Peter’s Story

Section Five - Episode Five

The search for redemption.

Peter, determined to finally heal the hurt from all those years ago, throws wide open the door to his closet, and the old skeletons come rattling out.....

The only other person who knew my  “Big Secret” for all those years, through the 1960's, 70's, 80's and into the 90's, was Jeanette, my wife, and we would speak of it occasionally.  My parents had never been told, and I presumed that they never would be.


As the decades passed by, social conditions and attitudes changed.  I recall reading about the changes to the adoption laws, how it was now possible for birth parents to contact their adopted children.  I wondered whether I would ever find the courage to follow this up.  It seemed hardly likely.  My old pain from this time of my life has greatly diminished over the years, but it has not actually healed, and whenever I think of these things, I shy away from opening up that can of worms.


But by 1992, soon after my move to Wellington, and the beginning of my “new life”, I am ready to finally face up to this big challenge.  I call the “Childrens and Young Persons Service”, and they send me the forms to fill in.  I return the forms with my fee (this service is definitely “user-pays” for birth parents to contact their adopted children), and I wait.


I wait, and wait.  Nothing happens.  Months go by, and no word.  Nothing.  No sudden telephone call from my daughter.  No emotional tearful reunion, like one sometimes sees on television.  Nothing.  Silence, like my application has fallen into a bureaucratic black-hole.




Eventually, I call the CYPS, and, with pounding heart, ask to be put though to the social workers.  A nice sounding woman answers, and I explain to her who I am.  She says  “Oh, yes, we have just been discussing your case.  I was just today discussing it with my supervisor, and we were about to call you.”


She says that my case is a most unusual case, they have never had another case like mine, and they are unsure as to how to handle it.  I am intrigued and apprehensive.  Whatever can she mean?


We have a long conversation, and she explains the following:

(1)  The name of the father was never recorded on the original birth certificate, so officially I have no status, as the father.

(2)  The birth mother (ie. Mary), has at some stage placed a  “veto” on any information being released that might identify her.  As long as this veto is in place, they are unable to supply information concerning her to the adopted child, nor to anyone else.  Nor are they allowed to approach Mary in any way, not even to ask her whether she still wishes to keep the veto in place.  Any change in the status of this must come from a fresh approach by Mary to them.

(3)  The adopted child (my daughter), has, at some stage in the fairly recent past, applied to them for information and help in tracing her birth parents.  Because of the veto from Mary, and because they had no record of who the father was, they were unable to help her at all, and she was sent away empty-handed.




The social worker goes on to explain to me that they really do want to help, that here are two people who have both approached them asking for help from them, in order to make contact with each other, and they really do wish to help.  But, they are legally not permitted to help, because they have no proof that I am actually the father.  For all they know, I could be someone who was a friend of the parties way back then, who is now pretending to be the father.  They really do want to help, but their hands are tied......


We talk about this for some time, and it is obvious to me that this social worker does believe me in that I am the father, but that her hands are tied because of the legal situation.  She is very careful not to mention any information that I do not already know, like the name of my daughter, Mary's married name, or anything like this.


I ask whether I can do anything to break the impasse?  Is there any way that I could prove that I am the father?  She says that the only acceptable proof, after all these years, is a declaration in writing from the birth mother (ie. Mary), as to who is the father.  Ordinarily, they would approach the birth mother and ask for this, but they are unable to do this because of the veto.


The penny drops for me when I realise that the veto applies only to them, the government-employed social workers at the CYPS, but it does not apply to me!  I already know who Mary is, because I was there!  If I wish to break this impasse, I will have to find Mary myself, and approach her (despite the veto), asking for her assistance.  This would be perfectly legal, but fraught with possible consequences.


Why is it that she has placed the veto?  Has she told her husband of this long ago indiscretion?  I have no way to know.  What if I inadvertently stir up a hornet's nest for her?  It's bad enough what I did to her all those years ago, but to risk causing her grief now!  And whatever her present circumstances, she will not exactly welcome an approach from me after all these years, stirring up long-dormant memories, pain, and regrets!


I ask the social worker for advice as to how I would go about locating Mary after all this time.  “Oh that's easy”, she says,  “We do this all the time, it's part of our job.  But in this case, you would have to do it all yourself with no help from us.”


She explains the procedure of doing a  “marriage search” of the public records at the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, to find the details of Mary's marriage, followed by a search of the electoral rolls and telephone books.


After a little more discussion, I decide to proceed.  No time for hesitation.  Just go for it.  Now, today.  Within an hour, I am driving out to Lower Hutt, to the office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, which “just happens” to be only a few miles from where I am living.




