Meeting My Birth Mother

Chicago. Winter '96.

It was that time of the year. 20 degrees below zero windchill factor. Black skies at 11AM. Walking from my parking garage to my office at 232 E. Ohio street. Walking on diesel soot stained black ice in whipping wind, hearing screams of "Fuck this shit", mother fucker! and so on. Every year I wonder why I stayed in this city. Why my family stayed so long. Why my friends stayed. Were it not for the weather, I'd argue that Chicago may be America's best city. Maybe I'm just nostalgic. Your odds of getting shot were lower in those days too. Many things kept me there. Friends, culture & family. Now I'd had enough.

I had recently returned from vacation with a childhood friend. It was one of those cheapie Cancun all inclusive packages that college students on limited budgets take.  He planned it and it was just what I needed. A week of sunshine, beer & tequila.

Our return flight had been delayed back due to weather til late that night. The good news was that we got a full extra day in Mexico. The bad news, we had to move our of our rooms and store our luggage with everyone else in a hospitality suite. Genius that I was, I left my passport in my bag with my original birth certificate inside. They were stolen together. This was pre 9/11 and one one only needed a driver license to return to the states.

Back in my office on that dreary frozen Monday, I contemplated a massive life change. I needed to move. It was time. First call of the day was to the Department of Vital Statistics to order a replacement birth certificate. They informed that since I was adopted, (and a closed adoption at that) it was a more complex process than normal. I first had to apply for this document called a "Gold Certificate", which would then enable them to release a newly censored birth certificate. I finished this process over the next month. I finally got the birth certificate back. It was more or less the same, save for one snippet of information at the bottom of the birth certificate. It had a lawyers name and law firm. It was around 6PM and I was in my office. I decided to call the number. A man answers.

MAN: Hello?

ME: I'm sorry. I must have the wrong number. I was trying to reach a law firm.

MAN: This is a law firm. My secretary went home for the day and I picked up. What can I help you with?

ME: I was adopted through this firm in 1965 and wanted to get some information.

MAN: Are you Judge Garbers nephew?

ME: Yes. How did you know that?

MAN: I went to law school with him at John Marshall. We were classmates. His sister needed a lawyer to do her adoption. I referred my father and yours is the only adoption we've ever done.

ME: Wow. Do you have any information about it? I want to find my biological family.

MAN: All I can tell you is that you were adopted via a closed adoption through the Jewish Children's Bureau of Chicago. Try them.

ME: Thanks so much.

I call the agency the following day and chat with a woman whose sole job is reuniting adopted kids and parents. She explained to me how it all works & not to get my hopes up. The odds are low that she will be of help. The only way these records can be opened is if there is permission in my file via a letter from on or both of my birth parents. She explain the storage records facility isn't unlike the final shot in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and may take her weeks to find paperwork & microfiche in a box. I thank her and I wait.

4 or 5 weeks later, she calls me back with an update. There were letters written to me by my birth mother. 5 of them. All Birthday notes beginning at age 13 and as recently as 2 years prior til this present time. They were all more or less the same message. Happy Birthday. Should you ever come looking for me, here's the contact info of where I am now.

The lady from the adoption agency said that, given the fact it had been two years, the trail may well I have gone cold again. She said she try & track her down at her last known contact info. 3 days later, she was found. Neither one of us wanted to give the other their phone number & neither one of us was willing to budge. We finally settled on a plan. My birth mother would go to the agency that Thursday and I would call in at 4:30PM. The conversation was awkward. She was emotional & I got the sense not entirely together. I could feel that she had a hard life and struggled with mental illness.  We chatted by phone a half dozen or so times over the next couple of weeks. During that time, I had moved to Los Angeles. I wasn't yet ready to meet face to face.

2 months later, I returned to tie up some loose ends. Get my old Harley Davidson out of storage and onto a truck to California and a few other things. I decided it was time to meet her.

Knowing this was my deep and personal journey & not wanting to risk hurting my parents, I decided to keep this all to myself for the time being. The weather was unchanged. A brutal, frozen hellscape. I decided to dress like a grownup for my meeting with her. I wore my navy Gianni Versace suit with an Hermes scarf tie (it was the 90's) a black, full length cashmere topcoat and scarf. I know my way around Chicago like the back of my hand, but had no idea what this area was. I asked my father.

ME: Dad, where is the intersection of X & Y?

DAD: I'll tell you where it is. It's where you're not going in your mothers new car. They'll kill you & steal the car. What's there anyway? A club?

ME: Yes. A new club.

DAD: Forget it. 

ME: I'll tell the guys we're going someplace else.

