Speaker 1: Family Secrets as a production of I Heart Radio Baby,
Speaker 1: It's Whole Baby, and the dog is just I pointed
Speaker 1: out to him where I spent many many in afternoon
Speaker 1: sitting out on that slab. Was at the concrete slab
Speaker 1: with a cover over it and talking to the girls
Speaker 1: listening to this transistor radios. Um what teenagers did back then,
Speaker 1: talking about boys, talking about what seventeen year old girls
Speaker 1: talk about seventeen magazine at the beach, almost Amazon to Papa's.
Speaker 1: The only odd thing was all these teenagers were in
Speaker 1: various stages of pregnancy, but we were chest girls. That's
Speaker 1: Laura Angle recalling her time at a home for unweed mothers. Today.
Speaker 1: Laura is a sixty eight year old mother and grandmother
Speaker 1: who lives a full and contented life in San Diego.
Speaker 1: She grew up in Boloxi, Mississippi, and describes herself as
Speaker 1: an average child and teenager, a teenager who had a secret.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I had a
Speaker 1: family that was a very close, nice family. You know,
Speaker 1: we were to church, and we did all the things
Speaker 1: that normal families do. I was the only daughter. I
Speaker 1: was the oldest, had three younger brothers. My mother had
Speaker 1: a lot of issues. She was actually a secret in
Speaker 1: her family. My mother was what I think. I'm another doctor,
Speaker 1: but I think she was bipolar. I just knew instinctively
Speaker 1: that just don't talk about mamma's moods and the weeks
Speaker 1: that she would lay in bed crying. And I loved
Speaker 1: my mother, but I don't think we were close at all.
Speaker 1: I always don't like I wasn't enough with my mother
Speaker 1: and actually became like the in between between my mother
Speaker 1: and my grandmother, who lived next to our my father's mother.
Speaker 1: When Laura was fifteen, she felt for a guy who
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly the boy next door. He wasn't from Biloxi.
Speaker 1: He had long hair, which was fairly new in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen sixties, and he didn't have a Southern accent.
Speaker 1: He just said a different than a guy. He played
Speaker 1: a guitar, and he and I became boyfriend and girlfriend
Speaker 1: and a very young age. I guess it was like fifteen.
Speaker 1: So by the time I was the summer that I
Speaker 1: was turning seventeen. He and I broke up because he
Speaker 1: was going on to college, he said, but he ended
Speaker 1: up joining the army pretty soon after that attack. I
Speaker 1: can imagine what a must have been like during that long,
Speaker 1: hot Mississippi summer ticking by, especially for a girl who
Speaker 1: had just turned seventeen. A girl was a troubled mother,
Speaker 1: a girl who had a certain longing to get out,
Speaker 1: though she might not even have known what that would mean.
Speaker 1: Though Laura and her boyfriend had broken up, he kept
Speaker 1: coming by the house. Laura was under a spell cast
Speaker 1: by her own longing made manifest by the long haired
Speaker 1: guitar playing guy from out of town. But that spell
Speaker 1: was broken by the slow, very slow, dawning realization that
Speaker 1: Laura was pregnant. Actually, my memory of that is that
Speaker 1: I was in denial. I couldn't believe it I could
Speaker 1: be pregnant. It's just devastating because I didn't know which
Speaker 1: way to turn. There was nothing much worse in that
Speaker 1: period of time, and to get pregnant, um, except if
Speaker 1: a boyfriend didn't want marre you, and that was like
Speaker 1: the ultimate. It was ascle back then. It's important to
Speaker 1: understand that there was no such thing as sex education,
Speaker 1: which my teenaged son has informed me is now called
Speaker 1: human development. In the mid nineteen sixties and Biloxi, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: it was called family hygiene. Let's take a second to
Speaker 1: think about that term family hygiene. It's like a big
Speaker 1: antiseptic wipe erasing the messy truth of teenage bodies and desires. Now,
Speaker 1: consider that oral contraceptives a k a. The pill were
Speaker 1: approved by the FDA in nineteen sixty, but it took
Speaker 1: US a Preme Court case in nineteen sixty five to
Speaker 1: give married couples the right to use it. For the unmarried,
Speaker 1: the pill was like a myth whispered among girls, and
Speaker 1: mostly you didn't whisper about such things because that would
Speaker 1: mean you were a bad girl. Secret until my mother
Speaker 1: cornered me when I was like three and apple once pregnant.
Speaker 1: Aaron demanded, now if I was pregnant, and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I don't think so, because I'm not sick.
Speaker 1: And aren't you supposed to be sick when you're pregnant.
Speaker 1: Aren't you supposed to throw up when you're pregnant? And
Speaker 1: that's why if I was my mother um permitted doctor,
Speaker 1: sure enough, I was pregnant. She was horrified, went to
Speaker 1: bed for a couple of days. I wouldn't even speak
Speaker 1: to me. My father wouldn't speak to me. I thought
Speaker 1: it was a very quiet man, that I was his
Speaker 1: only daughter, and he and I just adore each other.
