May. The sibling rivalry vying for Susan's attention. But it's all part of building a new family and playing catch-up with the past. Susan recalled Jan. 29, 1997, when she walked into her kitchen and saw a Federal Express package on the table. Kristin had promised her pictures that spanned her lifetime from infant to 29 years. "I took one look at this," Susan said holding the package, "and started to cry. This was my child's life on the kitchen table."
Kristin had the photos well organized and marked in envelopes. "I couldn't start with babyhood," Susan said. "I had to start with now and move backward."
She found a picture of Kristin standing on a chair and blowing out two candles on her birthday cake. There was the curly blonde haired toddler in her dreams. The princess.
Susan felt like a stranger peeking in a window at her own child. She felt the sorrow of missing out on her daughter's milestones, yet the joy of knowing they had been marked with fanfare.
Looking at those photos, she had the hope of every birth parent affirmed. Her "Emily" has had a good life.
