OBC means Original Birth Certificate...

... and I don't have one. That is, I do - but it's sealed in Sacramento and - by law - I am not allowed to have it. What I do have is an AMENDED birth certificate and nearly everything on it is false. It doesn't even look like a real birth certificate. I wonder if my birth-date is a lie... hmmm - that would mean that my natal chart is all wrong, too - but that might actually explain a few things.


What a crummy and creepy and totally UNFAIR law. I want my original birth certificate. It's mine and I want what's rightfully and morally mine. Maybe my mother (Nancee) named me and if she did I'd really like to know what name she chose for me - I really, really would. Really. That document is not, as too many people seem to think "... just a piece of paper." The last time I heard that it was from the mouth of a PAP. Actually, it was from the keyboard of a PAP but it amounts to the same thing. (PAP is adoption-speak for prospective adoptive parent.) What an insensitive, outrageously insulting and demeaning thing to say to an adoptee. "Just a piece of paper..." indeed. Just one more erasure of identity.

I should have started this particular leg of my journey years ago, before my father died. As an attorney he knew judges - and a judge will have to be the one to grant me access to my OBC. Hmmm… now let me think. Who do I know of my dad's friends and colleagues who are A): still alive... B): still on the bench... and C): adoptee-friendly. Wow - that's a tough one. I don't think there's anyone - not anymore.

But in any case - why should I be reduced to even thinking about pulling strings or asking for favors when everyone else who was born in this country but who was NOT adopted can get their own - their one and only - birth certificate?? WHY am I denied this? To protect me? FROM WHAT? FROM WHOM? I know all the names that should be on it anyway - except mine. Everyone who could possibly be "hurt" by my having my Original Birth Certificate is now dead - except me.

All Reunited

It seems to me that most of my adult life has been spent in searching for my natural family... not every single day of every week of every month, but it did take 25 years to finally find my three younger siblings. "Lee" - my half-sister, 17 months my junior... "Butch" - my younger half-brother, born 16 months after "Lee" was... and Michael, my youngest half-brother… who was born 16 months after "Butch". Hmmm - a definite pattern here. By the fall of 1956, my 24-year-old mother had had five babies in six and a half years.

When I was told of their existence way back in 1975 I was confident that I would find them in just a few weeks. I thought it be would easy to find them - that an unusual surname like theirs would be a cinch to trace. Not so. They had been adopted after their mother's death... by their father's mother and her 2nd husband, which meant a different surname - and as all three had been born in California (A CLOSED STATE), their birth certificates had been sealed - and as they had been adopted somewhere in the Midwest, I had no idea where to try to find their adoption decrees. I couldn't even find their father and I had his full name. My search for them stalled.

Time passed. Someone invented the Internet, the World Wide Web and home computers came down drastically in price and my husband bought our first Mac - and I discovered that I could search for my past, for my siblings, for my grandmother, my natural father or for just about anyone right from the comfort of my very own home. No more days spent at the Hall of Records downtown (and they had moved the Birth and Death Records to another location much further away by then anyway)... no more days spent at the library combing the telephone books state by state... no more waiting for weeks and weeks to hear back from the Vital Statistics Departments of every Midwestern state in the Union that there was nothing in their records that matched my inquiry.

One night at about 3 am, during one of my obsessive search sessions, I was searching the database at Ancestry.com for an ancestor from the 18th century and absently typed in the name of my natural mother's husband - the father of my younger siblings. To my amazement - to my shock - to my joy - I got a hit. SUCCESS!!!! Someone (a distant cousin of my siblings' step-grandfather, the one who had adopted them) had submitted her entire family tree to Ancestry and there they all were... all three of them. Their father was there, too, of course. And no wonder I couldn't find him - he had died in Iowa in 1976.

I couldn't believe it. I leaned back in the chair and said out loud to my cat, "I did it. I finally did it. It's over." He purred his applause. I crawled back to bed and tried to wake my husband... "I found them - I did it - I found them". He murmured something like, "That's nice, honey..." but I had to wait awhile to share my news... he's a very sound sleeper. He practically slept through the Northridge earthquake as our 1920's Sears-catalog house rocked and rolled as if a train was crashing through the center of it... so this certainly wasn't going to wake him up.

I immediately e-mailed the woman who had submitted the family tree and over the course of several e-mails told her the whole story. She was fascinated - but being such a distant cousin, didn't actually know this branch of her family at all. There was a minor error in her information regarding my sibs but she decided not to correct it in the hopes that perhaps one of them would also stumble across her entry at Ancestry.com and e-mail her with the correction.

A wise woman. For that is exactly what happened. Well over one year later, I got an e-mail from her out of the blue saying that one of my brothers had contacted her about the error, that she had told him my story and that he wanted contact with me - was I still interested in that? WHAT?!!!! Hellloooooooooooooo!!!! Does a bear s___ in the woods???

"Butch" and I began corresponding via e-mail, sharing and catching up on two lifetimes and filling in some of the gaps of the past. He and his sibs had had no idea at all that their mother had ever had another child - let alone two.

He had lost touch with his older sister and younger brother - deep scars from their painful childhoods and very different interests did little to keep them connected and there had been no contact between them in many years. After about a year, I asked if he'd mind if I pursued contacting them and as he had no objections at all - I did.

I had wanted to call my sister first - for one thing, it was her birthday the day I had steeled myself to make the calls - and after arguing with myself about the pros and cons of laying this shocking bit of news at her feet on her birthday, I picked up the phone and punched in the numbers.

An answering machine answered. RATS! I hung up without leaving a message. Not to be deterred, though, I paced for a while, tried to calm my churning stomach, rehearsed what I was going to say, and then called my youngest brother.

His wife answered the phone. Once I knew I'd reached the right guy, I forgot my rehearsed speech and blurted everything out to her in a rush of words. When I finally stopped for air, she asked, "Wouldn't you like to speak with my husband"?" "Yes", I said gratefully. "Yes - I would."

Michael came on the phone. I said what I always say - "Please - please don't hang up on me - let me explain." And I began to tell him the story of his natural mother who had been killed when he was 18 months old and of an older brother and sister who had both been adopted out at birth. He was, I think he would agree, in a complete state of shock.


I have now met all three of my younger siblings, f2f, as we say in Adoption Land (face-to-face).

I met my sister first... she came to California in October of 2003 from the south-western state where she has lived for many years and we spent five days together. We did a little detective work in Santa Cruz, where our mother was killed, and we stirred things up a little bit in Tulare, where she had been raised. We visited her grave in the pouring rain. We shared the stuff that sisters share, we clung to each other, we laughed and we cried.

"Butch" came to California a few months later from the east coast state where he lives. His itinerary was a little different, preferring to get acquainted with the living first. The timing was a little awkward for me as I had a freelance job with a hot deadline the week he came - but we still managed to spend time together and he was able to meet our older brother as well as our aunt and uncles who never met their older sister Nancee.

Finally, this past February, Michael came back to California from Nebraska where the trio were raised and saw the Pacific Ocean again for the first time since he was about two. Most of the five days we spent together was in Santa Cruz. We looked at the sea... he couldn't get enough of it - we beach-combed for shells... and when we retraced the route on West Cliff Drive that Nancee and Joseph Henry Nickels took that fatal night and got to the place where the motorcycle crashed through the barrier, we argued about where exactly to put the roadside memorial cross I'd sent away for... he won - I think. We both had a touch of food poisoning from a very famous restaurant on the wharf - (it's the big one on the right, you can't miss it... stay away from the shellfish and anything with tentacles.) And we visited Nancee's grave. It was raining, of course... it's always raining when I go there. It has never once not been raining, even in summer. And we spent some quality time with our older brother.

