The Mother Mystery

All I know about my birthmother is that she was born, lived in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was married to Melvyn E. Hansen and had a daughter a year or so before giving birth to me. I have no idea what she looked like, did for a living or believed.

I was conceived in Cape Girardeau and her brother’s family knew of my birth and thought I was Hansen’s son. It looks like she and Hansen had separated before or shortly after my birth that because he moved back to Idaho where he’d enlisted in the military four months after my birth.

We know she traveled from Cape Girardeau to Evansville, Indiana for my birth so we can assume she didn’t want it known around her home town. But we don’t know at what stage of her pregnancy she went to Evansville.

My mother told me that my adoption was arranged by her old high school and university friend, Charlotte Dress and that Charlotte was in charge of the adoption agency. Charlotte’s father was William H. Dress, the Evansville mayor when I was born and after whom the city’s Dress Plaza on the shores of the Ohio River is named. Dress Plaza is also where the river boat passengers would embark and debark and goods loaded and unloaded. And river boats were still a major means of mass transport in that part of the “Tri-State” during that period.

So it’s conceivable that my birthmother traveled down the Mississippi to the Ohio and up to Evansville on a river boat some months before my birth and met with the agency to arrange the adoption.

After the initial revelations regarding my biological family had settled I wanted to know more and once again contacted the Indiana state authorities. Since my last encounter the laws had been liberalized even further and I could apply for the court order sealing my birth records be made available to me. All I had to do is fill out another form and provide proof of my identity.

The process was a very smooth one and compared to my previous experiences and the waiting period was comparatively brief. I received the copies and that’s when I discovered that I was not born in Deaconess Hospital as told to me by my mother, but somewhere else. Nor was I born on the day given on my official birth certificate, but at just past midnight on the following morning. The document also revealed that my birthmother had had a previous child who was still living.

According to my mom, I was carefully matched to her and my dad based on physical traits of my biological parents, their health records, education, religion and, although never mentioned, ethnicity. She’d often tell me that I’d been a perfect match for my two WASP adoptive parents who had both graduated from college and were “professionals.”

After earning her college degree my mom had worked as a high school English teacher and as a social worker for a Federal agency. My dad was a senior executive in a major corporation that manufactured gas appliances.

The document presented another curiosity when compared to the official court order approving my adoption. I’d been handed over to my mom within a few days of my birth – a fact that adds weight to my guess that my adoption had been planned long before my birth.

I’ve been thinking about including the document copies that I’ve been referring to but decided against it due to the possibility that the details could be used for identity theft. It’s unfortunate because one of the strangest things I discovered was what appears to be a smudged name that had been rubbed out in the space that asks for the name of the father.

Yet the question remains. Why did my birthmother travel all that distance to give birth to me since the city of St Louis, Missouri was so much closer and so much easier to hide a birth in? What, if any, was her connection with Evansville. Or with my mom and her friend Charlotte Dress. Did they know each other before?

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