I Need To Know - Part Three

… Finally after six months of letter writing; meetings, phone calls, plenty of application forms, some pretty extensive red tape, and of course the waiting,  I had done it! 

Now what?...

After arriving home, I did just as I had the urge to do in the council office and spread the paperwork out on the floor of the dining room. Then the table and the odd chair here and there. There was so much! Visit reports, case studies, medical reports, and notes about meetings, were all mixed up together and nothing chronological at all. Some of the documents had been skewed in the photocopier, these might have had important information accidentally cropped off, but I couldn't tell. Plus, why did they find it so difficult to add the date to formal documents back then? 

I started to try and arrange the papers correctly, searching for clues as to when the file or report was created in the sometimes barely legible hand-written text, but I soon got bored. So I slid it all into clear plastic wallets and secured them in a green A4 ring binder. And that is how it has stayed. The first thing I wanted was clarity, clarity on exactly who my birth parents were. I still had no idea whether I wanted to find them, however, that didn't deter me from needing to know. 

The only thing I knew about my birth mother was her name, my parents had told me that. Conceivably there was more information about her given to me from them, but I can't recall what, if anything. After spending more time that evening perusing through the folder, I started to realise that the reports included the social worker's personal opinions. Not just of the facts but also of the opinions of the people involved. Sometimes the notes contained observations of whether or not that person was good-looking, indifferent,  likable, or not likable for that matter. This surely wouldn't be entertained today. 

By the end of the day, I had a lot of key information to go on, such as; Birth mum and dad's full name and birth dates, last known addresses, and my birth mum's latest boyfriend. Who, she was engaged to. That means she may have been married to him. Sure enough, with a bit more sleuthing, I found a report dated January 1974 that said she had indeed got married. Right, now, I have an 8-month window between May 1973 when I was born, and January 1974, when the report was created. there has to be a record of their wedding for this period right? 

As I knew that her last recorded address was in Sheffield, I fired up the clockwork internet before going to bed and found the address of the Sheffield Archives, which was, and still is located on the first floor of Sheffield's Central Library on Shoreham Street. If there is any information on this wedding, then I'll find it there.

The next day I woke up to a very wet and rainy Tuesday. I’d booked some time off work after picking up my records because I had every intention to be getting all ‘Miss Marple and be all over this ‘searching’ malarkey. When I say Miss Marple, I mean in a younger,  more masculine way. Perhaps ‘Sherlock Holmes’ may have been a better analogy here. Well, they both wore a hat.

Sheffield Archives was 41.7 miles from my house and just less than an hour away up the M1. I just checked the mileage, it's not a fact I remember, I'm not quite that ‘Sherlock’ after all! It was raining there too. After explaining my intentions to the staff, I was ushered over to the microfiche machines, surrounded by old heavily varnished drawers all containing records dating back to god knows when, the Big Bang I assumed. It was explained to me approximately where to look for the records I needed and I was then left alone to search. I can't recall how long I searched for that day, but what I can recall is excitedly sliding the microfiche film into the machine that I knew would contain the record of the marriage I was looking for, getting to the correct point in the document, and……

Damn it. It's double-printed!

I went back and checked the previous page, and no, nothing there. I went forward beyond the double-printed page, and again no, nothing to report. So it's got to be right in between the two good pages. I tried looking again, but it was no good, it was just a nebulous fuzz on the screen in front of me. But hang on, sure this copy is poorly finished, but what about the spare pages, these can't be the only copies on-site. 

Asking for another copy, I received this news. “I'm sorry, we only have one copy of each of these records''. I deflated a little. Ok, “do you expect to get another copy anytime soon?'' I asked. “We get new copies supplied to us every five years,” they said. More deflation. Perhaps though, these records were 4 years and 11 months old. A new set could be arriving any day now, yes? No, the records were only 3 months old. Oh balls! The last bit of air in my metaphorical balloon squeaked out.

Never mind, ‘Rome wasn't built in a day’, ‘there are more ways to skin a cat’ and as important as this was to me, ‘I was just a small cog in a large wheel’ here. Incidentally, I've just written an entire sentence using only idioms and you didn't even notice, or did you just ‘turn a blind eye’? I'm sorry, ‘I don't want to upset the applecart’ Oh bloody hell, now I can't stop it!

Of course, I did as you would have expected, I got straight back on the horse, right? (is that another one? Now that was purely unintentional). Well, no I didn't. The first stumbling block in the way and I just tripped over it and pretty much gave up, vowing to return to it as soon as I could. What an anticlimax. However, it's not all bad news, I did receive my original Birth Certificate at the beginning of July 1999, which I stored in the green folder. 

A couple of months later I came across the address of my first foster parents in the file. I was transferred to them at around 10 days old. I’m being more vague here, due to my lack of note-taking at the time. I pulled out the BT phonebook, back then, they were huge and I remember seeing strong men on the TV ripping them in half to prove some kind of point. It would be really easy now, the last one I received was 3 years ago and it was more like a leaflet that said "We don't know, just bloody Google it, will you?” 

I digress. To my amazement, they were still listed in the book. I called them that day. Happily, they were still married and had 2 children of their own. They were very surprised to hear from ‘David’ that was the name given to me at birth, I explained that I was Andy now and that I had a happy childhood overall. They told me that I was the first and only child they ended up fostering, because during the few weeks ‘David was with them, they found out they were pregnant, so chose to discontinue fostering. It wasn't a long call, just a few minutes, but before hanging up, I thanked them for being there for me in the first few weeks. I remember them wishing me luck in my search before saying goodbye themselves. I remember feeling that this was a lovely moment and I left the call almost overflowing with emotions, excitement, happiness, and sadness, almost in sympathy for baby me. It was at this point that I parked my search and hung up the deer-stalker hat. It stayed on the peg for almost 4 years.

In those 4 years, I made a few changes. A new wife and 1 one-year-old son and a new job. The new wife had come with the job as she was a fellow employee of the same firm. after a joke text sent to her by a colleague from my phone. Suggesting I fancied her (unbeknown to me i might add), We ended up on a date and that was that. Well that showed him, because we were together for nearly 9 years and had 2 beautiful kids together. I have often thanked him for that interjection. As the years went on the green folder burned brighter and brighter in my mind until I had no other choice than to start looking again. 

I don't know what turned the switch on in my head, perhaps it was the fact that I was now a father myself but I had an ever-increasing desire to find my birth mother. The internet was growing and ‘Friends Reunited’ was the big thing. It was an early Facebook of sorts I guess. In November 2003 I set up an account and started to search for names from my birth family. Nothing, no results. Perhaps all this new social media had got some catching up to do eh? it‘ll never take off you know!

It didn't take me long to start looking for online tracing websites. One that I engaged with was called ‘Searchline’. I've just done a quick Google search for it but all that comes up now are links to petrochemical companies and gas detection devices. On the message board, I placed a post. “My name is Andrew Wallis, My birth name was ‘Dave Charles Rice’ and I am looking to find my birth mother. Her name is (not going to add it, sorry) and she was born…..blah blah” you get the idea. Initially, I was requesting an idea of the cost for them to do this work for me, so I was expecting a call or an email from them regarding that sort of thing. The first form of correspondence I received was definitely not what I was expecting.

A lady called, erm? Let's call her Joan rang me on my mobile phone while  I was at work. She introduced herself and I confirmed that it was indeed I, that had posted on the message board and that I was looking for an idea of cost. “Well, “ she said, “Your birth Mum” Mistaking this for a question I said “Yes please my birth Mother…..”

As I tried to continue, she cut me off mid-sentence.

“We’ve found her”.

To Be Continued.

Image: © Andy Wallis