Speaker 1: It was the apple of his eye, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden he turned away from me. Would speak to me.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, he called my old boyfriend's parents, and
Speaker 1: no doubt that he had just gone into boot camp
Speaker 1: and he wasn't Fort Benning for that. And my father
Speaker 1: took me in the car and my moother interrove straight there,
Speaker 1: four hundred miles and I thought that he could have
Speaker 1: us married there, because if I did get married, that
Speaker 1: was like getting on with everyone's problems. Dr bid. They
Speaker 1: think I was pregnant and not, you know, married. I
Speaker 1: thought we would go to a church there and and
Speaker 1: get married, or we'd go to justice in the peace.
Speaker 1: And I had this fantasy that it was all going
Speaker 1: to work out. Let's just back up for a second.
Speaker 1: I just want a little bit more. Those four miles
Speaker 1: back and forth between Biloxi and Fort Benning. What was
Speaker 1: the atmosphere like in the car between you and your parents.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to bring that up. That was torture. Neither
Speaker 1: one of my parents said hardly anything, even to each other.
Speaker 1: My mother sat in the front seat trying my father
Speaker 1: just to a long. I don't even remember him turning
Speaker 1: back and looking at me or saying anything. I'm sure
Speaker 1: we stopped to go to the the bathroom. Um. It was
Speaker 1: horribly I have to tell you, though. I do remember
Speaker 1: in the backseat thinking it would all work out that
Speaker 1: once my boyfriend saw me, and I honestly thought my
Speaker 1: father would just go take him, pick him up at
Speaker 1: the dace, that everyone would say. Sure. In the trunk
Speaker 1: of that silent car speeding through those four miles between
Speaker 1: Biloxi and Fort Benning was a white dress and white shoes.
Speaker 1: Laura thought she'd be married in the way. I remember.
Speaker 1: It was kind of an Empire style dress, and my
Speaker 1: grandma was a seamstress, so I ought to beautiful close
Speaker 1: for me. And I don't even know where that dress
Speaker 1: came from, but it was nothing. It was not new.
Speaker 1: It was a dress in my closet, and I remember
Speaker 1: it was clean colored, and I remember taking white cut
Speaker 1: like pumps because weren't heels, but they were pomps, you know,
Speaker 1: And I just remember packing my battle bag. When we
Speaker 1: got to the hotel room, I took a bath. I
Speaker 1: remember being in the back and thinking this is all
Speaker 1: been working out. I remember getting dressed and my mother
Speaker 1: stayed in the room with me, but she and I
Speaker 1: didn't we didn't speak that much. But big surprise, things
Speaker 1: didn't work out that way. Her dad returned to the
Speaker 1: hotel without the boyfriend in tow. The boyfriend's parents had
Speaker 1: told him he didn't have to marry Laura. His drill
Speaker 1: sergeant told him he didn't have to marry Laura, And
Speaker 1: so Laura's father, still not speaking to her, said only
Speaker 1: one thing as they packed up and headed back to Biloxi.
Speaker 1: He doesn't deserve you, he said, a small high beam
Speaker 1: of love, cutting for just a moment through all that
Speaker 1: family shame. But not too long after that a plan
Speaker 1: was hatched. My father and my grandmother talked to the
Speaker 1: minister and he told them about the home over there
Speaker 1: as a maternity home for I'm wed mother's and it
Speaker 1: had been in New Orleans since like the late eighteen
Speaker 1: and it was run by the church. And they assured
Speaker 1: me that I would be taken care of and my
Speaker 1: mother said to me. She took me aside and said,
Speaker 1: if you go over there and have the baby, what
Speaker 1: we'll do is we will have you have the baby
Speaker 1: over there, and when you come back, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say the baby is mine, and you can pretend like
Speaker 1: you're the baby's sister. And I'm in love with it,
Speaker 1: because I thought, even though I still couldn't even comprehend
Speaker 1: a baby, I still thought, you know, at least this way,
Speaker 1: I have my baby. And so I've been along with it,
Speaker 1: and I said, okay. So as a seventeen year old,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is going to solve the problem.
Speaker 1: I'll go there, all the out of sight, nobody in
Speaker 1: my hometown will see me walking around pregnant. Um, I'll
Speaker 1: have the baby and then we'll come up. That's father
Speaker 1: and mother both droves me over to New Ones in March,
Speaker 1: and Um, I remembered it, thinking they're both going to
Speaker 1: go in with me. Of course, I was scared to death.
Speaker 1: I'd never lived anywhere at a home. Imagine being a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old girl who has never lived anywhere other
Speaker 1: than your own home with your parents and brothers, and
Speaker 1: pulling up to a nondescript red brick building in a
Speaker 1: big city full of strangers. Imagine stepping out of that
Speaker 1: car knowing that for five months you will live apart
Speaker 1: from everyone you know and love. Will you prepare for
Speaker 1: one of the biggest moments of your life childbirth. Laura's mother,
Speaker 1: who just can't handle it, stays in the car as
Speaker 1: her father takes her inside. My father had to do it.
