North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Alex
the oldest
niece I’ve got Anna, she lifted us from Belfast airport and took me down to
where Maureen lived in Grove Road and Anna had took the granddad away, out
of the way just so that Maureen would have some time with us before he come
back from his weekend stay. That was great and erm, when he come in he
didn’t recognise me either in name or in looks and he says, and I just
turned round and says, ‘hello John’, ‘who are you?’ Well I says, ‘I’ve come
to meet me sister, Amanda Mulvena’ I says, ‘but ye changed her name to
Maureen Maria’ and I says, ‘there’s a photograph of mam’. ‘Don’t know her’.
I says, ‘that’s, that’s me mam and you adopted my sister’. ‘You’re a cousin
of her’, ‘no I’m not , no I’m not.’ And every time, anything was said to
him he had an answer, ‘no I’m not’. So, what we managed to get on but, it
was an unexpected and a feeling that you can’t explain when you know the man
who actually adopted your sister and he denies it and I brought, took
photographs over for Maureen of mam and different people. She says, ‘that’s
my mam there’. ‘That’s not your mother’. But I knew it was and I knew
Maureen was my sister because, it’s a funny feeling and I’m 60 now and
Maureen’s 57 but if you can imagine looking at your mother when she was
younger and about 57 ye know, it’s a funny experience, ‘god is that mam or
is it Maureen’. Because the photographs and the features are so, how can you
put it, a copy print. And Maureen’s got the same attitude as mam, she does
little things like mam. It hits ye know, erm I know it’s my sister but it’s
funny to be there and it’s hitting you and you think well that’s me sister,
it’s not me mam. So Maureen moved erm over to have a fortnights holiday in
England then Maureen went home and I had to take my girlfriend over for a
week. So I took the girlfriend over, Beryl, we had a good time there and
then we came back home and a fortnight later Maureen and Willy came over on
the boat. So I picked them up from Carlisle where they got the bus to er,
to get a connection to Newcastle. So I picked them up in the car and
brought them home. They were here for another fortnight and there was the
time when they were ready to go home. Willy stopped at the door and turned
round and said, ‘I’m going home, I’m going to sell me house, I want to live
near my brother-in-law’. The feeling for that, I just couldn’t, I can’t
explain it. But it was the thinking that me sister was coming home to
England, Newcastle where she was born, it was ecstatic. So with Maureen,
Willy went home and we were on the phone every night and I mean every
night. Maureen would phone me and say, ‘right put your phone down, I’ll
phone you back.’ It was like that and I got a telephone message through the
day, ