Chapter Twenty One

Adoption, what a journey that was, in a way the process we had to go through was what prompted me to write this book. I was forced to remember things about my past that I had no recollection of at all. I was being asked questions about myself that I could not answer. Not because I didn’t want to but simply because I couldn’t remember. I’ve always been terrible at names and dates but there was so much more that I had absolutely no recall about. Jane tells a story of us driving down a motorway back while we were going through the process, I was on the phone to my sister, it was a long call and I think I got a bit animated but she was telling me things I had absolutely no idea about at all, things about our childhood that I had no idea about, it was a real learning curve and I think one for Jane too the way she was hanging on to her seat and telling me to watch how I was driving, although not quite as politely as that!

The adoption process is long and convoluted, as it needs to be, it is not something to be entered into lightly. We had months of meetings with our assigned social worker, Helen and she was brilliant, no she really was. there were checks on us of course and interviews to attend, a long course that we had to do over a number of weeks. It was on this course we met a couple, younger than us but we got on really well, Kaya and Algy, today Jane and Kaya are best buddies and talk on the phone at least 3 times a week. 

Some of the harrowing stories we heard about children leaves you wondering about folks, how nasty, inhumane and just plain horrible some people are, and how awful the world is sometimes. The good thing however is that we are not all like that.

Between our first application for adoption to completing the course must have taken at least 18 months, partly because they lost our first application and it was a few months before we realised. Then it took around 6 months before they matched a child to us. Our friends journey was a lot quicker, their initial application had not been lost and they had the details of a child in front of them within weeks of completion. They had a 3-year-old who had, as they all seem to have had, a bad first 3 years but we were so happy for them. When the match came through for us it started to get real, a whole new ball game. We were first talked through what he was like. Just coming up to his 5th birthday he was in foster care over the other side of the county. He had two sisters, both younger than him and they too had been taken into care. The two girls had been placed together with a lovely couple in Norwich but the boy, Connor, could not go with them.

We then got more details about him along with a photograph and his history, which was a difficult one to say the least. We had to put together a story book about ourselves, where we lived, our pets, etc which was passed onto him by way of preparation. We eventually got to meet him, but this does not happen quickly, the social worker had to be convinced that both sides were happy to proceed. Right at the last minute, a day or two before we were due to meet Connor for the first time there was a hiccup. Our social worker Helen came to see us, his foster parents had been given our details and Anne, the foster mother said there could be a potential problem! It turns out that, and this is so hard to believe but it’s true, Anne was once the best friend of my sister when she was around 12 or so. Anne lived across the road from us and apparently spent a lot of time in our house back then, she even said my mother taught her how to iron! It also appeared that Connor had been to my home town, to see Anne's mother, who lived only about 5 doors down from my mother at the time, a few times over the previous 2 years that Connor had been with her. How small a world do we live in? it just doesn’t seem possible. I never knew Anne, by the time she and my sister were friends I was at college and hardly ever home, especially during the day so there was no worry about any conflict of interest or anything, thankfully. When we did eventually get a photograph of Connor he looked just like me and my brothers at his age, now just turned 5.

A few weeks before we had heard about Connor I met up with Anton Edlemann in London and we had dinner together, at Quo Vardis I think it was. I said to him, I am about to become a dad. He did a double take, his eyes widened, the food almost fell out of his mouth, and said, does Jane know? It was priceless, I’ll never forget the look on his face. Although I doubt if he’ll remember. 

We met with Connor a couple of times and got to take him to our house on a couple of occasions to get him used to it. A few hundred meters from ours there was an old church with a round tower and it could be seen from a mile or so away. As soon as I saw it I pointed it out to Connor so he would know where he was from a distance, then every time after that we had a game of see who could say “I can see the church, I said it first”. He very soon made sure he was watching for it on every journey.

The day came when he was moving in with us, that was emotional, October 5th I think it was just 2 weeks after his 5th birthday. It was half term so he had a few days at home with us before he had to go to his new school. He was really fortunate with that, as we lived in a very small community in the country, he got to go to the small village primary school. He loved it and made some good friends. 20 years later he’s now working away from home, we desperately hope he manages to settle somewhere – soon.  His sisters, now 4 of them as his birth mother went on to have another 2 girls, both of which were taken away at birth, were all adopted by the same couple that took on the first two and they still live in Norfolk.