I am writing about the experience of re-meeting my son, who I raised until he was nearly five years old, then did not see again until the day before he turned sixteen. He is now forty-one.

I do not know if my experience is universal among birth parents, especially birth mothers, a feeling that we are still searching for our children. I have never read anything about it in the numerous books and articles published since our first reunion in 1992. I would like to find out, and hope that this article will bring forward stories from others, who perhaps have given the subject some consideration, and maybe brushed it aside as unimportant.

Since I had raised my son, then surrendered him for adoption when he was a young child, I have many memories of his physical appearance as he grew, as well as memories of things he said or did. I was also dedicated, as most parents are, to capturing his “firsts” and meaningful moments in his years with me, especially in photographs. The collection of pictures of those four years fills a large box, carefully preserved for a time when I can look at them again without tears, and place them in albums.

I can also remember clearly the feeling of his hands as I held them, the weight and sensation of closeness when picking him up and rocking him to sleep, the sound of his voice, his cries when he was hungry or needed any kind of attention. All of these experiences, familiar to and normal for any parent, are perhaps imprinted in our sensory memories more deeply if a loss of any kind has occurred with that child.

This is just speculation on my part, but seems true to me.

Among those who relinquished a child older than newborn, are there any birth parents reading this who, upon and long after reunion with their adult child, continue to look for similarities between this adult adoptee and the child that they remember? Has anyone experienced the shock of finding that the three-foot-tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed son or daughter that they remembered is now tall and slender, brown-haired (or even bald) and hazel-eyed, bearing little physical resemblance to their young child? Do you continue to seek familiar gestures, try to match emotional responses to those of your little boy or girl in similar present situations?

Even as adoptees may seek their “genetic homes” in their birth parents, I have found myself looking for physical attributes and body language that connect to the boy my son was once, to the man he is today. I cannot seem keep from needing these links. The combination of longing for my child, and the grief and guilt related to his surrender, did not make it easy to simply accept him as he was when I met him again. As he matured into adulthood, I actually envied birth parents for whom I thought this acceptance came easier, because the surrender occurred immediately after birth. I do not know if that’s true, but it has been my perception. Our situation was also modified by the early initial reunion, in his teen years, though that reunion did not continue after two years. My son went into seclusion for a year after his eighteenth birthday, staying with friends. There was a continuous reunion after that year, until he left to pursue his career in another state at age twenty-five.

Still, as I have come to know him better through these years, I have found myself often searching for clues. The shape of his hands, his facility with language, the way that his weight changed with increasing height, the fact that he slept heavily, as he did in his early years, even his premature baldness, inherited from his birth father these things were all reassuring and a comfort to me.

Today, my son is forty-one years old, and we are now five years estranged. He did send photos after his own son was born, and the child seemed identical in appearance to my son during his first year, which has helped me to accept completely the man into which my little boy has grown. All of my hopes and dreams for him during my pregnancy and those initial years have been realized. In his career, his marriage, and his beautiful ways with his son, he seems to have succeeded in fulfilling the remarkable emotional and intellectual potential with which he arrived in this world. He is amazing.

Yet, I am not part of his life at this time. All that I know now is that, once again, Something has divided us, and it is painful for me. Still, I have faith that we will, once gain, at some time, reunite, because I know who he is.