And I think this is why, for the first time in 32 years, I felt a bit of peace on the anniversary of Nancee's death. I have always felt her presence... as though I was being guided... and I believe that I was - that my compelling need to find my sister and brothers was not just my need, but hers as well - to bring all of her children together.

~ The Family Curse ~

Prologue...

Over thirty years ago, I embarked on a journey... to find and meet my natural mother. It didn't happen quite as I'd planned or hoped for. I found her - but she'd already been dead for many years.

As it turned out, she had been adopted, too, though not as a baby and since her only surviving family (two older adoptive brothers) were uncommunicative - one was an alcoholic and though he was willing to speak with me, his memory was as if blanketed in a very thick fog - the other simply refused any contact whatsoever - I decided to search for her natural parents.

The same day I found out that my mother was dead, I also found out that she'd had three more children after I was born. After their mother's death, they had been adopted by one of their father’s relatives. I determined to find them, too.

Sometimes, to arrive in the present, one must first travel backwards. Having no other choice, that's what I had to do.


When she was five years old, my natural mother Nancy Lee Crane was taken from her mother by the county and tossed into whatever the foster care system was in 1937. The reason cited for this was that her mother was "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" because she was (allegedly) living with a man to whom she was not married.

When I met my grandfather way back in 1976, he mentioned something about a prostitution charge as well, but I have not been able to verify that - and since he was in the Navy and their marriage was the shotgun type and he didn't really stick around after the ceremony, I have my doubts about that… and it doesn't matter to me anyway, other than as just another detail in the story.

There's no denying that Grandma was a bit of a hottie for her day and that her hormones raged like an out-of-control forest fire. She and her two older sisters liked to go to the picture show, they liked to drink, they liked to smoke and they liked boys - a lot.

Here's Grandma with a boyfriend in 1930 when she was fifteen:

Cute, huh? She and her sisters liked sailors. They didn't live too far from the port of Los Angeles and what better place for Depression-era girls to have a little fun and maybe meet a potential husband? That's exactly what Grandma's eldest sister did... she married a sailor - with her father’s shotgun aimed right at the center of his back. (Their first child was… umm... "pre-mature" - but unusually hale and hearty.)

Here's Great-Auntie Billie, the next sister, in 1929 when she was fifteen:




There's something about her eyes - don't you think? So… arresting… so languorous. (Billie's given name was Minnie but she didn't like that so she changed it.)







Back to Grandma Jerrie. (Her given name was Juanita but she didn't like that so nicknamed herself Jerrie.) Here she is with the same boyfriend in the next picture in the series - did they even have photo booths back then? I guess so:

Shortly after her older sister's wedding, Jerrie found herself in the very same predicament - pregnant by a sailor (a friend of her new brother-in-law) and unmarried. It was very early in 1932. It was the Depression. I can only imagine what it might have been like for for my great-grandparents... another daughter pregnant but, with no husband, still their responsibility... and soon, another mouth to feed. My great-grandfather, John Albert Davis, had recently lost his shoe repair shop… and then, in the midst of this family crisis, a far greater one occurred - he suddenly died of a ruptured appendix at the age of 48 in the spring of 1932.

To his credit, my then 21-year-old grandfather Jim did do the honorable thing and married 16-year-old Jerrie a few weeks after her father's death, though apparently it took some convincing. Jim was from a prominent Nova Scotia family and Jerrie's family were mid-western Dustbowl farmers (although their pedigree was just as long and every bit as impressive)... but he did step up to the plate. (More about him later.) His ship put out to sea a few days later and he was gone for months and months. Even if things had been under better or even ideal circumstances, it was not a great beginning.

Here they are in 1933... Jerrie - who looks so happy - with Jim and baby Nancy, who was about 6 months old:

According to what I know from my late Great Auntie Doris (Grandma's younger sister - who liked her name and kept it) Jerrie adored her child - in fact, the entire family did - they all doted on her.

