A bit 'lucky' to find the biological mother AND father!

It’s pretty darn cool to find your birth mother. It’s a curious, unexpected and rather thrilling twist to find your biological father.  This post is about finding him!

That biological father-person-thing…Who is he?  What does he represent?  Not much, and... but certainly not nothing.  He isn’t someone you’ve instinctively yearned for, and you get the feeling he probably isn’t yearning for you.  We’re all aware he didn’t invest as much into bringing you forth.

But he’s someone, and it feels… kind of, important.  On one hand we can scoff, ‘he’s just a sperm donor’, ‘anyone can do that’… yet; he and only he personally holds a key to half your genetic picture.  What he means may not always be in an emotional sense, but the mystery of it can gnaw away as that key dangles out of reach.

In our case, Shaun’s hunger and hunt was for his birth mother.  There is of course an inextricable and undeniable connection between pregnant mother and that precious developing life.  The father… his bond is just as strong in a different way and will develop outside the womb with his child, if he is given the opportunity.  If not – his life is unchanged.

We barely expected to find Shaun’s birth mother, Ellen, let alone be welcomed by her.  Never in my wildest dreams did I dare to dream we would find BOTH bio. parents!?

I will refer to Shaun’s male biological parent as Graeme.  ‘Ellen’ is his birth mother. And his parents who raised him, of course; Mum and Dad. This is for a couple of reasons… he only has one mum and dad, and I honour that.  His birth mother absolutely deserves that mother title in there as her journey was one of immense sacrifice, true love and ongoing grief, primarily for herself and also her own parents.  There needs to be a distinction between her and the other parent who ‘helped make Shaun’, especially in this case as he was unaware of Shaun’s existence and his entrance into the world did not affect his family at all.

So!  If you haven’t read how Shaun found his birth mother and bonded in a special way with that family – that was my first-ever blog post titled ‘The adopted child, where do I belong?’  which gives this post more context.  It was a consuming life-long dream and journey for Shaun to meet his birth mother, which culminated in one of those life-defining moments which continues to evolve and enrich our world.

It was September 2001 - we had made contact with Shaun’s maternal grandfather in England, and now had been able to talk on the phone to his birth mother for the first time. All of it: exciting!!! After introductions and many, many, ‘wow’ sentiments, I tentatively asked “do you have any idea who the father was, like any idea..?” – for some reason I felt resigned that she wouldn’t.

She immediately blurted out his full name “Graeme P****”.  I needed to pinch myself.  Here I was talking to the bio. grandparent of our children for the first time, and she’d just handed me the other technical grandparent’s ID, too easy.

And had they had much to do with eachother?  A relationship over a few months, in 1976; but when Ellen fell pregnant at 15 to this 21 year old, well he was told by her father in no uncertain terms to get off their property and never ever return.  That was the last she knew of him.

I pulled out the chunky white pages directory after our phone call ended, and searched the surname.  He was a New Zealander, and it was a relatively unusual last name, surely there would be a relative in the Auckland phonebook!  …And of course, there was!

It was about the 7th one I rang who said “yes, he’s my nephew, yes, he’d be around 45 years old, and yes, he’s from Marton.  She gave me a phone number for Graeme’s ex-wife. – I was speaking to the ex-wife within half an hour, who told me she would call the family and sound them out.  Whilst her regard of Graeme were less than favourable, it was nothing but butterflies for me to hear anything about him.  We had revelled in the photos of his birth mum’s family, studying their features, learning who they were.  Now we had the icing on the cake, this other side.  This was an extra, tossed in on top of a HUGE gift.

I learnt that Graeme had lived many years in Mt Wellington, ten minutes from Shaun’s home in Pakuranga.  They’d had two sons together – technically Shaun’s half brothers.  Ten minutes away!

In an outlandish coincidence - I spoke in detail to my school friend Tania about all these developments, she came back saying the whole story had rung a bell with her mum – turned out their close friends had lived next door to Graeme & his family in Mt. Wellington.  And yes, the ex-wife verified this connection.  Tania’s family friend had in fact been a bridesmaid at their wedding!  You could have blown me down with a feather, talk about truth being stranger than fiction! My Howick friend randomly connected to Shaun’s birth parent who was way south..?!

We ended up receiving photos of Graeme’s wedding day before when we were yet to have contact with him! 

This ex-wife of his very helpfully contacted Graeme’s sister and the green light was given for that conversation. Graeme’s sister, Shaun’s Aunty, was hospitable and accommodating from the outset.  She vaguely remembered Ellen (Shaun’s birth mum).  Their younger sister recalled being told in the school playground that their brother had gotten Ellen pregnant. 

Graeme was the eldest of four children, their mother was German, their father a Kiwi.  Two of the siblings were close, but Graeme hadn’t been seen for a while… and she didn’t have a number for him.

Not long after this, Graeme’s brother drove up to Auckland to meet us, he “just needed to lay eyes on this Shaun, and would know if he was one of our relations”.. this somewhat alarmed me as I knew Shaun looks so very like his maternal side.  However, the uncle drove up, we had a cup of tea and a friendly chat, and he was satisfied that Shaun’s Nordic features came from their mum. 

Graeme’s sister kindly put together a little album with some scanned photos of them growing up, we SO appreciated it!  In some photos we could see Shaun and that was always so special. If you read this, thank you!!

Their other sister tried numbers she had for Graeme, no success.  She enquired of her son Geoffrey (Shaun’s cousin), as he’d been quite close to Graeme at times.  He would try to track him down.

We had spoken to his ex-wife, met his brother, were speaking to his sister almost daily and had an album record of his life, but no Graeme.  After a fluid process it felt like we’d come to a frustrating dragging delay.  What felt like months went by, still no one had a contact phone number for Graeme, nor did anyone know his whereabouts... would he even want to know us if he was this elusive even with his own family members?  I started to doubt!

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