Giving Birth to a New Family

Kathy Hall’s only child was 2 days old when she said goodbye. She had enough time to baptize him and whisper in his ear, “You continue to find me, and I’ll continue to find you.”

That was 28 years ago when Hall made the difficult decision to give up her son for adoption. But after almost three decades of wrenching emptiness and wondering about her son, Hall finally located him in Canada.

The two first spoke six weeks ago and since have begun to share accounts of their lives. On New Year’s Eve, they will meet at her son’s hometown of Belleville, Ontario.

“I always knew deep in my heart I was going to find him,” Hall, of Santa Ana, said sobbing.

While theirs will be a joyous reunion, thousands of other birth parents and adoptees are still searching for their loved ones.

Kate Burden of Lake Forest has not found her birth mother, but her nine-year search has been fruitful--she discovered she has a sister, who was also adopted. By connecting with about 15 search services and scouring the country on various leads, she found her older sibling in Petaluma. They met for the first time just before Thanksgiving.

“We were friends immediately,” said Burden, 27. “I had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.”

The sisters discovered they share numerous interests, such as a love for cats, the arts and designing. Despite the separation, the kinship feels strong, said sister Destra Beatie.

“It’s very odd how two people who grew up in entirely different circumstances can be very much alike,” said Beatie, 28. “I see us being very close.”

For Burden, finding her sister has helped fill some of the blanks in her life, she said. It has also encouraged her more to continue to search for her mother to better understand her heritage.

Bits and pieces from various government documents offer Burden a vague image of her mother--her first name is Susan. She was born in 1949. Like Burden, she has auburn hair and owned two cats at the time she was pregnant. She majored in commercial art in college but did not graduate.

By befriending Hall and other birth moms searching for their children, Burden said she does not resent her mother. Instead, Burden said she has forgiven her mother and wants thank her for her courage.

“I would just like a friendship with her,” Burden added softly.

Perhaps the kind of friendship Hall and her son, Michael Finch, have discovered.

Mother and son communicate daily via the phone or Internet. They admit they share similar vices, such as coffee, cigarettes and cyberstuff.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Hall said grinning widely. “It’s like becoming a new mom at age 51.”

She never wanted to lose her son, Hall explained, seated at her home lined with towering bookshelves, some filled with guides on how to find adoptees. At the time she was pregnant with her son, Hall said she was 22 years old, in an abusive relationship and had just lost her job as a file clerk.

“I know I couldn’t be a good mother under those conditions,” said Hall, who now works as a psychiatric nurse at the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange.

When Hall gave birth to Finch at a Los Angeles maternity home, someone took a picture of her baby and gave it to her. That browning thumbnail photo, which she has kept framed and nearby for 28 years, has helped her continue with her life, she said.

For years, she refrained from looking for her son because she didn’t want to interfere with his childhood. But Hall proceeded last year to aggressively find Finch.

She fought for government documents on her medical records and any piece of information on her son. Under adoption laws in California, most information is sealed from the birth parent and the adoptees. (In several states, support groups for birth parents and adoptees are pushing to change laws so that records are easier to get. In the U.S., there are 450,000 foster children.)

Hall hired investigators, psychics and anyone else who could help her find leads. Then, she hit a gold mine: an investigator helped her obtain her son’s name: Michael Douglas Finch.

With his name, she tried to track him down through scores of databanks, phone books and search engines on the World Wide Web. She contacted hundreds of people, some as far as South Africa and Australia, with various versions of her son’s name. But they all led to dead ends.

Finally, with the help of a fifth researcher, she found the phone and address of a Michael Douglas Finch who had the same birth date as her son’s and whose parents’ names were the same as the information she had.

Hall called the number immediately. Michael Finch wasn’t home. She left an urgent but cryptic message on his answering machine for him to call or e-mail her.

Two hours later, Finch responded by e-mail, and the mystery began to unfold through an exchange of numerous letters. It was the second electronic letter that he figured out who Kathy Hall was.

“She knew my birth date, my middle name, the name of my parents and where I was born,” Finch said. “But it was these lines that really got me. She wrote, ‘I may indeed be someone you might want to know. We have met but you would not remember as you were very young. But I have never forgotten.”

Finch paused and then added, “When I found she was my birth mother, there was just a tremendous sense of relief and excitement. I’ve been wondering about her all my life.

“This has opened a whole new part of my life, a whole new family,” Finch said. “It’s a great way to ring in the new year.”