Margo Darretta’s Blog

It would take her a few minutes at least to call my mother and tell her I had called her. And who even knew if she wanted to talk to me at all. I was clueless, but I could feel something in my heart that she would call me. So I made a quick phone call to my best friend, Maurya, and told her everything that had just happened. I was excited and rambling and crying. Then I called my best friend from childhood, Robin and told her all the same news. Paul wasn’t home yet, and I had to share this with someone or I might have a heart attack! Both my girlfriends were excited and crying right along with me! But the calls were quick so I could leave the line open in case my birth mother actually did call back.

At one point, Kate came in my room asking to use the phone. “No way!”, I said, hovering over the phone like I was starving and it was my last meal! Then Sarah came in and announced she was hungry. “You’ll have to wait.”, I told her, with a voice shouting to me somewhere in the recessess of my rational mind that I wasn’t being a very good mother at the moment. But I was waiting for mine and had been all my life, so a few more minutes of hunger wasn’t going to hurt anyone. She didn’t disappoint.

An hour later almost to the minute, my phone rang. “Please let this be her”, I prayed. I could faintly hear a voice at the other end of the line asking for me. But she couldn’t hear me at all. I heard her say “I’ll hang up and try again to get a clear connection.” Oh my God! I just heard my mother’s voice for a brief second. What if she doesn’t call back??? But a few seconds later the phone rang again. This time the connection was clear. She asked for me. I said “This is Margo.” and she said “This is Blank.. I am your mother”. Open the floodgates! I cried like a baby. She cried, too. And then she said, “and I am sitting across from your father.” My head swam and I thought I might pass out. All I could say was “Oh my God!” I felt like I won the lottery. I found both my parents at the same time? It was unbelievable. My father got on the extension and we were all crying and nervously talking. They explained to me that they were high school sweethearts and madly in love, but only 16 and 17 when I was conceived. It just wasn’t possible for them to keep me, and my maternal grandmother had sent my mother away to Poughkeepsie to have me and give me up for adoption. That’s the way it was done in the 50s and 60s. You went away and were to be done with it. But that is a whole other book.

Shock and amazement didn’t end here. I then learned that I had two full sisters. The girls didn’t know about me. My mother explained that when they gave me up, they had to sign a legal document that stated they would never try to find me or have any contact with me whatsoever. They didn’t feel it was fair to tell my sisters that they had yet another sister, but no way of ever finding me or meeting me. My birth parents did not know anything about my adoptive parents, where we lived or where I might be now. All my mother knew was that my adoptive parents had named me Margo and she was greatful to know my name so that she could use it when she prayed for me. I found that very touching and actually quite comforting. I was relieved to know that she had actually spent time thinking about me over the years.

Toward the end of the conversation, I asked the inevitable question. “Do you want to meet me?” They sure did. We made plans to have lunch the following day at Thataway Café, in Greenwich, CT. They were familiar with it, and I lived a stone’s throw from there. We planned to meet and 1:00PM and said our goodbyes until tomorrow. Emotion of every kind was pulsing out of my body, mostly in the form of tears. Happy, joyful, scared, worried, nervous and bewildered tears. My husband walked in to the middle of that. He didn’t know what to make of the situation! When I told him the whole story, he cried, too. I didn’t sleep a wink that night.