Here is young Aunt Doris in 1934 holding 2-year-old Nancy Lee:

And here's Jerrie with Nancy:



















And Nancy again in 1936, shortly before she was "removed" from her mother's care... she was four years old here:

Losing her daughter very nearly destroyed Jerrie. And it really doesn't make sense that she did - my mother was adored by her aunts, her uncle and her grandmother, as well as by her mother. She was very well looked after - it wasn't easy, not by a long shot, in the middle of the Great Depression - but there was always food on the table, a few toys to play with and Shirley Temple-like clothes to wear. It appears that my grandmother's only "crime" was in being a free-spirit in an up-tight neighborhood and that someone reported her comings and goings and the visits from her friends to either the police, Social Services (or whatever they were called way back then) or both. Great-Aunt Doris told me that it tore my grandmother apart when the authorities took her little girl away.

Here she is in 1939... two years after Nancy was taken from her...I recognize the sad and empty look of depression...
She tried to dull the pain of her loss with alcohol, parties, lots of men, lots of cigarettes and even more alcohol. She never had another child and I've often wondered why this was, because she was most definitely a very sexual being who was never without a man in her life, and though it certainly existed, birth control was, I think, sometimes problematic to obtain. So… folk medicine potions maybe? Lots of abortions, perhaps. Or secondary infertility. Anyway - she didn't.


I don't know much more about her than this... I wish I did.

This portrait was taken sometime in 1943. The sadness in her eyes of several years earlier seems to be gone now and replaced with something almost vibrant... perhaps she was in love again. I hope so.

My grandmother Jerrie died in early August of 1970... exactly one week to the day before her 55th birthday. I had graduated from high school that June… and had turned 18 three days before her death. I had just been given my adoption file and didn't even know her name yet.

She died of a particularly nasty kind of cancer... of the tongue and throat, according to the death certificate… caused (medically) by over 40 years of chain smoking and heavy drinking.





All rights reserved. ©Deborah Rykoff Bennett 2007

"Seeing for Yourself"...

(Note Bene! The following illustration is NOT a photograph!!!)


The body is opened with a Y incision.











The word autopsy means "seeing with one’s own eyes".


I’ve read the autopsy report so many times that I know some of it by heart. It’s the only one I’ve ever seen. I was 23 years old when I read it for the first time. It’s still completely overwhelming, though I can read it dispassionately now – well, at least most of the time.

"The body is opened with a Y incision".

"There is extensive hemorrhage…"
"… multiple extensive fractures…"
"… multiple ragged lacerations…"
"… small focal hemorrhages… "
"… adventitial blood…"
"… extensively lacerated and surrounded by… extensive retroperitoneal hemorrhage…"
"… torn in association with… fractured… bones…"

I learned new words – such as "retroperitoneal". Retroperitoneal is the area situated behind the peritoneum – and the peritoneum is the space between the two layers of membrane that covers the abdominal cavity and supports most of the vital organs – in effect, serving as an insulating and protective layer.

I learned that "adventitial" refers to the membrane that covers an organ or blood vessel.


The body that had been opened with the Y incision was that of my natural mother, Nancee. The [medical] cause of her death was recent and extensive internal trauma resulting in the rupture of her liver, ruptured right kidney, ruptured bladder, shattered pelvis and broken right ribs, 2 through 8… and a massive amount of blood loss.

What caused the trauma was that the driver of the motorcycle that Nancee was with that night in Santa Cruz failed to negotiate the sharp curve to the right on West Cliff Drive at the point where it becomes Pacific Ave. The motorcycle’s estimated speed was between 60-70 mph… the posted speed limit was (and it still is) 25 mph.

They skidded 21 feet before crashing through the guard-rail, tearing out 6 feet of it. The motorcycle skidded another 18 feet, then jumped the sidewalk to hurtle 21 feet over the bluff to the private road below. It hit the road once, bounced, then flew another 28 feet before it finally crashed to a stop. Nancee was thrown an additional 20 feet from that point of impact and landed in tall grassy weeds near a Texaco station, face down.

It was a little past 2 in the morning. She died within a few minutes… cold, broken and alone. The driver lay critically injured near the motorcycle – which was brand new and wasn’t even his – he’d borrowed it earlier in the evening. He died a month later, never having been able to make a coherent statement.


This is what I found in the fall of 1975 after having searched for my natural mother for 5 years. That she had died nearly 18 years earlier, in 1958, at the age of 25. It had never occurred to me, not even once, that she might be dead and I was completely unprepared for that possibility. Being rejected would have been joyous in comparison since where there is life there is hope. But Death doesn’t give you second or third chances. Death is absolute. Death is final.

It seemed obvious then to everyone I knew who wasn’t adopted, and even a few who were, that The Search for my natural mother was over. But it wasn’t. Far from it - in fact, not even close. It was just the beginning.



All rights reserved. ©Deborah Rykoff Bennett 2006

I'm really not an expert - BUT...

... I am of "a certain age" - which is to say, I've been around the block a few times. I am old enough and have experienced enough of life to have matured a little bit and to have learned a little bit.

Upon closer reflection, I think that perhaps my opinion about adoption has not really changed all that much over the years. Most of my feelings haven't really changed either - it's just that I am no longer pretending or suppressing quite as much as I used to. I no longer say what people expect or want to hear from me quite as much.

This is what I believe - and it has nothing to do with how I feel about my mother or my father - my adoptive parents, who were the only parents I've ever had. They loved me - that I know.

I adored my dad - not a day goes by when I don't miss him in the most profound way. His death from cancer eleven years ago is the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me in my life thus far. I loved my mom, too - but it was never easy being her child. I think had I been her natural child and been as I am, it would have been even harder... but since my sister and I were adopted and as Mom's opinion of "nurture over nature" changed 180% once we had developed our own personalities, we probably got cut some slack. We were nothing like her - and she wasn't prepared for that.

I do not say the following to hurt anyone, but it is a fact. Adoption is unnatural. It may be an ancient practice, going back to well before the time of Moses - but it's still not natural. That does not, however, make it inherently bad. But it is not Nature's intention for a woman to go through nine months of physical, emotional and hormonal changes, give birth to a baby and then hand it over to someone else to nurture. It goes against the natural order of things and to say otherwise is to deny Nature in it's purest form.

I do not believe that ALL adoptions are bad - obviously that is not true. There are children all over the world who have been orphaned or otherwise have no one to love and care for them. There are women who should never be left alone with a child for even two minutes, let alone become a parent and the same is true of men. I have a friend who was terribly abused and neglected by her natural parents, as were her many siblings. All of these children were finally removed from their dangerous parents and were ultimately adopted. None of them were infants. All of them are scarred emotionally from the traumas of abuse and neglect, removal, foster care and adoption. My friend struggles with her past - but looks to the future in her own child. She has little contact with either of her families and takes refuge in the relationship she has built with her husband's parents.

But that is NOT what happened to me, or to my sister, or to any of my friends who also happen to be adopted, save for this one... ONE... adoptee friend of mine. The rest of us, all born in the late 1940's to the early 1960's, were surrendered for adoption at birth for one reason and one reason only:

Our mothers were unmarried.

That was it. Most of them were young, still in their teens, but not all. They just weren't married. And that is a pretty crummy reason to give up your baby. It was a crummy reason then, although I do understand it - but it's an even crummier reason now and does not stand the test of time.

My personal belief is that adoption is probably a better solution than a group home or an orphanage is for those children who truly need homes and have no relatives at all who are willing or able to care for them.

However - I also believe that it is in the best interest of any child to remain within her (or his) family of origin - IF, of course, it is a safe environment and all other factors being equal - than it is to be removed from it and be given a new name, a new identity, a false background complete with ancestors from whom she does not descend and be denied her own natural name, heritage and genealogy. When that happens, the answers to the questions every adoptee has had or will have at one time or another – from the most basic "who do I look like?" to "Does this disease run in your family?" - are denied them forever.