Speaker 1: And it was while we were in there that the
Speaker 1: lady was admitting me when she said it was a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing, but I was doing giving up my child
Speaker 1: to be loved by a family that could not have children.
Speaker 1: I stopped her and I said, there's a mistake. And
Speaker 1: I was not the kind of teenager that would do that,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't make ways with adults. I was
Speaker 1: very respectful of adults, of course, And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a mistake. I'm not leading the baby here. I'm no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep it. My mom is going to
Speaker 1: raise it. And she looked at my father and he
Speaker 1: looked at her, and that's when everything changed. She left
Speaker 1: the room, and my memory is and it's so traumatic
Speaker 1: at that point that my memory is like um savvy
Speaker 1: and it's little bits and pieces. For so many years,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even allow myself to go there. He's talking
Speaker 1: to me, and he's telling me, you don't want your
Speaker 1: mama to raise this baby. And I think he was
Speaker 1: trying to protect not just me, the the baby. I
Speaker 1: think he had just made up his mind that that
Speaker 1: was not gonna work. And he's the one that told
Speaker 1: me this is what he wanted. And I remember I
Speaker 1: was so glad that he was finally talking to me
Speaker 1: and giving me advice. I think I would have done
Speaker 1: anything to him, because it killed me what he's stopped
Speaker 1: talking to me, and I wanted to make him happy.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking at the same time, I said okay.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking I said his fantasy that somehow everything
Speaker 1: would work out, he would change his mind and that
Speaker 1: I would keep the baby. But I told him. The
Speaker 1: Home for Unwed Mothers asked the girls to change their
Speaker 1: names while they were there. This stripping away of their
Speaker 1: very identities was meant to preserve their anonymity from each other,
Speaker 1: from any possibility that their secret might someday be revealed.
Speaker 1: Laura was told, you will forget this. Ever happened, it
Speaker 1: became like a Mantra repeated to her over and over again.
Speaker 1: Within the walls of that red brick building, you will
Speaker 1: forget this ever happened. On one side of the building
Speaker 1: was where the girls lived, the dormitories upstairs, and we
Speaker 1: had a kitchen, an area for um, you know, reading,
Speaker 1: and there was a TV room and that type of thing.
Speaker 1: And it was a chapel, because that was very important.
Speaker 1: So Laura and the other girls would listen to their
Speaker 1: transistor radios, call each other by their fake names, and
Speaker 1: flipped through the pages of seventeen magazine, while on the
Speaker 1: other side of the wall from where they slept each night,
Speaker 1: there was a clinic where they would eventually give birth,
Speaker 1: and a nursery where babies were kept until they were adopted.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the girls were given jobs. Laura's was
Speaker 1: to tend to the children in that nursery. Their belief
Speaker 1: was that the girls would be preoccupied working, which is
Speaker 1: true we were, and it would give us a sense
Speaker 1: of responsibility to have a job to go to every day,
Speaker 1: and it also helped the home to run smoother, of course,
Speaker 1: And from what I remember, we were all very eager
Speaker 1: to do our jobs. I remember doing my job was
Speaker 1: important to me, and I wanted to do a good job.
Speaker 1: I had never been around new form babies and I
Speaker 1: little brothers, but I'd never taken care of newborn babies.
Speaker 1: It was life changing for me because the nurse, the age,
Speaker 1: the nurses, aids, and the nurses that worked in there
Speaker 1: were black. My hometown, I've never had a friend of
Speaker 1: any color except light. Biloxi, Mississippi, in nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: was a tourist town of beaches, nightclubs, and casinos. All
Speaker 1: those places were still de facto off limits to African Americans.
Speaker 1: It took federal intervention in night after years of protests
Speaker 1: to open the beaches of Biloxi to non whites. It
Speaker 1: taught me so much. It taught me about me two
Speaker 1: so non judgment. It's such a wonderful person, and it
Speaker 1: opened my eyes to the real world. And and I
Speaker 1: think that changed me tremendously in that time. After five
Speaker 1: months in the Home for unweed Mothers slash Nursery, Laura
Speaker 1: goes into labor and her labor becomes quickly distressed. Instead
Speaker 1: of giving birth at the home as expected, she's taken
Speaker 1: to a nearby hospital. My memory is named they're scared
Speaker 1: to death in labor on a grey in the hallway,
Speaker 1: which seems like for a long time. I have no
Speaker 1: idea how long it really was. And then I was
Speaker 1: spent in the labor room. The next thing I knew
Speaker 1: was my mother came walking in the room. She looked
Speaker 1: like she was fun to die when she walked in.