I fill in the form, and give it to the woman at the counter, with the small fee that one pays for this service.  She goes away to do the search.  While I am waiting, I do some research in the microfilm reader on the marriage records of my great-grandparents.


After a while, the woman comes back and says  “Sorry, we have no record of a person of that name being married in those years.”  My heart falls.  I have already checked the old electoral rolls for the period immediately following the birth:  Mary was on the roll at her parent's address, still with her maiden name, a year or two after the birth, and then she has vanished.  She must have got married at some stage!


I pay an extra fee, and tell the woman to keep searching, moving forward year by year through the records.


Ten minutes later, she comes back.  Jackpot!  She has in her hand a photocopy of the original marriage entry!  It includes the full names and addresses of all the parties, all the details I could ever wish for.  I ask if I can take a note of the details, and she says  “The photocopy is yours, take it.”


I look in the electoral roll of Mary's husband's home town immediately after the date of the marriage, and there they are!  “Mr and Mrs.”  Next stop, Wellington Public Library, to continue the search.


I drive straight in to the library, and begin looking in the old electoral rolls.  They are in the roll for a few years in his home town, but then they disappear.  They must have moved.  They could be anywhere in New Zealand, maybe even having moved several times!  What do I do?  Search every roll until I find them???? Maybe they have even left New Zealand!




A sudden thought comes, like a small voice is telling me, whispering in my ear.....  “Look in the current Christchurch Telephone Directory!”  Fortunately, their surname is not a common name.  Thankfully, I do not have to wade through all the Smiths or Jones!


Disappointment.  They are not there. The small voice whispers in my ear again.....  “Look in the other 'phone books, including the country sections at the back of the books.”  Jackpot!  There they are, at virtually the first one I look at.


Over to the current electoral roll for this town, and there they are!  Printed in black and white, their full names, with two other people of the same surname at the same address, presumably their adult children.


The whole search, from go to finish, has taken less than thirty minutes!  It certainly seems to me that I am definitely meant to be following this path, that I am being “guided” by some intelligence that is much larger than me.


But now, I have their address and telephone number, what do I do next???  Just pick up the 'phone and call Mary?  Hardly!  I call the social worker at the CYPS for advice.


The social worker is very surprised to hear from me again so soon!  Found her already?  Well done!  I ask her for advice.  How do I make the approach to Mary, after all these years?  The social worker has had plenty of experience of approaching birth mothers, when following up inquiries from adult adopted children who are searching for their birth mother.  But never, of course, when the birth mother has placed a veto, which makes it an even more delicate matter than it usually is.  I will have to be very cautious and discrete in my approach to Mary.


The social worker explains that there is no easy way.  There is no way of knowing the present circumstances of the birth mother, and the only rule is  “Proceed with extreme caution, and be very, very discrete”.  We discuss the relative merits of a letter or a telephone call, and decide that a letter is probably best, as long as the wording is very discrete.


I agonize for a few days as to how to word a letter, and eventually I develop a plan.  It feels to me that, once again, I am being “guided” as to what is the best course of action.


I write a very generally worded note, asking Mary to please contact me about  “an important matter”.  I include my P.O. Box address and my cell-phone number.  I make no mention of what the  “important matter” is.  I sign the note with my name, which she will recognize, but which her husband and children probably will not!  I enclose a $20 telephone calling card for her to call me (as a matter of courtesy, and to avoid her having the telephone call show up on the family telephone account!).  I seal the note and phone card inside an envelope with her first name, “Mary”, and the word  “Confidential” on the outside of the envelope, and then I place this envelope into another envelope with her full name and address, and I put this into the mail.  Before I mail the note, I call the social worker again and explain the plan to her.  She endorses my plan as being  “brilliant”, and gives her blessings and best wishes.




The wait begins for Mary's reaction.  I figure I will hear nothing for at least a few days.  But what do I do if she just never calls?  If she just does not respond at all!  Will this be the end of the line?  I could hardly dare send another note if she fails to respond to my first one!


The days go by, and nothing happens.  I depart on a visit to Nelson, taking my cell-phone with me, careful to keep it with me, switched on at all times, and with the batteries fully charged!


While in Nelson, I call on my friend the re-birther for a counseling session, where we discuss the whole issue.  I leave my cell-phone in the car, and when I return, there has been a call!  With shaking hands, I retrieve the message from the voice-mail, and it is her!  Her voice sounds totally different to how I remember it, much deeper and more mature.  And, I can tell from her voice that she is very nervous!  She says that she will call again in an hour.  I check the time, and the hour is almost up!


