No Return: I never got a receipt

There never was a time I can recall NOT knowing I was adopted. I had a sister, though not a blood relative, who also was adopted. My parents made sure we knew we were adopted and my mom emphasized we weren’t just born, we were special in that we were chosen. In later yers, they always supported any attempts we might make to find our biological parents. It was around the age of 16 I started “ wanting” to know. Though, my mom made it clear to me I shouldn’t expect a sort of fairy tale and joyous meeting. She said, “You might be a deep, dark secret this woman has hidden all her life and no one knows about you. She may not want to see or know you.”

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot a 16 yo can do to find any information.. Keep in mind, when I was 16, there was no Internet with access to so much information at the stroke of a few keys. I wrote my foster mother and asked her what she knew. She knew very little: my mother was unwed, she was from Iowa, her last name was Matson, the nurses at the orphanage had named me Thomas, and my father was significantly older. Since such records were sealed, I had no access to anything. Even my birth certificate had my mom and dad’s name on it.

For the next 25+ years of my life I would go through phases of wanting to know and attempting to search to resigning myself to never knowing. Up until I was in my mid-20’s, I lived in Missouri. When I got married after college, my wife and I moved to Iowa City to work for her father’s family business. I knew from my birth certificate I had been born at the University of Iowa hospital. I happened to be doing some work at the hospital and on a whim, I requested my records. I don’t know what I expected, but what I got was a heavily redacted two page document with my name, “Baby boy Matson” shining boldly out at the top of the page. Well, at least I knew the time I was born, my weight, length, APGAR score, and that the mother had chosen to “not room in.”

Not long ago, I was relating my journey (and this story is far from over) to another adopted individual who had no desire to seriously find her biological family. She asked me why I was so intent. I told her being adopted leaves one with no known connection to the rest of humanity. You are a branch with no connection to a tree, just a branch hanging out there alone in limbo. You have no heritage, no history, no cultural connection. You have no past. You just are.

To be adopted but know your biological past connects you to the rest of the world. You have a past – good or bad – but you’re a REAL person. You’re not just some white guy. You’re Celtic. Your mother was an Irish-Scot. Your grandmother lived to be 104.

As I indicated above, my story is filled with surprises. I had many lucky breaks. The information in the above paragraph is all information I learned later in my search. You’ll just have to come back for the rest of the story.