Speaker 1: She was just petrified, and I remember crying. I would
Speaker 1: just you know, in pain. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: they'd given me anything. I don't think they had, and
Speaker 1: I was scared. And she stayed for a very short time,
Speaker 1: and she told me just to calm down and I
Speaker 1: would get through this. And then she left, and I
Speaker 1: think she might have been asked to me, but she
Speaker 1: did leave. And the next thing I know is they
Speaker 1: gave me a shot, and my memories con I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure what they gave me was tilight. The tilight shot.
Speaker 1: That is a lot back then where you have no
Speaker 1: memory of anything that's happening after the fact, And my
Speaker 1: first memory is so distinct. My first memory is waking
Speaker 1: up in a ward with six or eight other women,
Speaker 1: and it's morning, the sun's coming in the window, and
Speaker 1: they've said my dady and I have no memory that
Speaker 1: my baby. I don't know if it's a boy. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a girl, and do nothing. They
Speaker 1: do know that all the women in this room, and
Speaker 1: we're all facing each other. It's like they had our beds,
Speaker 1: like in a circle, is the only way I can
Speaker 1: describe it. And they're all talking about their babies and
Speaker 1: their husbands and their other children. And I'm eavesdropping, but
Speaker 1: I'm very sigh and I'm scared to death and petrislight
Speaker 1: is that day are going to know that I'm an
Speaker 1: unwit mother. That is my biggest fear. This she name
Speaker 1: of being an unwit mother. So I don't talk to anybody.
Speaker 1: The nurses command and I asked the nurse about my baby.
Speaker 1: If she said over, I'll be bringing him into you
Speaker 1: when I bring the others. And that's my first inclination
Speaker 1: that my first knew I had the baby and it's
Speaker 1: a boy. And I'm thrilled because I'm thinking I'm going
Speaker 1: to see my baby and hold it, and at the
Speaker 1: same terman petrifide because I don't want them to know
Speaker 1: that I'm one of those women and unwit mother and
Speaker 1: that that memory is very strong. But I remember when
Speaker 1: they're broughting in. It was just it was beautiful and
Speaker 1: it was so painful because I knew that this baby,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be my baby, and he was.
Speaker 1: He was part of me for the minute I helped came,
Speaker 1: he was part of me. And that's that's when it
Speaker 1: all began as far as my when I really realized
Speaker 1: the impact of what this is just going to do.
Speaker 1: How much time did you spend with him before you
Speaker 1: didn't see him again? Actually, I held him and I
Speaker 1: said to get a little bottle to give him, and
Speaker 1: I knew what to right foot to do because I
Speaker 1: had been working in a nursery and I said him
Speaker 1: and I held him and I unwrapped him, and the
Speaker 1: whole time trying to be strong because I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone to know what I'm really thinking. And the nursing
Speaker 1: man it took him from me, and it just told
Speaker 1: me not to make a scene because I didn't want
Speaker 1: or taken from me. She took him from me. And
Speaker 1: my next memories and I don't even when I got there.
Speaker 1: My next memory is going back to the home and
Speaker 1: I was put into a clinics right because when she
Speaker 1: had your baby didn't you known gold the theater girls?
Speaker 1: And you know kind of like your getting ready to
Speaker 1: be it, you know, sit out of there. During her
Speaker 1: time caring for infants in the nursery, Laura had instinctively
Speaker 1: learned a great deal about attachment. She's a naturally empathic,
Speaker 1: compassionate person, and even as a petrified seventeen year old,
Speaker 1: she's thought of those babies, not just her son, to
Speaker 1: whom she gave the crib name of Jamie, but all
Speaker 1: of the babies. How long would it take for them
Speaker 1: to be adopted, how would they be held and cared for?
Speaker 1: How would they attach without a mother to attach to?
Speaker 1: How would the time in the nursery, in the Home
Speaker 1: for the unwed mothers impact them. She longed to spend
Speaker 1: as much time with Jamie as she could, because it's
Speaker 1: so obvious to me. As they got older, their faces
Speaker 1: was right up. I can see their faces now. They
Speaker 1: were a few that were very important to me, and
Speaker 1: they've they've stayed with me all these years. They are
Speaker 1: little staces. You can see your eyes and see there's
Speaker 1: the lives light up. When you bent over to pick
Speaker 1: them up out of their crew. Um, it was something
Speaker 1: inside me up I think I've always been maternal. Being
Speaker 1: a mother has been the most important thing in my life,
Speaker 1: and my children have meant more to me than I
Speaker 1: always say. They are my arms and life. They are
Speaker 1: part of me. I have all sons. They are me
Speaker 1: and I am there. I knew that even then. The
Speaker 1: first time I held Day, they knew that he he
Speaker 1: was me be hungus him. I actually got to hold
Speaker 1: my son again because the nurse who I had become
Speaker 1: so close to day afternoon, she was alone in the
Speaker 1: nurse week. She let me hope my son was three
Speaker 1: weeks old. So Dad is one of the most was
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful, beautiful memories I had the
Speaker 1: fact that I got to hold my shirt again. And
Speaker 1: he was adopted at five weeks, so two weeks later
Speaker 1: he was gone from the home. You were repeatedly told
Speaker 1: by everyone, you will forget this ever happened. Was there
Speaker 1: ever a moment where you forgot that this ever happened?