I had planned to maybe tell them eventually, but not then. I did however tell my thrice married, exceedingly botoxed Judas sister who waited all of 5 minutes to betray me. Nothing new. Just thought I'd give her another shot.

Off I went to the North West side ghetto in a blizzard to meet my birthing vessel.

At the time, I was an I.T. guy. I designed networks, produced websites and did concierge support for demanding clients. My main client was Nicolas Cage at the pinnacle of his career. He'd recently won his Oscar and Golden Globe for best actor and was just starting his rise to action movie star. He was a great client and a funny and generous guy. Between his office and a pile of houses, there were a lot of billable house to be had. Designing and building networks in 5 residences, lessons for him, his wife, babymama, kid, step kid and the above for his offices and exes. He was also not the guy you ever just call back. Day or night, when he calls, you pick up. I was very very nervous about this meeting with this strange woman who gave birth to me for the first time when Nicolas called. I was never impatient or short with him. Until this moment.

ME (answering) Hey Nic. REALLY bad time. Anything super urgent?

Nic is a lovely guy, but he's still a movie star with a sizable staff and I'm pretty sure hadn't been told no in a very long time. I caught myself & tried to soften it.

ME: Sorry, what do you need? I'm going through a thing at the moment.

NC: What's happening? Maybe I can help.

ME: I'm in Chicago driving to meet the woman who gave birth to me for the first time and I'm kind of melting down.

NC: I can help you.

ME: (rolling my eyes). How?

NC: First of all, do you have Valium?

ME: Yeah. Way ahead of you. Already on 5 milligrams.

NC: Perfect. OK. Here's what I want you to do. Are you listening?

ME: I am.

NC: Take yourself out of the first person.

ME: How?

NC: This is a tool I've always used to deal with stressful situations and it works every time without exception.

I pull the car over.

ME: I'm listening.

NC: I want you to picture yourself alone in a dark movie theater.

ME: Got it.

NC: Get specific. You're sitting in a red velvet theater seat. You're watching a black comedy. Like a Coen brothers movie. It's unfolding before your eyes. It's fascinating. Take it all in, but take yourself out of it. 

All of my stress instantly melted away and it wasn't the Valium. Nicolas Cage, you're different breed of cat, but you're a fucking genius. 

ME: OK. I'm going in. 

NC: Good luck. 

It's snowing hard. Those big, heavy & wet midwestern snowflakes. Nothing like that fluffy expensive Aspen shit. There is a group of vagrants standing around a burning 55 gallon drum. I find a parking space and pray this brand new, gleaming black BMW will be covered with snow quickly enough to mitigate it's chances of being stolen.

I enter a poorly maintained old brick mid rise building. Trying to breathe and take it in as Cage advised. A legless man in a wheelchair wearing a military jacket whizzes by, his eyes locked with mine in a long pan. The olfactory overtone was the smell of institutional gravy, pine cleaner and cheap cafeteria food fills my nostrils. The undertone was the putrid smell off old people.

I noticed the thick layers of dingy paint that may have once been white, but now is a greenish yellow bathed in F40T12CW. light. That is the code for a 4 foot, cool white fluorescent tube. How do I know this? My dad made a decent living selling these and it's 8 foot counterpart, the F96. They made that horrendous green light you never see anymore except in movies about the 70's & 80's.

Moving on, I see two kids that look like teenage runaways sitting on the floor and all manner of human frailty. I move toward the front desk, andnd make eye contact with a pie eyed, strange grinning woman in her mid 60's.

RECEPTIONIST: Praise Jesus! How many I help you?

What the fuck, over? What is this place? (I never exactly found out other than it was some kind of subsidized housing.)

ME: (at a rare loss for words) Hi, um, I'm here to meet... um.

RECEPTIONIST: You're Dora's son aren't you?

ME: (confused at how she knew) Uh, yes.

RECEPTIONIST: We've all heard about you for weeks.

Now my stomach is cramping from pressure. Listen to Nic Cage. Don't run. Keep going.

I make my way to the elevator area which is packed with a post dinner crowd. After 10 minutes, I realize that only 1 of the 4 elevator banks is working. Everytime one opens, the residents push and shove and pack together like sardines. I keep politely waving them through. "Go ahead. I'll get the next one" I'm beginning to sweat in my wool suit and cashmere topcoat and the dry radiator heat begins to suck the juice from my eyeballs.

Now it's been 20 minutes and enough is enough. I join the Hunger Games, shove my body into the car and take it to the 15th floor. Just like in a movie, she's the last unit at the end of a long, poorly lit hallway. The carpeting was a deep red & black pattern.Like a old west themed whorehouse or casino. I pause, then rap my knuckles twice on her door. I hear nervousness in her voice on the other side.


DORA: Oh... hel... hello?

ME: Hi, It's Scott.

She opens the door to reveal what appears to be a very tidy dorm room. A plywood sleeping loft over a sky blue thrift store loveseat in good shape. Across the room I see an old dresser in also good shape with a lot of prescription pill bottles on top. Nervously she asks...

DORA: So, what do you think of my place?

ME: It's nice.

DORA: (boastfully) It's one of the only units here that has its own bathroom. Can I get you anything? A cigarette? A percodan?

ME: (I giggle) Did you just offer me a percodan?

DORA: (shrugs) Yes.

ME: (I giggle again) You're my mom alright!

I really loved painkillers in those days.

This is the first time meeting any flesh & blood relative, so I was fastidiously studying her every feature. Over the phone, she sounded like my twin. 5'11", long curly red hair, pale skin, slim with green eyes. In person, I saw no similarity other than we had the same ugly, ruddy freckled hands. None.

I won't bore you with all of the details now, but I asked her if it's ok to interview her, and explain that my memory isn't great and ask if she'd mind my taking notes. She consents. I pulled yellow legal pad and peppered her with questions for an hour or so about how I came to be. It was difficult to keep her focused. She was cycling manic and I was learning more about her, and perhaps to a greater extent, my own genetic makeup.

The gist is, she was a teenager and got pregnant by a guy who was already married with a kid on the way. I met that kid 20 years later in L.A. and promise to tell you about it later. I told her that I had made a dinner reservation at The Pump Room. I was making a pretty living at the time & thought it would be a nice gesture. The Pump Room was perhaps Chicago's most famous old school “fancy” restaurant. It was name checked in Sinatra's "My kind of town". It opened in 1938 and closed 2017. It was rumored that Oprah had her own booth there with an actual TELEPHONE in it.

ME: We should get going. The weather is bad & we have an 8:30 reservation.

DORA: No, I couldn't possibly go there.

ME: (Sarcastically) You don't like The Pump Room?

DORA: No, I can't go to any restaurant. They will all just remind me of your father.

ME: Wait. So you haven't been to a restaurant since 1965?

DORA: Oh god no. They would all remind me of him. 

Fuck this is sad. But fuck, I'm also starving.

ME: C'mon, we'll have a great time. Let's stop thinking & just hop in the car.

She finally says she'll only eat at one place. The place where she'd had her last date with Joe my sperm donor. I'd never heard of this place. It's a deli that in these conditions would be an hour minimum in some far flung western suburb. I call 411 and pray it doesn't exist anymore so we can eat at the fancy place. Sadly it's still there. We get in my other mom's new car and without asking, with the windows closed, she lights a cigarette. It's so cold and wet out that even cracking a window would be an impossibility. I'm trying not to flip my shit, but she's refusing to put it out and it's just ashing itself all over the car. 

During the drive, out of nowhere, she asks...

DORA: Are you feeling any kind... of deep psychic, familial connection?

ME: Not really, no.

DORA: Me either.

It was quiet for awhile with the only sound being the car heater on max and the wiper blades sweeping the snow from the windshield.

We finally arrived at this empty deli lit with the same shitty cool whites that her building was lit with, replete with 70's fake wood paneling and faded photographs of Chicago celebrities on the wall. I'm trying to have a meaningful conversation with her and all she can talk about is the menu. I’m not exceedingly patient on my best day, but was doing my best and I was wondering if I had gotten what I needed from this meeting already.

DORA: Maybe the brisket? Or Chicken in the pot? Or a corned beef sandwich? Or the Kasha Varnishkas, Or the Latkes? What do you think?

I'm kind of already over it.

ME: (Irritated but patient) Get whatever you like. My treat.

The waitress makes her over and it's the same thing all over again. Maybe it's my character flaw, but I hate people who keep servers at the table and batter them with questions, flirt or start conversations. Shut up, order and let them get back to work. 

You know that sign in the airplane lavatory that says “Please wipe the basin as a courtesy to the next passenger?” That’s how I generally like to live my life. A basin wiper.

DORA: (to waitress) So, between these 6 things, which is the best.

WAITRESS: (On cue) Well, it depends on what you're in the mood for...

Another 10 minutes of deliberative babbling. I have a minor fit.

ME: (raising a hand) You know what? Bring us all 4 of those dishes. She'll take home the leftovers. Thank you and I wave the server away from the table.

I got through the rest of it, learned what I needed to and dropped her off. We spoke a couple more times by phone and that was that. She incubated me and for that I’m grateful, but she's not someone I needed to have a relationship with.