Who Am I?

All my life, I’ve had this feeling that I don’t belong. I was born on May 22, 1967, and my original name was Donald. I don’t know who my biological mother or father were. I don’t know their names, their stories, what they looked like, what kind of people they were or what circumstances brought me into the world. At about 11 months old, in 1968, I was adopted. The people who adopted me were my parents. They weren’t some separate category of “adopted family” to me. They were Mom and Dad. They were the only parents and the only family I ever knew.

Mom renamed me Mark. What I know about that mostly comes from one of the very few real adult conversations I ever had with her, and actually one of the last meaningful conversations I remember having with her. I don’t remember paperwork, courts or procedures. I only remember what Mom told me about how I came into the family and how she chose me. My sister Diane, rest in peace, had also been adopted. Diane was actually the daughter of one of our cousins, something we learned more about later when we met that side of the family. So adoption was already part of the story of our family before I ever understood what the word meant.

I also know something important about why Mom and Dad chose me. Dad had already lost a son. His son carried Dad’s middle name, Byron, and died for some horrible reason before I became part of the family. Dad had wanted a son, and somehow I came into his life after that loss. I filled a place that had been left painfully empty. Mom was the one who actually chose me from the orphanage, and during that adult conversation she told me the story of why.

When Mom picked me up, apparently I was so desperate to be held that I grabbed onto a button on her shirt and wouldn’t let go. I pulled so hard trying to hold onto her that I tore the button right off. That was the story she gave me about choosing me. There’s something about that story that stays with me now. Before I understood adoption, family, rejection or belonging, apparently I was already hanging onto somebody because I didn’t want to be put down again. Mom saw that little eleven-month-old boy holding onto her shirt and chose him. She took Donald home and called him Mark.

So I know I was wanted. At least at that moment, I was chosen.

But the family I’d just become part of didn’t stay together very long. Sometime in 1969, my parents separated. My mother left Dad on the back of a motorcycle and somehow eventually ended up about 2,000 miles away in Saginaw, Michigan, where she settled with another man. So I went from an orphanage, to being chosen by a mother and a father who wanted a son, to having that new family scatter before I was even old enough to understand what had happened.

That left me with a strange problem I’ve carried most of my life. I don’t know anything about the people I came from biologically, but I also never really got to know the stories of the parents who chose me. Oh, I knew their names. I knew who Mom and Dad were. I know pieces of their lives. I know Dad had lost Byron. I know Mom walked into an orphanage and picked up a little boy named Donald who tore a button off her shirt because he wanted so badly to hold on. I know she chose him and renamed him Mark. I know Diane was adopted too, and that her story eventually connected back into the extended family. But I never got to know enough.

I didn’t know Mom and Dad in the way I think children should eventually get to know their parents as adults. I didn’t know enough about where they came from, what shaped them, what they dreamed about, what frightened them, what happened before I arrived or why their lives went in the directions they did. I know their names, but I don’t know enough of their stories. And somewhere behind my own name is another story I don’t know at all.

My mother and I remained estranged. I reached out to her over the years, but there was always distance there. I only remember having one real adult conversation with her, and that conversation now feels even more important because so much of what I know about my adoption came from it. She wasn’t a bad person. I believe she was a good person, and that’s part of what makes this difficult for me to write about. I don’t want to turn her into a villain because she wasn’t one. She mostly just avoided me. And now, even after her death, she sometimes appears in my dreams. Somehow, even there, she’s telling me to go away.

There’s something especially strange about that when I think about the button. The first story I have about Mom and me is about me desperately grabbing onto her and refusing to let go. One of the last real conversations I remember having with her was the conversation where she told me that story. And one of the last things left in my mind now is me still reaching toward her and feeling her moving away.

That troubles me deeply because my heavenly Creator says to honour your father and mother. I want to do that. I don’t want my hurt to become dishonour, and I don’t want to condemn people whose complete stories I never knew. Dad had already known the kind of grief nobody should have to know. Mom had her own story too, most of which I never really learned. Maybe part of honouring them means refusing to reduce either of them to what hurt me.

But it still leaves me with a question I’ve never really been able to answer: How do you honour your father and mother when you never really got the chance to know them? Maybe honouring them means telling the truth without turning that truth into hatred. Dad wanted a son. Mom chose me. Mom gave me my name. Those things matter. The fact that the family later came apart matters too. Both can be true.

That feeling of distance followed me into the rest of my life. I’ve spent much of my life reaching out to other people. Most people are perfectly polite. They’ll answer me, talk to me and sometimes we’ll even have a really good conversation. But very few people reach back. Eventually you notice when you’re always the person sending the message, making the call, suggesting the visit or keeping the relationship moving. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I simply stopped reaching out. Usually I already know the answer: silence.

Maybe that eleven-month-old baby grabbing onto Mom’s button never completely disappeared. Maybe some part of me has spent my whole life reaching out, grabbing onto people and hoping somebody will hold on from the other side.

Then I met Felicity. I was working as a security officer when we first started talking. During one of those early meetings, she suddenly reached out, grabbed me by the tie and kissed me. She later confessed that she’d never done anything like that before, but it worked on me. More than that, it touched something at my core.

There’s something almost poetic about it when I think about Mom’s button. One of the earliest stories of my life is about me grabbing onto somebody because I wanted to be held. One of the most important stories of my adult life is about Felicity grabbing onto me because she wanted me close. She didn’t know any of that when she grabbed my tie. She didn’t know what that simple act would mean to me. She was just being Felicity. But somewhere deep down, I think it answered a question I’d been carrying since I was a child. For once, I wasn’t the one reaching. Somebody reached for me.

Felicity kept reaching for me for the next 28 years. That means more to me than I can probably explain because so much of my life has involved wondering where I belonged and whether anybody would actually choose to have me in theirs. Felicity did. She loved me for 28 years, including plenty of times when I didn’t think I deserved that kind of love. With her, I had a place.

I never became a father myself. I’m 59 now and single, so I have to accept that I may never become one. At the moment I don’t even have a close female friend, much less somebody I can look at and think, maybe there’s another chapter coming. And now Felicity is gone, so that old question has come walking straight back into the room: Where do I belong now?

There’s one answer I keep coming back to: Yahweh. My heavenly Father has always been there. I don’t say that because it sounds religious. I say it because when I look backward across my life, I can see Him acting in it. Whenever I’ve genuinely needed something, somehow there’s been provision. My wife dies during a massive housing crisis, and somehow I end up with a nice two-bedroom apartment that’s almost exactly the kind of place I need. At another point in my life, I moved across the country, and within days I had somewhere to live and work providing an income. And at a time when I’d spent so much of my life wondering whether I belonged to anybody, I was given Felicity, who loved me for 28 years.

I can look at those things individually and call them coincidences. It gets harder to do that when I look at the whole road. I’ve always felt Yahweh there. He’s given me the confidence to keep going, but even more importantly, He’s given me reasons to keep trying to be kind, gentle and loving. There are two ways a person can respond to feeling unwanted. You can decide nobody reached for you, so you won’t reach for anybody else. Or you can decide you know exactly what that loneliness feels like, so you’ll try very hard never to make somebody else feel it. I want the second one.

Maybe that’s what the button means to me now. At eleven months old, a little boy named Donald reached out and held onto Mom with everything he had. She chose him, took him home and gave him the name Mark. Dad needed a son and made me his. Diane had her own adoption story too. Somehow all of us were connected by family, blood, adoption, loss and circumstances we didn’t fully understand. A family came together, and then parts of that family broke apart. Years later, Felicity reached out, grabbed me by the tie and pulled me toward her. She chose me too. For 28 years, I knew what it was like to have somebody reach back. Then she was gone, and somehow, all these years later, I’m still asking the same question that little boy must have been asking without even knowing the words for it: Where do I belong?

Maybe I’ve spent my life asking the wrong people to answer. Maybe belonging doesn’t necessarily come from knowing whose blood is in your veins. Maybe it doesn’t come from knowing every story behind your family name. Maybe it doesn’t come from whether the first name somebody gave you was Donald or the name your mother chose for you was Mark. Maybe it doesn’t come from California, Michigan, Australia or anywhere else I’ve lived. Maybe it doesn’t even come from people reaching back every time I reach toward them.

I’ve spent a lifetime asking where I belong, and maybe the answer was there before anybody ever called me Donald or Mark. I belong to Yahweh. The first family story I know begins with me desperately holding onto a button. One of the greatest love stories of my life begins with Felicity grabbing me by the tie. Maybe both of those moments were teaching me something. Maybe the greater story is that, all along, somebody was already holding onto me.

And He never let go.

If you want to know what I'm holding on to now...

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