Gift of the gods - Page 2

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 10: Family Politics
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Sandy McCutcheon

FOR YVONNE, THE WAIT HAD BEEN MUCH LONGER. In 2002, she was finally assigned a caseworker and, shortly afterwards, told that her mother was indeed alive and she should write a letter asking for a meeting. Her relief was immense and, after almost 20 years of searching, she finally met up with Margaret. For reasons of her own, Margaret arranged to meet in the lobby of the very same hotel where she had handed Yvonne over 34 years earlier. The meeting was fraught and emotional. Yvonne's description of Margaret as being initially reserved accords with many of the stories that I have heard since releasing my memoir The Magician's Son (Viking, 2005). There is a consistency of behaviour displayed when it is the children who have instigated the search. Understandably, their mix of emotions is different from those of their mothers who are having to deal with long-suppressed feelings of sadness, loss, guilt and grief. Many of the women who have related the stories of meeting their mothers talk of their frustration at being unable to immediately bond in the way they desired. For Yvonne, however, it was a moment of great relief to have her mother confirm that her father had indeed wanted her. She also provided the additional information that, although her father's name was Robert, everyone called him Sandy.

Yvonne's subsequent inquiries in New Zealand produced no results. It was not until December 21, 2004 that her husband decided to do a Google search for Sandy McCutcheon and came up with my email address. Within hours we were talking. Within days we had agreed to meet in the old medina of Fez in Morocco where I was heading to buy a riad as a writing and holiday retreat.

Overjoyed as I was to know that we would soon meet, I also experienced a sudden rush of doubt. How would we get on? Would we even be compatible? In my blackest moments I was convinced that committing ourselves to spending a week together was a recipe for disaster. It was, I thought, entirely possible that simply having a genetic link would not be enough to base a relationship on. Rejection, I felt, was a real danger.

THE EMOTIONAL REACTION TO MAKING CONTACT IS EXTREMELY COMPLEX. For my part it was initially a mixture of sheer joy and relief. Having been on a lifelong search for my parents and my own identity, I had some understanding of what Yvonne had been going through. Yet there was envy there as well. Having known all her life that she was adopted had allowed Yvonne a focus that I had not enjoyed. My parents had denied that I was adopted and absolutely opposed my attempts to discover the truth.

People who grow up in their birth families have the building blocks of identity in place and, understandably, find it hard to comprehend what it must be like to have that certainty missing. For them, identity is a given. Without it the world seems out of kilter and the absence of certainty colours everything. An absence is difficult to quantify and it is only when the issue is resolved that the extent of its effects can be understood. So it was for me. On the day, seven years ago, that I finally met my real brother and sister I experienced a seismic shift towards stability. The previously drifting tectonic plates of my personality finally locked together with the ease of well-crafted jigsaw pieces and for the first time I felt I was standing on solid ground. The full effect of the change did not happen overnight but within a matter of weeks I was enjoying a calm sense of contentment that has lasted ever since.

Amid all the joy over having reconnected with Yvonne was also a simmering sense of guilt. Had I done enough to try to find her? Could I have done more? Though I had done searches in genealogical databases and on the web, I had missed what, with hindsight, appears to have been the most logical avenue – contacting the information and tracing unit of An Bord Uchtála, the Adoption Board. I had been in touch with a private tracing agency but I was unaware that the board existed. Fortunately, the exciting prospect of actually meeting in three weeks' time overrode my feelings of guilt.

It seems to me that the desire to know your offspring is as deeply seated as knowing your own genetic heritage. Yet, for some people, the search for one or the other does appear to be less of a priority. My adopted sister claims to have never understood my desire to trace my birth family. A search is not a single event but rather a long painful and protracted process. The emotional investment in untangling the bureaucratic and psychological barriers to the truth takes its toll. Explaining the two-year gap between discovering her mother and finding me, Yvonne said simply: "Life gets in the way." It seems something of an understatement as in those two years she had two children and completed her doctorate. Sometimes, even finding your father gets put on the backburner.

AT FEZ AIRPORT, ON THE EVENING OF JANUARY 14, 2005, I held my daughter in my arms for the first time in my life. It was eight days after her 37th birthday. All day I had been so on edge and apprehensive I was nauseous. At times I thought I would be too ill to meet her. Yet the moment I set eyes on her the fear of rejection slipped away, replaced with an overwhelming sense of completion. The meeting raised huge questions about the nature/nurture debate. Up until that point, I had always accorded the two factors equal status as determinants of personality. On meeting Yvonne, this was totally overturned. The young woman I met was so emotionally and psychologically like me that the dominant role of genetics seemed indisputable. More importantly, we hit it off from the first moment and spent the next few days exploring every detail of each other's life. Having the fascinating medina of Fez as a backdrop provided us with a safety valve and whenever we needed a break from the intensity of our newfound relationship, we explored the city arm in arm. Not only were we absolutely compatible, we were more than father and daughter – we were friends. It was pure bliss.

It is hard to overstate the impact of being in touch with your own flesh, your own blood, your own tribe. The desire to perform such a simple act as putting your hand out and touching the face of your child and to have physical contact is overwhelming. The link buried away in our DNA seems to demand that physical confirmation, and once that takes place the bond is immediate. At least it was for me. For others I have talked with, this moment was marred by hesitation.

Yet once our bond was established, the genetic traits were glaringly obvious, even to outsiders. Not simply the physical attributes such as eye and skin colour, or the physical manifestations such as shared gestures or stance, but a more difficult to describe catalogue of emotional and psychological markers. For Yvonne and me to share tastes and attitudes in almost everything we explored was remarkable. Put simply, despite never having met before, we knew each other.

Almost a month to the day after the first public reports, the news broke that there had been a DNA test that revealed Tony Abbott did not have a son. Yet before the publicity that compelled the genetic father to come forward, there seems to have been no doubt about his paternity. Abbott handled what must have been devastating news with dignity. "I have gone through 27 years of life convinced that I was his dad, but it appears that is not the case," he said, adding that he was "sorry" he has been dragged through the public spotlight as a result of a connection to me which it now appears was never the case".

The effect on Tony Abbott of the roller-coaster ride he had endured in public must have been considerable: "To find the boy I thought I had all those years ago and to go through a reunion and now to lose him like this is pretty shocking and I feel a bit numb about it all" seems a classic understatement.

The lessons are not about political point-scoring raised in the media but about the genuine need to come to terms with what we tell children about their genetic heritage. The fact that adoptions are no longer as common as they once were is a plus, but IVF and sperm donors means there are new ethical challenges. I hope that, as a society, we learn from the mistakes made with adoption during the second half of the last century and go forward with one principle firmly in mind: every child has the right to know where he or she came from.

While there are many fascinating aspects of these stories that can be explored through psychology, biology or sociology, there is one aspect of my own story that seems to belong in another realm completely. It is timing. For 36 years I had been looking for an Irish girl whom I believed to be called Chantelle. For more than 20 years an Irish girl named Yvonne had been searching for her father. But it was not until the very last day of my publisher's deadline to return the proof sheets of The Magician's Son that we made contact. It had not been an easy task to write the book but, having done so, Yvonne's appearance felt like the universe saying: "You've done the hard work, now here is a reward." Thinking about it later, over a glass of Guinness, it occurred to me that maybe our DNA is a homing pigeon that, when separated from its tribe, demands return. That, of course, is just fanciful nonsense – what really happened was a miracle. ♦