I drive away, and have driven only a few blocks when my cell-phone rings!  I hurriedly pull over and park, and with pounding heart and shaking hands, I answer the call.  She is just as nervous as me, and asks  “What is it?  What do you want!?”


I try to calm myself, and explain what has happened.  How I wish to contact our daughter, but am unable to because of the circumstances.  She says that as far as she knew, my name should have been registered as the father:  she cannot understand why this was not done.  She also explains that her husband and three oldest children all know about our daughter, and that her husband is supportive and understanding, etc.  She only placed the veto because her youngest daughter has not been told yet, and probably will not be told for a few years.  Once this is done, she will probably lift the veto, and contact our daughter herself, as she would love to meet her when the time is right.


She agrees to write a letter to the CYPS to the affect that I am the father, provided that I promise to never reveal anything to our daughter that might lead to her being able to trace Mary.  I readily agree to this; to me this is a matter of basic integrity.  We then have a brief exchange of information about ourselves.  I tell her that I was married for 22 years and have three adult sons, having recently separated from my wife and moved from Nelson to Wellington.  She tells me a little about her circumstances, and she also explains that they have recently moved house, so my letter had to be redirected, which took extra time before she received it.  My little scheme of the two envelopes worked perfectly, as she opened the outer envelope in front of the family but, on seeing the inner envelope and the  “Confidential”, she had the presence of mind to slip the inner envelope into her pocket to open later in private.


Before we hang up, I manage to say to her  “Sorry” about what happened way back then.  She says  “Yes, it certainly messed me up for a year or two, but thank-you for saying sorry.”  I feel a great weight lift from my shoulders, the ghost of Mary is finally laid to rest.  I have a feeling that this is the real reason for this saga of having to trace Mary and contact her.  A chance to balance the ledger with a simple  “Sorry”, with both of us now being mature adults, with the benefit of the maturity that our years has given us.


I return to Wellington, and await the call from the social workers that her letter has arrived.




Sometime in the midst of all this, I attend a psychodrama workshop in Nelson.  This is my first experience of psychodrama, and it proves to be very powerful.  I am chosen by a woman as the main actor to play in her drama.  She just happens to have the same name as Mary (not their real name).  This woman even looks very much like “my” Mary, or at least how I would imagine she would look now, as a mature woman.  I find myself acting out a drama of lost love and betrayal, quite similar to my real-life one with “my” Mary!  I am overwhelmed by the experience, the intense feelings this brings up for me.


Later in the workshop, a young woman, the same age as my daughter, has to choose someone to play the part of her father in her drama.  She looks right at me, our eyes lock for what seems an eternity, my heart races, but she tears her eyes away and chooses someone else.  Later, in the discussion that follows the drama session, she explains that she was about to choose me to play her father, but that the energy between us was just too strong, too much for her.  But, in a later session, another young woman chooses me to play her father, and we play out an intensive drama of a father-daughter relationship.


In the sharing sessions, I share with everyone the story of my daughter, how I have been following up on finding her, and how the psychodrama has brought up intense feelings for me.


At the end of the day, a woman my age comes up to me, gives me a big hug, and explains how moved she was to hear my story, as she is the birth mother of an adopted child that she is presently tracing.  It has been very helpful to her to hear the story from the father side of the triangle, it has helped her enormously with her issues with the father of her child.  I have the feeling that there must be untold thousands of men and women just like us, the baby-boomer generation, all over New Zealand, and indeed all over the world, with similar stories.  The children of the 1950's and 60's, brought up to be very dysfunctional around anything to do with sex, with a legacy of unresolved pain, guilt and shame.  And how the only way to clear away this mountain of unhealthy energy is for each and every one of us to now fearlessly follow our own path in finding our own answers to this legacy.


I travel back to Wellington feeling much lighter than I have in years, much of my pain and shame has been released.




I wait for the call from the CYPS social workers, but for a long time nothing happens.  Eventually, they call to say that the letter from Mary, confirming that I am the father of her daughter, has arrived, and I now have the status of the birth father.  They will contact my daughter and explain that her birth father wants to have contact with her.


Several more months go by, and I hear nothing further.  I begin to wonder, when will this end?  I call the social worker again, and she tells me that the case has been referred to their Invercargill office as my daughter lives in Southland.  I have a momentary thought that maybe I even passed her, a little girl, in the street, in the 1970's when I lived in Southland for six years!