Speaker 1: I never forgot for a minute. I thought of him
Speaker 1: every day from that day forward, and I don't think
Speaker 1: a day went by that he didn't flicker through my
Speaker 1: bind or something. I'd look at one of my other sons.
Speaker 1: You know, and I'd always wonder where is he? How
Speaker 1: is he? When I sent spif home? He was a
Speaker 1: miss I was Besides, I was furious. I felt like
Speaker 1: I had been betrayed. I felt like, okay, I'm they
Speaker 1: think I'm so bad, I'll be bad. I remember drinking
Speaker 1: alcohol in my bedroom. A girlfriend brought it to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was not the person would be in
Speaker 1: my bed room drinking, you know, podcast And I started
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes and I had started smoking at the home,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, they say I'm dead, I'll be bad.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think that was just,
Speaker 1: you know, my rebellion. What had happened to me. We're
Speaker 1: going to pause for a moment. Six months after she's
Speaker 1: back home, Laura's brother convinces her to go to a party,
Speaker 1: and it's there she meets a guy in the Air
Speaker 1: Force who's from California. In short order, she marries him
Speaker 1: and moves to California, away from the place it holds
Speaker 1: so many painful memories and secrets. Except we all know
Speaker 1: what happens when we run away from secrets. We take
Speaker 1: them with us wherever we go. Do you think, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's impossible really to answer this question, But do you
Speaker 1: think that had this not been your experience, had you
Speaker 1: not had a child that you were forced to give
Speaker 1: up for adoption, and yet everything else remained the same,
Speaker 1: and you still were at that party that evening that
Speaker 1: your brother talked to you into going and you met
Speaker 1: this man, do you think that you would have married him? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I would have been in a totally different
Speaker 1: space in my life. I know that having my son
Speaker 1: is having to give him a for adoption, changed my
Speaker 1: whole direction of my life. I would probably have stayed
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. Um, maybe not, but I would have gone
Speaker 1: on to college. I would have had a totally different life. Ever,
Speaker 1: in my wildest dreams, would I have gotten married. That's
Speaker 1: quickly to somebody. I was able to admit to myself
Speaker 1: as I got older and raiser, that I used him.
Speaker 1: I I can't say that I'm this perfect angel. I
Speaker 1: used him to leave a bad situation. My parents would
Speaker 1: not even talk to me about that it happened. My grandmother,
Speaker 1: who I adored and who loved me more than anything,
Speaker 1: would not talk to me about what happened. I was
Speaker 1: mourning that home time for a baby. That it was
Speaker 1: as if he had died, but you can't talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's a secret. Nobody is supposed to know that you
Speaker 1: did this, and God forbid as they do, what they're
Speaker 1: going to think of you? And what are they going
Speaker 1: to think of the family. Laura and her husband have
Speaker 1: three boys together, but the marriage isn't a particularly happy one.
Speaker 1: After about a decade together, they split up. When we
Speaker 1: were finally divorced. I had met my second husband on
Speaker 1: a soccer field where oldest boys were playing against each other,
Speaker 1: and they were just very good friends who became very
Speaker 1: very close friends, and it just evolved into love, and
Speaker 1: three years later I married him. We've been married thirty
Speaker 1: eight years. Now. Did you tell your first husband about Jamie? Yes?
Speaker 1: I told him before we got married because I felt
Speaker 1: like he needed to know. I felt like he needed
Speaker 1: to know what I really who I really was, because
Speaker 1: in my mind I was damaged and I couldn't not
Speaker 1: tell him. I told him, and he um, he said
Speaker 1: to me. We sat. He was shocked, and then he
Speaker 1: said to me, don't Azra ever say anything about that again.
Speaker 1: I don't ever anything to my parents about that. Promise
Speaker 1: me you won't. And he said, and another thing, or
Speaker 1: you gonna love me as much as you love this Jamie.
Speaker 1: And I said, court because I was trying in this
Speaker 1: spar and I said, of course, and and if we
Speaker 1: have children. I loved him as much. But that was
Speaker 1: his you know, his period on it. Years and years later,
Speaker 1: before my husband who got married to now and I
Speaker 1: got married, I told him, Remember, we had gone out
Speaker 1: and we were sitting in a booth in a restaurant,
Speaker 1: and I said, there's something I need to tell you
Speaker 1: that I've done, and I hope we won't think less
Speaker 1: of me, And of course he was, how could I
Speaker 1: think less of you? He's known me four years A
Speaker 1: couple of years now, hut. And we said I I
Speaker 1: gave a baby for adoption, and he was like what,
Speaker 1: And after I told him the story, put his arms
Speaker 1: around me and he said, I'm so sorry you had
Speaker 1: to go through that, and do you want me to
Speaker 1: help you find him? Right then there I got wow,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a marriage test. Laura and her second husband, Jean,
Speaker 1: who have now been married for thirty eight years, raised
Speaker 1: their gang of five kids together in San Diego. Then,
Speaker 1: with their kids grown, Laura begins to focus on genealogy.
