By Danna Schmidt
Remember when you started as a file clerk three months ago, before this new promotion to judicial clerk? How could you forget?
Your covert efforts to locate your adoption file that first week yielded the holy grail of adoptee discoveries: a sealed kraft envelope with your name on it. Its mustiness still fills my nostrils like a rancid chamber of secrets, shame, and government regulation. When you held your birth file in hand and hugged it to your chest with a fierceness only adoptees could understand, my heart broke for you.
My heart still breaks for you. I recognized the glint of reclamation in your eyes and the slow trace of your fingertips along the file’s edges. It was as though you were measuring to see if its rectangular shape might fill the hollow circle within you. Having to tuck your origin story back on the shelf and walk away punched a new hole in you.
That was the day your longing lit an arsonist’s bonfire inside your belly from the raw spark of an idea. What if I stole my file? Would anyone even know…or care?
I see you now, typing your weekly court docket and orders as you sneak glances towards the adoption clerk’s vacant desk. You’re thinking, Now’s my chance…there’s no one in the courthouse but me!
If I could be your life coach, having lived that pivotal day plus forty years beyond, here’s what I would say: Do it. Don gloves, grab the file, use a letter opener to carefully pry it open, copy the documents, and reseal it.
Younger Self, it is that simple. Just make sure not to lick the envelope. (You won’t believe how little saliva it takes to unravel your DNA strand, shake your paternal family tree, and sign away your privacy rights to a genetic laboratory in 35 years’ time.)
Seriously. Take back what is rightfully yours. Heck, steal the file if you need to and sneak it back here later. No one will notice for decades to come.
I know you feel compelled to study the statute in your criminal code book that cites 18 years in prison for unlawful possession of government documents. Avoid that temptation, Miss Morality. Theft of sealed adoption documents is illegal, but do you honestly believe it is wrong? What’s criminal is a closed adoption system that gatekeeps adoptee rights and traffics in government secrecy.
You should know that playing by the rules will mean having to wait 14 years for your information to be released to an adoption agency who will charge you $500.00 (plus a government services tax) to meet your birth mother.
I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that your birth father will already have died by suicide six years prior to that reunion. Your file contains no clues about his identity but if you make your way to Prospect Point in Stanley Park on the morning of April 16, 1992, and wait for the short gentlemen carrying a passport and umbrella to approach, your conversational efforts just might save him from himself.
Have I mentioned that May 8, 2023 is when you will finally receive all 37 redacted pages chronicling the minutia of your relinquishment? Your tired eyes will struggle to read the fine print.
Bottom line? Liberate that file from its carceral purgatory. Become the protagonist of your adoptive story. Save yourself years of obsessive searching and hoping. Whatever intricacies you think this sly process entails are only a fraction of what your future sleuthing, worrying, and wondering will lend.
So, copy the file and go find your birth mom. She will appreciate the synchronicity of you being the identical age she was when she relinquished you. Pursue a relationship with her or not: you can choose your own adventure.
But if you do befriend her, you have a fighting chance of preventing those last years of estrangement. And who knows? Your earlier reunion might alter the sequence and path of the disease that will kill her in the end.
Risk, guilt, ambiguity, and doubt will plague you no matter which choice you make. I know this because I forever regret not claiming my file when I had the chance that day.
It isn’t too late for you though, so mull this over, but be quick about it. The cleaners will be here at 5:00 pm sharp!
Big Love,
Your Future Self
PS – I’m rooting for you.
Danna Schmidt is an adoptee and ceremonialist at work on her lost + found memoir about family secrets and belonging. Her writings have been featured in Crafting Love: Sharing Our Hearts through the Work of Our Hands by Maggie Oman Shannon, Seattle Bride magazine, and Grown and Flown. You can read more of her musings here.