They suggest that I might like to call their Invercargill office and speak to the social worker there who is handling the case.  I call Invercargill, and speak to the woman, who tells me that she has spoken to my daughter, but she may have gone cold on the idea of having contact with her birth father.  When she applied to trace her birth parents, a few years ago, she was going through a bad patch in her life.  But now, she is married and not so sure she wants to have contact.  She is also concerned for the feelings of her adoptive parents, and also she has a friend who recently contacted her birth mother and this was not a positive experience, as the birth mother tried to take over her friend's life!  She also, when she applied, had in mind finding her birth mother, she had not even thought of the father side of the triangle.


I explain that I have no wish to be a threat to anyone, least of all her adoptive parents.  Also, that I have no wish to intrude in her life, but that I would welcome any form of contact that she is comfortable with.  I discuss all this with the social worker, and she suggests that I write a letter to my daughter, just a few pages about myself, with maybe a photograph, send it to her, the social worker, and she will pass it on to my daughter.



I sit down to write the letter.  After many attempts (what does one possibly say in these circumstances!),  I manage a few pages of facts about myself,  I enclose photos of myself and my three sons,  and send it off.  I include my address and telephone number, leaving it up to her to initiate whatever further contact she is comfortable with.





Another long wait, followed up with another phone call to the Invercargill social worker.  Yes, she has forwarded the letter on.  She will call my daughter and see how she is feeling about all this.




Eventually, I receive a letter from my daughter!  At last!


She includes photographs of herself, her husband, and their daughter and son (my grandchildren).  My heart leaps when I see that she looks very much like Mary looked.  The same natural blond hair and lovely smile!  The pictures of my grandchildren really move me.  She is also pregnant again, expecting her third child in a few months.





In the letter, she mentions a few facts about herself and her family, including her address.  She asks me a few questions.  The first question is. of course,  “What can you tell me about my mother?”  I get the feeling that this is very important to her, possibly it is the main reason that she has written to me.  She really needs to know more about her birth mother.  I have a sense of the pain of the disappointment, and the feelings of rejection, that she must have felt upon being turned away with news of the veto a few years earlier.  This resonates deeply with me, as I am very familiar myself with the emotions that one feels when feeling rejected.


I write back, and give her all the information that I can about her mother, being very careful to reveal nothing that could identify Mary.  I tell her about how Mary was a trainee school teacher, how she looked just like she looks now, I tell her Mary's first name (a quite common name), and that she lives in a town with her husband and four children.  I explain the reason for the veto, and that eventually Mary will probably contact her.  It feels really good to be able to supply this information, a small step towards the healing of the pain that all three of us have suffered over the years.


I mail the letter, in the realization that I will probably not hear from her again.  And I was correct.  As I write this, in 1998, there has been no further contact.  I have not contacted her again.  One day I will, when I know that the time is right.  In the meantime, I am happy to lay the whole matter to rest.  Once I have tidied up a few loose ends.





Epilogue - Concluded


The first loose end is to call the social workers in Invercargill and in Wellington, telling them what happened, and thanking them for all their help.  They are delighted that it has turned out so well.


Next loose end is my sons.  They are already aware of their half-sister, Jeanette has told them.  I talk to them, and I show them the photographs.  They are fascinated.  What a surprise!  They have a sister!  I suspect that they are also rather surprised to hear that their father was a little “naughty” all those years ago!


Next for the big one, my parents!  In order to lay the matter to rest completely, I have to tell them!  Quite apart from the obvious logic of this, I am currently doing my 12-step program, and it would be incomplete if I did not include them in my Step-9 process, the “making amends to everyone that i have harmed”, concerning this issue.


I wait until my next trip to Christchurch, so as to be able to front up to them in person.  My youngest son, Nick, who is seventeen at the time, is with me on this trip.  In the car trip down from Nelson to Christchurch, I discuss the issue with Nick.  He is fascinated at the prospect of witnessing my confession to them, his grandparents!  He says  “What will Nana say, when she hears this?”




Well, for once, she has nothing to say!  The only time I can ever recall my mother being left totally speechless!  My big confession totally takes her breath away!  Well, at least for a minute or two!


Once they recover from the shock, (they had never suspected anything, for all these years), my father wants to know “Why did you not tell us?”


How can I explain to them how it was for me back then?  I have no wish to go into all of the drama of trying to explain to them about how I desperately wanted to tell them, but was literally unable to, as related above.  Maybe when they get to read this, my story, they might finally understand.


My parents have occasionally raised the subject with me in the years since then.  They would really like to meet their granddaughter one day.  Perhaps they will, I certainly hope so.  Maybe this will be the final turn of the wheel, the completion of the circle.