Baby Meets Mother

Burger King baby has happy meal

 Okay, not a meal exactly–but chocolate! According to the article I read on the Internet, the attorney who made the arrangements for the young woman, known as the Burger King Baby, and her mother to meet, “had his staff prepare for the reunification with flowers, chocolates and boxes of tissues.”

My son and I had drinks

Shortly after my son and I met for the first time in a hotel lobby in downtown Los Angeles, I invited him into the bar for drinks. An hour or so later, we went out for Mexican food, and then to my house in Silver Lake for fruit and cookies and coffee.The kleenex part happened in the wee hours of the morning when I drove him back to the hotel and said good-night. I was crying so hard by the time he got out of the car that I kept turning on the windshield wipers, thinking it was raining.

Social media and searching

I am indescribably happy for this young woman and her mother. I share all of these searching posts on Facebook if I see them in time. This one resolved itself before I ran across it. Like many people, I have my complaints about Facebook, but searching for a family member lost through adoption is one of the best uses I can think of for social media.

Searching without social media

When I worked up the nerve to search for my son, Facebook didn’t exist. I wrote letters to the Iowa Department of Human Services and to the agency that handled the adoption. I filed an affidavit with the court saying that, if my son ever tried to locate me and managed to convince the court to unseal his adoption record (unlikely), I was willing to be found. Each of these campaigns was its own peculiar exercise in futility, the details of which I will not go into here.

Eventually, after months of searching the haystack without so much as a glimmer, I got a tip after a support group meeting. This woman knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, and if I delivered 2,000 in cash to her in a plain manila envelope, the someone at the end of the chain would find my son.Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call with his name, address, and phone number.

My son and I have eaten a lot of chocolate since then. I wish the same for the Ms. Deprill and her birthmother.

The injustice of sealed records

And I hope that the states who continue to maintain sealed adoption records, treating birthmothers and adopted adults as disenfranchised children will realize that reunion can and will happen without the states’ participation. Each Facebook reunion will give dozens more adoptees and birth parents the courage to post their own pleas. Everybody share!

2 thoughts on “Baby Meets Mother

  1. Ms. Moon

    As with so much in our blogging community, this has opened yet another window for me into a world I am not personally a part of. And yet at at the same time, it is definitely a very real part of my world.
    And I just can’t even imagine and it rips my heart out to think of the emotions, the yearning, the fear, the joy when there is a reuniting.
    Denise- you have my utmost respect and admiration.
    Always.
    Love…Mary

    Reply
  2. Pingback: Burger King Baby Update - Denise Emanuel Clemen

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.