Speaker 1: I wanted to buy a family history for my children,
Speaker 1: and I was having so much fun doing this genealogy.
Speaker 1: It's probably about ten years and I knew that DNA
Speaker 1: was kids were available. During the thirty years in Jane
Speaker 1: and I had been married. We very seldom talked about
Speaker 1: Jamie either because I would change the subject and we
Speaker 1: would try to bring it up. And I couldn't even
Speaker 1: spun to terms with the fact that I might never
Speaker 1: see my son again. And I mean to was the
Speaker 1: one who said to me, honey, let's do this be
Speaker 1: an a kid thing, And I said, you, it might
Speaker 1: be fun. But part of me knew that if my
Speaker 1: son did this, we'd get connected. All her life, Laura
Speaker 1: had dreamt of a time she might meet her first son.
Speaker 1: At times she imagined letters, other times a blond man
Speaker 1: in a red car pulling up to her house and
Speaker 1: embracing her. Why was the man blonde? Why was the car? Read?
Speaker 1: She didn't know. Our fantasies don't have to make sense.
Speaker 1: That night was October nine, I don't remember forever, and
Speaker 1: we not to walk our dogs in my cell phone kings,
Speaker 1: I looked down and said answers Tom, and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, another you know, cousin from you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen hundreds or whatever, you know, And I was just
Speaker 1: kind of guy, I'm not even gonna look at that.
Speaker 1: I want to go. I wanted to go to bed read.
Speaker 1: I was reading a really good book and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to go and read until I fell asleep. But
Speaker 1: something inside of me said, just look at it. So
Speaker 1: I opened it up on my phone and there it
Speaker 1: said parent child Match, and there was an email and
Speaker 1: within my private email, and it said I just received
Speaker 1: my DNA profile and ancestry dot Com says we are
Speaker 1: a parent child match. I was adopted and I'm looking
Speaker 1: for more information. Well I heard this saying they fell
Speaker 1: to their knees. I know what that means. Now. My
Speaker 1: knees buckled. I had the most gigantic physical reaction to
Speaker 1: that email that they think I've ever had when reading something.
Speaker 1: My body started trembling. I couldn't talk. I was like
Speaker 1: I could not speak. I was like petrified. I was petrified.
Speaker 1: I was terrilyzed. I just ran through my house. My
Speaker 1: husband thought the dogs. I was so stricken when I
Speaker 1: ran in the house, and so he went on out
Speaker 1: to get the dogs and get the whole time you think,
Speaker 1: what is it? What is it? And I couldn't talk.
Speaker 1: I ran to my office, my home office, looked at
Speaker 1: the computer lockd inting a Tissot dot com. We read
Speaker 1: that over and over and my thought was it sounds
Speaker 1: so business like. It was just very direct, you know.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, the other side of me
Speaker 1: was just I just knew, I knew, and I do
Speaker 1: want to scare him. I was so emotional. I didn't
Speaker 1: stop crying. My husband started crying when he came in
Speaker 1: the room, and he said to I think that's really him?
Speaker 1: And I said, from us, could it be? And he's crying,
Speaker 1: I'm crying, And I decided that what I'm going to
Speaker 1: do is right a very calm email back, and so
Speaker 1: he said, can you please tell me where you were
Speaker 1: born and when? And maybe you know I can give
Speaker 1: you some information? Well right away? He right away, he
Speaker 1: writes to me and says, I can't be talking to
Speaker 1: my eighth N seven the Orleans, Sluisiana, and that I
Speaker 1: knew it it was him. And here's what I wrote back,
Speaker 1: Dahn and here's exact email. Do you go with it?
Speaker 1: Says I'm overcome, Please bear with me. I knew it
Speaker 1: in the heart when I read your first message, I
Speaker 1: am your birth mother. Please let's connect. My email is
Speaker 1: and I get my email and I said, do you
Speaker 1: want my phone number or me to call you. I
Speaker 1: never thought this day with Tom, that I always prayed
Speaker 1: you okay, and that you had a good life, and
Speaker 1: that some day, this day with Tom, and repeating myself,
Speaker 1: I am so grateful your birthday is sketched in my heart.
Speaker 1: And then this man who had told me you know
Speaker 1: that he was so keeping it together, says I'm also
Speaker 1: over time. I do have a wonderful life. After getting
Speaker 1: the results last night, my wife and I found you
Speaker 1: on Facebook. You that's already have a wonderful life as well.
