By AMY SHANKLAND
Perfectly Imperfect
With my non-identifying info regarding my adoption in hand, I had some solid things to go on for a more advanced search for my biological parents. What leapt out at me was the fact that I knew my birthparents’ age at the time of my adoption (20), years in school (junior and sophomore), where they went to college, and where they were originally from.
My mind turned to yearbooks. Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College were just a couple of hours away. Perhaps I could take an afternoon off work and drive up to look at some yearbooks.
I emailed both colleges to find out where their archives were located and their hours of operation. And on a hot, sunny Wednesday afternoon in July, I headed to South Bend. As I walked up to the Hesburgh Library, a familiar sight featuring “Touchdown Jesus” on one side, my heart was pounding. I hoped I appeared calm and composed to the college kid with the beard and glasses who pointed the yearbook area out to me.
If my biological father was a junior from 1969 to 1970, that means he graduated in 1971. I didn’t realize just how many seniors that year were from Indianapolis. I must have seen and written down information about 30 different young men. None of them really looked like me as I had hoped, so I was a bit discouraged about how many different people I would have to research.
But St. Mary’s is a smaller college. As I got back into my car to drive to Le Mans Hall on that campus, I felt hopeful. The main driveway going through St. Mary’s enveloped me in tall, mature trees and fingers of sunlight.
After getting a little turned around upon entering the building, I found the right spot. A young lady with dark hair directed me to the yearbooks. I was feeling nervous that they wouldn’t have the 1972 edition, but thankfully they did. I sat down on a leather bench to peruse it.
I went to the index and was disappointed to not see any girl from Cleveland, Ohio. I thought perhaps she had resided in a nearby suburb instead, so I copied down the three names listed from Ohio. I took their pictures with my cell phone.
None of the girls looked like me, but I still wondered if one of them was my birth mother. I drove back to central Indiana feeling disappointed. My hope had been that I would see one of their pictures and have a “lightning moment” recognizing some of my own features. But that had not happened.
Then I had a terrible thought when I went to bed that night. What if I had gotten the years wrong? What if my birth mother was going to be a sophomore after I was born and my birth father was going to be a junior? That would mean my efforts that day had possibly been wasted. Discouraged, it was difficult for me to fall asleep.
I decided to go back up to St. Mary’s a month later, and this time found a couple of girls from the Cleveland area who graduated in both 1973 and 1974. Once again, none of them looked like me, but it was a start.