My biological mother passed away the day before thanksgiving.
I thought I’d tell the story of how she came to be a known part of my life. So, I was adopted as a baby. THAT part I have basically always known, since my adoptive parents were pretty open about it with me. In fact, they made kind of a big deal of the adoption by telling me that all the other parents just got the babies they got, while my parents actually chose me. It’s of course not quite that simple in reality. It’s not like they went to an orphanage and picked the cutest kid there, which is what it sounded like to me, but it did the job in that in made me feel as special as could be.  

From my biological parent’s side, the story was a bit different. The usual adoption story has a young, unwed woman getting pregnant and, being unable/unwilling to take care of a baby, she puts it up for adoption.

That’s the normal story. I was actually the fifth child my parents would have had. My biological father, while still married and at home, was perhaps not as involved as he could have been, and when my mom got pregnant with a fifth, he made the decision that I should be put up for adoption, reasoning that if she had another baby, it might have caused her to have a nervous breakdown. So when the time came for giving birth, my parents went to the hospital, had me, then signed me over to be adopted, went home and told everyone that I had died in childbirth. My biological mom, years later, told me that she told a few people the truth later on, but not too many.

I grew up then with my adoptive parents, never thinking too much about my birth parents, except for the occasional issues with family health that people are asked about: do you have a family history of any particular disease, etc. Of course I didn’t know because I didn’t know my biological family.  

Now, in my adoptive family, I have two sisters. The middle sister, two years younger than me, was also adopted since my parents didn’t think they could have kids. Then there’s my youngest sister, who is biological to my adoptive parents because it turns out they could have kids after all.  

The middle sister was always more curious about meeting her biological parents. She had researched into how to find them, and went through the process. For me, it was never that big of a deal, so I didn’t pursue anything. But in late 1989, I was looking at flying to Mexico City to visit a friend, and while it was too late to get a passport before the flight, I was able to get a birth certificate. At the time that was good enough to show citizenship. My adoptive dad went to the county records department (Orange County in California) which, as it turns out, is an ‘open’ county for birth records- meaning they don’t hide adoption records.  

When he got the folder, he noted the names of my biological parents in the adoption papers. He let me know and I decided, given that my biological father had a somewhat distinctive name, to go to the local library and see if I could find him in any of the phone directories. I did, in fact, find the name and I told my adoptive dad. He asked me if I’d want him to call for me, and so he did. It turns out that my biological father had been living within 3-4 miles of where I grew up. 

My biological father said he had been expecting that he would get this call at some point. We arranged a time to meet and my wife and I, with my two kids, went over to meet him. We found out he had been divorced from my biological mom since the early 70’s, and she had returned to the San Diego area where she had moved as a young girl with her family.  

He called her and let her know what was happening and to expect a call from me. So in Jan 1990, I called, we spoke for a while and arranged a time to get together and meet. I traveled down to La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego, and met my brothers and sister, a few aunts and nieces and nephews, and my grandmother- my nonna.

It was an immediate fit and I got along well with everyone. I got to learn a little bit about the family history. I knew I was of Italian origin on my mom’s side, but found out she was full Sicilian, though born here in the states- Detroit. Her father was from Sicily, and nonna was born in Detroit, but her dad had come from a neighboring village in Sicily too.

This is a picture of, from left to right: Charles, Brian, me, mom, and Mark, taken back in March 1995

I had already taken a classes in Italian from a local community college and began to study more.

In 1995, I got the opportunity to go to Europe, so I got the contact information from my nonna, wrote them and told them who I was and that I would like to visit them. Nonna herself had told them I would be coming so we traveled there and I met with my family in Sicily.

Then in 2000, I decided to take mom there, since she had never been, and to take nonna too, who had of course been there, but not since my nonno had died. So we flew, all 6 of us, to Italy for the Ferragosto and met over a 120 relatives there.  

This is a picture of my nonna, me, my oldest brother Charles, and mom, just before our trip to Italy in August 2000.

My nonna passed away in 2012, I believe she was the last of her generation.

This is a picture of the family at a dinner after her funeral.

 And a few years ago my biological mother began to suffer from dementia. 

This is the last picture I had of us together, taken in Dec 2020. The younger man to the left is my nephew Josh, one of my brother Charles’ sons, then Brian, Mom, me, and Charles.

She had been progressively getting weaker and the wed before thanksgiving she passed away, in her sleep, at home in her bed, and with my brothers taking care of her. You can’t ask for much better in terms of passing away. While I will miss her, I’m sincerely grateful for the opportunity I got to know her and my family, and just how much that has expanded my world.

She was instrumental in helping me get my own Italian citizenship, and even went through the process herself in order to help me. She graciously signed everything I needed to get things done and in 2013 I was recognized as an Italian citizen.

So, mom- Thanks for everything. I’m sure you’re now home with the Lord, so I don’t worry about you. The memory of your life and love lives on.