We all have a FAMILY TREE. Just as the fruit on a tree
fall to the ground, we too sometimes lose our
connections. However, the TREE and ROOTS are still
there. This is the story of the LOST SON-?.Newark
International Airport...the day has
arrived.....36 years, 3
months and 17 days after I was born...I would meet
the woman who gave me life. To say I
was tense or nervous would be putting it mildly. I
arrived at the airport hours before the flight was
due to arrive. I brought with me 36 long stem RED ROSES one for each year of life I had been
blessed with. Should I call her mother? Should I hug her? What should I do?
This is not the end of the story; it is only the end of one journey within the story. In order to get the full meaning of this day, one needs to go back 36 years, 3 months and 17 days...the day I was born: which began a childhood of no family to ever call my own...finding out I belonged to no one!
I was born on February 7, 1950, in Detroit, Michigan. I am born to a mother and father whom I would not know until the scene described above. I was born to an unwed mother at Providence Hospital. I was given the name of LAWRENCE PHILIP ADAMS. My mother was all of nineteen years old. My birth would not be greeted with great joy as so many births are. My mother had no place she could call home to take me. She had no way to support herself, yet alone a newborn. She had earlier faced the difficult decision of whether to carry a child to birth or to abort. Now she faced the gut wrenching decision to give her newborn son up for adoption. After a process only a mother can fully appreciate; she gave me up only moments after my birth.
I would remain in the nursery of Providence Hospital for the first six months of my life. Though my mother had given me up for adoption there was no family ready to do so. On June 7, 1950, four months after birth a petition was made to the court alleging that "the child's mother is unmarried and without adequate provision for care and support." I was placed in custody of the court. In August of 1950 I would be transferred to the nursery of the Sarah Fisher Home in Farmington, Michigan. This was where my mother had spent her last months of pregnancy since at that time it was officially known as a home for unwed mothers.
I would spend these first months of life without bonding to a mother but in care of others. Yes, they provided for my basic needs, though I doubt they provided what I needed most at that time...love!
Finally, just a few weeks shy of my first birthday, I was moved from institutional care to that of my first foster parents. By the time my second birthday would roll around I had been transferred three more times to different foster parents.
On August 1, 1952, I was placed in the home of what was finally to be my adoptive parents. For reasons not made available to me, four months later I was returned as a ward of the court and returned to the foster parents who cared for me just prior to my supposed adoption.
Over the next four years I would be transferred four more times to different foster parents only in the end up once again being returned to foster parents who had cared for me twice before. I would remain with these foster parents for the next four years...until age ten.
The total of fourteen moves in eleven years are listed below:
