Uncovering the Path: Steps towards the Truth

" Alice laughted. "there's no use trying.' she said: 'one can't believe impossible things." Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

I didn't officially find out I was adopted until I was 21, already a wife and mother to a two-year-old. Back when I was 16, I had this notion that there was some hidden truth. Teenage years are confusing as it is, but my birth extract certificate was like a mystery novel. It claimed to be issued in 1966, but I was born in 1964. I'd compare it to my friends full-fledged birth certificates at school, and theirs were straightforward - no weird dates, no drama. Something didn't add up.

Fast foward to 18 and living with my future husband, we were doing it tough in a little flat, with not much between us, other than his wage as a tradesman and mine working part-time in an office. As I became officially an adult, I asked Mum for my passbook. It contained a princely sum of $1800 (around $5800 in today's terms). As she was still the co signer I needed her to relinquish the title and hand over the cash.

Was that to become a drama! In Mum's defence, she had helped me to save by taking over my pay packets at the end of the week. As the "accountant" of the family she felt it her duty to take my wages and Dad's and dole them out to her specifications. That meant Dad got $5 to spend for the week on frivololities or emergencies and I got $10 out my $65 a week wage. That $10 was to cover my weekly travel to the city and I ended up spending the rest on stockings. I could never go a day without putting a ladder in my hose, always in an obvious spot. I hated wearing those things, but they were standard issue in the office working girls life.

Now, picture this cinematic scene on the bank steps. Mom and I, arguing. And then, for the first time ever, I drop the F-bomb. The tension is thick. And that's when Mom catapults a bombshell in retalliation to my swearing, "I'm going to tell you something."

I'm like, "Tell me what?" But she storms off in one of her rages, leaving me hanging.

At first, I thought it was a trick, you know, to make me beg for forgiveness. But as I journeyed home on two sets of trains, I couldn't help but have the feeling that she was going to finally tell about me being adopted. I was convinced, but my then-future husband would call me crazy, like I was an overdramatic actress on the stage, deepening my performance for attention.

On our next visit, to celebrate my 18th (delayed to the weekend), I'm sitting there, on the edge of my seat, waiting for the big reveal. But it never comes. Mum, like my swearing episode, brushed it off like it was just another day in our "normal" life. Classic, Mum right? She had thought better of it and it wasn't until three years later that the truth would come out.

Mum never told me about my adoption. That news came from my sister in a roundabout way. She was visiting for the only the second time after my efforts to try to reconcile the relationship between us all.  I understood from my perspective what a struggle it was to be a daughter of that woman. But I never truly understood my sister's plight of the "scapegoat" till much later in our lives, when I finally found the answer in the narcissist’s playbook, the one that described Mum's behaviours to a tee.

I wanted us to be close, I desperately wanted some family cohesion. Naively, I was doomed to continue to paint that lovely picture of family in my head. I was the fixer, but it didn’t matter how much I tried, that fairytale Brady Bunch family would never eventuate.

On that visit I begged my sister to tell me the truth and her only hint she gave me was " you need to speak to Mum. " As if that would deter me, and it only gave me the confirmation that I was indeed adopted.

I kept at my sister, relentlessly till finally she broke, and the affirmation still didn't come directly to me.

My sister insisted that she would tell my husband, that way she wasn't betraying Mum. As it emerged, all the kids were sworn to secrecy about my adoption, and they were to never tell me. To shine a bright light on the differences between my sister and I, if it had been reversed, I would have told her face to face in a heartbeat, firstly to spite Mum and secondly, because she deserved the truth.

In that moment of clarity, years of turmoil washed away. Everything made sense and there was a joy in knowing she wasn't really my mother.

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