Closed Doors
This entry is about my on-going project (be)longing which looks at themes of race, heritage, transracial adoption and estrangement. Click here to read all of the posts on this topic.
In my steadfast approach to avoid doing other less than joyful work, I found myself doing a bit of digging around this morning. Whilst I wait for my Ancestry DNA test to arrive I thought that I would see if I can get any information from Barnados, where my father was left at an orphanage in the late 1950s.
The conversation started off frosty, suspicious almost. I am not sure if it is uncommon for descendants of adoptees to want to find out more about their biological family, but each phone call I have made today has been met with a level of hostility. I am, of course, aware that certain information about my father’s adoption can’t be shared with me, only him, but I found that people are quick to shut you down and with a tone that is tricky to receive.
“OF COURSE we would never share your father’s information with you,” the first lady said, as if I’d asked a back catalogue of his medical records. I had, in fact, simply asked for some guidance on how I might be able to trace my heritage, or what information was legally available to me.
“Is he still alive?” she asked.
“I’m afraid I have no idea, as I don’t have a relationship with him.”
“Oh then we’d never be able to give that information out, unless you can provide a death certificate. You will have to write us a letter - not an email,” she said, “but I doubt we will be able to help you with anything anyway.”
The next avenue was to try and find my father’s birth certificate which I thought may name his biological parents and be helpful in my search. But I had been warned by my adoptive aunt that most birth certificates were changed to the adoptive parents’ names, and the new name for the baby. After searching for my father’s name in records I found nothing.
I telephoned the General Register Office, but to order a birth certificate (which is a public record) I need to be able to provide the location of his birth, but of course, I don’t know that. I wondered, does he?
“We would never be able to share your father’s birth certificate if he was adopted, because that information would be sealed to protect the identity of other people.” I assumed she meant the names of my biological grandparents. I asked if she had any recommendations on how I might be able to access information about my heritage without my father’s consent, which isn’t possible for me to obtain for various reasons.
“You could call your local council, but they’ll only have records of adoptions in your local area. And I doubt they’ll give you information because you’re not the adoptee.”
I spent the morning then crafting an email to Barnados with enough information that I could humanly recall from that afternoon with my mother, a few months before her death. It felt like everything hinged on those last words she shared, not 3 months before she became acutely unwell and died. I wondered what story she would have told me on her deathbed if she could have spoken. Would it be the same? What details might she have revealed?
On Sunday I found a pocket of time to make some prints. I’ve become obsessed with the idea of islands. Big thoughts include:
Feeling like i’m on an island - I keep turning to people for information, but it’s never quite what I want/need, or I’m turned away.
Existing on this island of racially ambiguous brown people.
Living on a lonely island due to my family estrangement.
What it means to be on an island in relation to disability, which I feel and have felt so regularly in my life.
Interestingly my previous work, Insula (named after the Latin word for "island"), was named that for the same reasons. Over a decade later and I’m still thinking about islands.
Most of the time I make things and all I have are more questions than answers, but I guess that is a part of the process.
