Catherine Chanter, writer and poet, writes in today’s Guardian of her extraordinary search for her birth mother.
The author describes how growing up adopted with no knowledge of her biological origins gave her a sense of being unmoored, unbound to anyone. Not knowing was also a way of maintaining equilibrium with her “wonderful” adoptive parents.
“Not knowing gave me a furious independence, riding the rapids, not moored to either bank; and not knowing or asking was always a safe state of affairs for me and my adoptive family.”
She waited until after her adoptive parents’ death to search for her birth mother and the unknown piece in the puzzle of her own life. After applying for her original birth certificate and waiting for six months, she found herself learning her real name at the age of 50.
“I was Irish; my mother, Kathleen, was a nurse from Galway; no father noted. But one thing astonished me. I was called Fionnula Jane. In all the 50 years of speculation, it had never occurred to me that anyone had ever loved me enough to have named me.”
The facts of Catherine’s adoption story are tragically similar to that of so many babies born to single mothers in those days. She was born in August at a Salvation Army mother and baby home. Admitted to hospital for treatment in November and then discharged to a “babies home” where she was adopted by her new family. Her birth mother, Kathleen, had emigrated to Canada by then.
What was unusual about the timeline, as Catherine learned, was that her mother had taken her baby home to Ireland for a two months. This was extraordinary for the time; an unmarried mother in Galway in the 1950s.
“Whoever this woman was, I hated her for having given me up but I loved her for having tried to keep me.”
Catherine found other clues to her mother’s pain and resilience in bureaucratic correspondence on her file. In one letter, her mother pleads for a picture of her baby:
“I would be grateful if you would let me know how Fionnula is. I forgot to mention I left her clothes on the ward. I hope it is not too much to ask, but I would dearly love a photo. I didn’t have much opportunity to get one, but it would be lovely to keep.”
Her search took her to Ireland where she tried to find information about Kathleen from family and neighbours. A priest told her the whole story, but none of her mother’s family would meet her. Though her return to a place so rooted in her family gave her for the first time that “mysterious feeling of deep, keen belonging”.
Catherine continued to try to track her mother’s journey to Canada with no luck. Then she met a woman who had traced her family through a personal ad and decided to give it a go. Like sending a message in a bottle, she posted the following in the Galway Gazette:
“Many years ago, I lost touch with *******, born 1936, ****** Salthill, Co Galway. I believe she may have emigrated to Canada in 1959? I am now trying to contact her if she is still alive or any of her family/friends. Please get in touch if you can help. Thank you. Fionnula Jane.”
Incredibly Kathleen’s nephew saw the ad and contacted her. Through protracted correspondence first with him and then his mother, her aunt, Catherine finally received a letter from her birth mother 18 months after discovering her real first name for the first time.
They communicate through email, and the connection seems undeniable. They are both published poets. Their work is similar and unsurprisingly both their work deals with “explorations of loss”.
“In the years since, Kathleen and I have not met, we have never spoken. We communicate by letter, sometimes email. She says she would like to meet, but she is a Buddhist now and believes this will happen if it is meant to be. I cannot blame her for turning her back on the Catholic faith. I also believe that for everything there is a time.”
*Some names have been changed.
Catherine Chanter is the author of Well, available here.
