Many of you know that I was born in
Panama. In the city of Colon,
as opposed to the city of David.
Claiming the latter could have been fun, but oh-well. And then I was adopted.
Anyway, the birth certificate says that Mom was British, by name one Susan
Stockin, and the apocrypha says that Mom was connected with the royals in some
obscure way. Who would give that the least bit of credence that if it were not
for the fact that the trail has been blocked?
All traces removed? Is stone cold?
On a Neolithic scale of freezing. Which is to say, there is NO information
about my origins.
I grew up secretly believing, as
many adopted children do, that I was really a princess. This was before I ever
heard the apocryphal story. At the time I was just glad I had been adopted by
regular people because I thought princessing sounded like a really rotten job.
From what little I could see a princess almost never got to do anything she
wanted to do, she had to marry whatever dork her family picked out for her, and
she had to spend an awful lot of time doing what my young self considered dumb
things like christening ships, waving at people, giving interviews and looking
nice while holding flowers at hospitals.
I had known I was not a biological
member of the live-with family since maybe forever, in spite of all the
well-meant lies they told me, but it didn't really bother me. I was never
especially obsessed with finding the birth parents, as some adoptees are. I had been adopted – that meant somebody
really, really wanted me – and then I had been adopted again after my first
adoptive mother died and my adoptive father remarried. And in spite of the fact that the second mother and I were mutually not in love, I still felt sufficiently wanted and had no
internal pressure to hunt down people who emphatically didn't want me.
When I was 18 I received a
graduation gift of a trip to Europe. This necessitated getting a passport. So
step-adoptive mother hauled out the birth certificate and for the first time I
saw my birth mother's name: Susan Stockin, British citizen.
Father: unknown. Huh. I bet Susan
knew who he was. And then the fateful
line: Born out of wedlock and therefore illegitimate. Well.
That was in 1942 when stuff like
that still mattered, and if a girl was a bit fast you said she was "no
better than she should be." And
everyone knew what you meant. Old
biddies in particular. So can't you just
see the pinched lips below a faint mustache on the nurse making that
entry? Can't you just see the neat,
no-hair-out-of-alignment chignon under the crisp cap, and the glint of the
cat's eye glasses as she wrote?
My step-adoptive mother was
mortified by that line of text. She could not deal with it, and didn't want me
to have to deal with it either. Not anticipating the loose ways of the world to
come, she destroyed the document after I had been safely en-passported and
citizenized. (Yes, I had been an illegal alien for 18 years and nobody had the
least idea. Woohoo.)
It wasn't until Step-Adoptive Mom
had been laid to rest for some years and I was in my thirties (it was about
1982) that I needed that fateful document again. I managed to use my
passport for proof of birth and age. However, in the process my then sweetie,
Steve, had his curiosity bump excited and with my permission he began trying to
track Susan down.
This was when we discovered the
trail was blocked.
Steve was a determined
investigator. He made phone calls to Panama. He
wrote letters. He contacted the military
and the diplomatic services for Panama,
Britain and the US. He called the embassies and the
consulates. Short of physically barging
into offices, he made his presence known as an investigator.
And there was nothing there. The trail was non-existent. It was as though I had never been born, had
never even had my adoptive father push on his own commanders to obtain
emergency clearance so he could take me to the states.
We both thought this was a very
suspicious circumstance. Too much
TV? Maybe. But what was there to do about it anyway? I was not really interested in continuing to
try to meet people who so obviously did not want to meet me. I told Steve to
drop it.
And so it stayed until 2010, when
once again I needed my birth certificate because I wanted to teach ESL in Mexico. I had pretty much forgotten how much trouble
Steve had in his search, and sent off a letter (with a check for the very
healthy fee) to the Panamanian Consulate asking for help in finding my birth
certificate. It only took a week or so
for a note scribbled at the bottom of my letter to be returned to me along with
the check. "Sorry, we are unable to
locate it."
Well, I thought, when I am in Mexico I will at least be closer, and perhaps I
will pop down to Panama
for a visa-run. It would make a nice
vacation, too.
So toward the end of my allotted
days in Mexico, I bought a
ticket for Panama. But the trip was fated not to be that year. A mere
month before departure I slipped in the tiled shower of my 'habitacion' and
fell. My wrist shattered and I was
forced to fly home for repairs.
It took me another year and a half
to recover and save up to try again.
This time I got talked into going to Costa Rica by well-meaning
friends. It's true that Costa Rica is
totally gorgeous, from the countryside to the people. And I certainly do not regret going there,
particularly since I felt some renewed connection with my first adoptive
mother, who died in the jungles there.
She and Daddy adopted me because
they could have no children of their own.
Then, the frequent miracle occurred – once the pressure of desperately
wanting a child was off, she became pregnant.
Unfortunately, it was a tubal pregnancy and she was on vacation in the
Costa Rican jungle when my potential sibling began to make him or herself
known. So the only one of my mothers who really wanted me perished there
before they could get her to medical help.
I was six months old.
Daddy pressured his commanding
officers and pushed through the paperwork that allowed me to enter the US when he flew
back with her ashes. He presented us
both to her mother, my beloved Gram.
Nearly 70 years
later, here I was, living in Costa Rica
but thinking constantly about Panama. Panama is right next door. Life is cheaper in Panama. I want to see Panama. Etc. But there so many come hithers in Costa Rica –
the unequalled natural beauty of the land, the riotous bursts of flowers, the
pleasure of seeing so many lovely, smiling faces wherever you look. And the kindness of the people. Friends.
And then there were the expelling factors – the local hacker who had been after me,
the constantly rising cost of living, the bad plumbing in my cabina, the bugs
that simply love to munch me.
One day when I was half-mad from
scratching a fresh set of bites from an unknown insect, had just returned from
spending way too much on groceries, and opened the door to my cabina to be
met with a deep whiff of sewer, I made the decision. It was time to move to
Panama.
To be continued…