The Soul-Searching Road to One’s Roots : Adoption: There are two sides to the pending legislation that would open adoption records to biological and adoptive parents and adoptees.

After almost three decades of a love that has weathered temper tantrums, unfinished homework, preteen confusion, adolescent anguish, and addictions ranging from cookies to amphetamines, I could not say “No, Judi, do not search for your birth mother.”

Our daughter was 28 years old. Her decision to search for her roots was overdue.

That was 12 years ago. It has been a long time since I have thought about our daughter’s trip to North Carolina to find her “first” mother. When I read that the state Assembly had passed a bill that “would end confidentiality in adoptions,” the memory became current once again.

The pending legislation would allow records of adoptees between 1938 and 1984 to be open to adoptive parents, biological parents and, of course, themselves. Although I agreed with Judi’s decision to search, I am ambivalent about this new, potential erosion of confidentiality in adoptions.

As the mother of two adopted children, I have enjoyed an anonymity that protected my husband and me from intrusion and my children from possibly unpleasant surprises. On the other hand, I remember the many troubling questions our children asked over the years that I was unable to answer.

As a toddler, our daughter tolerated a consistently asked question from strangers on the street and even visitors in our home: “Where did you get your blond hair?” She would look at me and my black bob and shrug her small shoulders.

As she grew, Judi had questions of her own? “Were my ‘first’ parents Jewish?” “Why do I have such high cheekbones?” “Do you think that my other mother had any other children?” My answers had to be generalizations and platitudes. I had so little information.

In the early ‘50s, agencies gave adoptive parents only the most basic facts. We learned that our baby was physically and mentally healthy, that her mother was small and her dad was tall, that she cried and laughed a lot. She was named Barbara at birth.

When Judi was 28, she asked a challenging question, one she had never posed before. “Tell me, Mom, did ‘she’ have cancer, kidney disease, problems with her period, diabetes, etc.?” Our daughter had awakened to the fact that the answers she was giving on her doctors’ questionnaires concerned her adopted parents and grandparents, but their genes and disabilities were not relevant. Judi was having medical problems and she needed family history.

She hesitated to tell us that she wanted to find her biological mother, lest she hurt our feelings. But our parenthood was not threatened. We supported and encouraged her.

Judi contacted a social worker in North Carolina, at the agency that had placed her in a foster home, temporarily, and then in our home. At the worker’s invitation, she traveled there.

The social worker shared her birth mother’s first name and the general location where she had lived. That’s all. Feeling cheated, Judi continued her journey through the mountains, speaking to farmers and their wives, sharing coffee and chatter with anyone who would take the time.

She returned to the city of her birth and, using the name supplied by the social worker, her own birth name, her birthdate and the hospital, found her mother’s full name in the city clerk’s records.

But, suddenly afraid of confronting her birth mother, our daughter did not proceed further. She simply flew home.

Judi’s social worker had opened the file as far as she was permitted by law. When we adopted our children, we were told that when they were 18 years old they could see their records. But by the time our daughter tried to exercise that privilege, the law had changed.

Not every adoptee shares Judi’s desire to find her biological parents. We know, because 18 months before we adopted Judi, we adopted Jeff, who can’t understand his sister’s search for the past. When Judi suggested that Jeff obtain similar information, his impatient response was, “Who needs it?”

When Jeff, now 41, was a teen-ager, we visited the community in which we adopted our children. He refused to walk down the street or stay in a local motel. Years later, he confided that, at the time, he had been afraid that his birth mother would recognize him and “steal” him back.

Every child is different. I shudder when I try to imagine what it would have been like if confidentiality and anonymity had not protected our son. What if his birth mother had known where to find him?

There are two sides to this legislation. There is a wealth of information that can help adoptive parents understand the infants who become their very own. There is a real and deep-seated need among some adoptees to find their “roots” and satisfy themselves that they were not heedlessly abandoned. And there are many parents who relinquish babies in the children’s best interest, who might suffer less if they could learn, at the very least, that the children are thriving.

But safeguards must be included in any legislation. If I were a new adoptive parent today, I would need to know that no one could arrive at my doorstep to confuse my child, demand him or her back, or harass us. I would also hope that biological parents could be protected from confrontation and embarrassment. Finally, I would wish that adopted children would be able to seek and receive the family medical histories of their birth parents.

Each member of the adoption “triad” has special needs. Not one of those needs should be met at the expense of any one of the members.

Judi would still like to know if her mother was a towhead. But the possibility of opening wounds for her biological mother, who now must be close to 80 years old, have kept her from completing her search to this day.