My heart hammered in my chest, and the road in front of me suddenly turned unreal and far away. Though I’d known that my parents were sweethearts, I’d always assumed that once they’d given me up, their lives had taken separate directions. Instantly a picture appeared in my head. A picture of my birth parents, and of a home that they’d made somewhere. A home I had never known. A home where—I didn’t belong.
Betty interrupted my thoughts. “Dr. Alexander?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “I’m here.”
“There’s more.”
To Eben’s puzzlement, I pulled the car over to the side of the road and told her to go ahead.
“Your parents had three more children: Two sisters and a brother. I’ve been in touch with the older sister, and she told me your younger sister died two years ago. Your parents are still grieving their loss.”
“So that means…?” I asked after a long pause, still numb, taking it all in without really being able to process any of it.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Alexander, but yes—it means she is refusing your request for contact.”
Eben shifted in the seat behind me, clearly aware that something of importance had just happened but stumped as to what it was.
“What is it, Dad?” he asked after I’d hung up.
“Nothing,” I said. “The agency still doesn’t know much, but they’re working on it. Maybe some time later. Maybe…”
But my voice trailed off. Outside, the storm was really picking up. I could only see about a hundred yards into the low white woods spreading out all around us. I put the car in gear, squinted carefully into the rearview mirror, and pulled back onto the road.
In an instant, my view of myself had been totally changed. After that phone call I was, of course, still everything I’d been before: still a scientist, still a doctor, still a father, still a husband. But I also felt, for the first time ever, like an orphan. Someone who had been given away. Someone less than fully, 100 percent wanted.
I had never, before that phone call, really thought of myself that way—as someone cut off from my source. I’d never defined myself in the context of something I had lost and could never regain. But suddenly it was the only thing about myself I could see.
Over the next few months an ocean of sadness opened up within me: a sadness that threatened to swamp, and sink, everything in my life I’d worked so hard to create up to that point.
This was only made worse by my inability to get to the bottom of what was causing the situation. I’d run into problems in myself before—shortcomings, as I’d seen them—and I’d corrected them. In med school and in my early days as a surgeon, for example, I’d been part of a culture where heavy drinking, under the right circumstances, was smiled upon. But in 1991 I began to notice that I was looking forward to my day off, and the drinks that went along with it, just a little too eagerly. I decided that it was time for me to stop drinking alcohol altogether. This was not easy by any stretch—I’d come to rely on the release provided by those off hours more than I’d known—and I only made it through those early days of sobriety with my family’s support. So here was another problem, clearly with only me to blame for it. I had help to deal with it if I chose to ask. Why couldn’t I nip it in the bud? It just didn’t seem right that a piece of knowledge about my past—a piece I had no control over whatsoever—should be able to so completely derail me both emotionally and professionally.
So I struggled. And I watched in disbelief as my roles as doctor, father, and husband became ever more difficult to fulfill. Seeing that I was not my best self, Holley set us up for a course of couples counseling. Though she only partially understood what was causing it, she forgave me for falling into this ditch of despair and did whatever she could to pull me up out of it. My depression had ramifications in my work. My parents were, of course, aware of this change, and though I knew they too forgave it, it killed me that my career in academic neurosurgery was slumping—and all they could do was watch from the sidelines. Without my participation, my family was powerless to help me.
And finally, I watched as this new sadness exposed, then swept away, something else: my last, half- acknowledged hope that there was some personal element in the universe—some force beyond the scientific ones I’d spent years studying. In less clinical terms, it swept away my last belief that there might be a Being of some kind out there who truly loved and cared about me—and that my prayers might be heard, and even answered. After that phone call during the blizzard, the notion of a loving, personal God—my birthright, to some degree, as a churchgoing member of a culture that took that God with genuine seriousness—vanished completely.
Was there a force or intelligence watching out for all of us? Who cared about humans in a truly loving way? It was a surprise to have to finally admit that in spite of all my medical training and experience, I was clearly still keenly, if secretly, interested in this question, just as I’d been much more interested in the question of my birth parents than I’d ever realized.
Unfortunately, the answer to the question of whether there was such a Being was the same as the answer to the question of whether my birth parents would once again open their lives and their hearts to me.
That answer was no.
11. An End to the Downward Spiral
For much of the next seven years my career, and my family life, continued to suffer. For a long time the people around me—even those closest to me—weren’t sure what was causing the problem. But gradually—through remarks I’d make almost in passing—Holley and my sisters put the pieces together.
Finally, on an early morning walk on a South Carolina beach during a family vacation in July 2007, Betsy and Phyllis brought up the topic. “Have you thought about writing another letter to your birth family?” Phyllis asked.
“Yes,” Betsy said. “Things might have changed by now, you never know.” Betsy had recently told us she was thinking of adopting a child herself, so I wasn’t totally surprised that the topic had come up. But all the same, my immediate response—mental rather than verbal—was:
So in early August 2007, I wrote an anonymous letter to my birth sister, the keeper of the gate on the matter, and sent it to Betty at the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina to forward along:
Dear Sister,
I am interested in communicating with you, our brother and our parents. After a long talk with my adoptive family sisters and mother about this, their support and interest rekindled my wanting to know more about my biological family.
My two sons, ages 9 and 19, are interested in their heritage. The three of us and my wife would be grateful to you for any background information that you feel comfortable sharing. For me, questions come to mind about my birth parents regarding their lives in their younger years until now. What interests and personalities do you all have?
In that we are all growing older, my hopes are to meet them soon. Our arrangements can be in mutual agreement. Please know that I feel most respectful of the degree of privacy that they wish to maintain. I have had a wonderful adoptive family and appreciate my biological parents’ decision in their youth. My interest is genuine and receptive to any boundaries they feel are necessary.
Your consideration in this matter is deeply appreciated.
A few weeks later I received a letter from the Children’s Home Society. It was from my birth sister.
“Yes, we would love to meet you,” she wrote. North Carolina state law forbade her from revealing any identifying information to me, but working around those parameters, she gave me my first real set of clues about the biological family I had never met.