Speaker 1: I lived in Baton Rouge. I'm happily married. You have
Speaker 1: three healthy and happy children. I grew up in Alexandria.
Speaker 1: I'm rambling. I didn't expect it, okay, I didn't expect
Speaker 1: to be this emotional. I would like to connect, and
Speaker 1: that's when the emails take off, and it would America.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Well, I'm crying too. You can't see
Speaker 1: that because we're not in the same room. And I
Speaker 1: know you're a mother and I get your books, and
Speaker 1: I know any anybody who's ever ever had a child,
Speaker 1: even if they knew they couldn't keep them, and even
Speaker 1: if they chose not to keep them themselves, it's just
Speaker 1: such a it's such a tie there. It's like you
Speaker 1: can't ever your heart will never forget that person, that child, never.
Speaker 1: And here he was, in a flesh and blood riting
Speaker 1: to me, and he had found me. And it weren't
Speaker 1: driving up to my parents house in a red car.
Speaker 1: It was through the Internet and its DNA, which seven
Speaker 1: none of us would have ever dreamed could even be possible.
Speaker 1: It was raculous, and I'm not kidding. I cried for
Speaker 1: and they were happy here, of course, for a good
Speaker 1: solid three months. I mean I couldn't. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: through a day without just breaking down. All those years
Speaker 1: holding in that secret just started unraveling. It was insane
Speaker 1: and it was dutiful. We're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. Jamie, whose name given
Speaker 1: to him by his adoptive parents is Ray, and Laura
Speaker 1: make a plan to speak by phone that evening, after
Speaker 1: he's put his children to bed. At seven on the dot,
Speaker 1: he calls Laura. He says, I don't know why or how,
Speaker 1: but I know his voice, and his voice is different
Speaker 1: than my other son's. My other son John had a
Speaker 1: paper voice. Of course, he has a southern accent to
Speaker 1: my other son. S don't this voice. I knew it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know it anywhere. It resonated with me like
Speaker 1: I can't even explain. And he he laughed and said,
Speaker 1: you're just saying that because I'm saying Dtor were laughing,
Speaker 1: We're laughing. We were crying in eight after four hours.
Speaker 1: It was great speaking of Laura's other sons. A kind
Speaker 1: of amazing thing had happened, which is that, in a
Speaker 1: couple of years leading up to Jamie finding Laura online,
Speaker 1: Laura had begun to loosen her hold on her secrets.
Speaker 1: She revealed the truth about having given up a child
Speaker 1: for adoption one day while she and Jean were meeting
Speaker 1: with their attorney to discuss their wills. Shortly thereafter, she
Speaker 1: told two out of three of her sons, the ones
Speaker 1: who lived nearby. She didn't want to risk the chance
Speaker 1: that one day they might find out after she was gone.
Speaker 1: She also blurted out the story to one of her
Speaker 1: best friends as they were taking a long walk in
Speaker 1: San Diego. It reminds me of a favorite quote from
Speaker 1: the Scottish explorer W. H. Murray. When you are committed,
Speaker 1: the universe moves too. Now. She tells all three sons
Speaker 1: about Jamie that they're in touch. Each of them has
Speaker 1: a slightly different reaction, though ultimately all are supportive. Laura
Speaker 1: begins to tell her inner circle of friends, and with
Speaker 1: each telling there's a burst of energy and joy, a celebration,
Speaker 1: a liberation and unburdening of a secret shame carried for
Speaker 1: a lifetime. And once she shares her secret, the floodgates
Speaker 1: of memories start opening up. I started in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, but remember the names of the girls,
Speaker 1: were sitting outside with my book or my magazine. I
Speaker 1: would remember sitting in the guy we're eating with them,
Speaker 1: and all the you know things we did. We were
Speaker 1: allowed to walk around the neighborhood, they were allowed to
Speaker 1: My parents came over a few times and took me
Speaker 1: for the afternoon, and things like that began to just
Speaker 1: like flood my memory. I could see him. I would
Speaker 1: always imagine him the way I would see him in
Speaker 1: my memory. But I would think about him. It was
Speaker 1: always a baby, of course, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I could remember holding him. I could remember the weight
Speaker 1: of his body, um, this little body in my arms.
Speaker 1: And that's something. I felt so happy when I tell
Speaker 1: this story, because I want people to know that it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's okay that we remember these things. It's anything, it's
Speaker 1: it's the best thing in the room for us to
Speaker 1: be able to talk about it, because then it actually
Speaker 1: makes us understand ourselves. And and I found a forgiveness
Speaker 1: for that girl that I didn't even realize I was
Speaker 1: holding this all against her. And it's like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I understood myself by finding him, for him
Speaker 1: finding me, I hustled down myself. And then Jamie tells
Speaker 1: Laura that he wants to meet her. That will come
Speaker 1: the next day, fly from New Orleans to San Diego.
Speaker 1: I wasn't nervous wreck because when I said when I'm coming,
Speaker 1: he said tomorrow. I am a fellow here. I was
Speaker 1: at ance for the girlfriend one of my deart's friends,
Speaker 1: telling her she's crying. I'm telling her the story, and
Speaker 1: he texts me. I jumped up from the launch and
Speaker 1: I go, you know what I have to get to
Speaker 1: the home. I drun by Trader Joe's. I have to
Speaker 1: get stuff hooked cooked. Um, I gotta clean the house.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's got here over the but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just and she's like, calmed down, He's not coming
Speaker 1: till tomorrow, and I said, no, no, we have to leave.
Speaker 1: I text my husband he's with fishing buddies, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's coming tomorrow. And he said, oh my god, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm leaving right now. I don't know what we thought
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. But I rushed home. You know, just
Speaker 1: make sure everything's say before him in the guest room
Speaker 1: and I give a sign saying alcophone way waited. I
Speaker 1: don't think anything. So ever, then that expruciating and it
Speaker 1: was really long driveway. I hear this supercar coming up
Speaker 1: the driveway. I'm trying to be at calm, like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be like hi. So when he walks in the
Speaker 1: depart I run out the door and run towards him,
Speaker 1: and he of course stopped in his tracks and puts
Speaker 1: his arms around me. And it was beautiful. It was
Speaker 1: like hugging any of my signs. The way he stopped
Speaker 1: the way he just did which me, and there was
Speaker 1: no shyness. It was like we had known each other forever.
Speaker 1: It was like any of my son's coming home, and
Speaker 1: it was wonderful. We came in the house, we were
Speaker 1: like glue to each other, jeans crying, kind of crying.
Speaker 1: We sat and we talked, and we've never left each
Speaker 1: other's side. I never cooked anything in the way that
Speaker 1: two days he was here. Six months before the evening
Speaker 1: when her email pinned and she looked down to see
Speaker 1: the words a parent child match. Laura had written a
Speaker 1: letter to her seventeen year old self, that lost, shamed, shunned,
Speaker 1: pregnant girl who wasn't even supposed to reveal her own name.
Speaker 1: The letter was meant to be a reckoning with the past,
Speaker 1: but it has since taken on a life of its own,
Speaker 1: becoming a talisman, a wish and agreement between Laura and
Speaker 1: the universe that somehow exists in the past, present, and
Speaker 1: future all at once. This letter is both an ending
Speaker 1: to Laura's story and the beginning. April twenty there, Zaura,
Speaker 1: I know that you're facing one of the worst chapters
Speaker 1: in your life, and I have come back to you
Speaker 1: from the future to let You know, my dear girl,
Speaker 1: that this two shill paths you are a survivor. Hold
Speaker 1: your head. I you have nothing to be ashamed. That
Speaker 1: you are a dutiful spirit and give to human being.
Speaker 1: It's so much to give. I know that your dreams
Speaker 1: are still possible and that your life ahead will be
Speaker 1: fulfilling beyond your wildest dreams. Although today you think you
Speaker 1: are unworthy, Soon you will move away. You will move
Speaker 1: across the country and reinvent yourself. You will become the
Speaker 1: mother's three more amazing son and too marvelous extra children
Speaker 1: through an incredible marriage to the love of your life,
Speaker 1: your knight and shine the armor, your soul mate. Eventually
Speaker 1: will become from the eatistics of our grandchildren. There will
Speaker 1: be the backbone that a good mother and a grandmother
Speaker 1: is for her family. Some of the lovely surprises will
Speaker 1: come your way, and it's time softens like you are
Speaker 1: going through right now. You will one day forgive and
Speaker 1: love your parents again. You will come to terms the
Speaker 1: way this loss of your son happened. You will understand
Speaker 1: the grief and loss that they too endured. Yes, you
Speaker 1: will always born your secret son. Not a day will
Speaker 1: pass that you do not. But one day you will
Speaker 1: be able to talk about him and write his and
Speaker 1: your story, and then you will say that yes, you
Speaker 1: are still loved and most importantly, you will learn to
Speaker 1: love yourself again. You deserve this. I adore you, your
Speaker 1: older self, Laura bar I'd like to thank my guest
Speaker 1: Laura Angle for sharing her story with us today. You
Speaker 1: can find out more about Laura at Laura l Angle
Speaker 1: dot com. Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production.
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagin is the supervising producer, Andrew Howard and Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil are the audio engineers, and Julie Douglas is the
Speaker 1: executive producer. Also a special thanks to producer Derek Clements
Speaker 1: on this episode. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, you can get in touch with us
Speaker 1: at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Ryder
Speaker 1: and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fam
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod. That's fam Secrets Pod. For more about my
Speaker 1: book Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com. Boy you gonna
Speaker 1: bed my baby? Whisper A little wrap on me, my
Speaker 1: baby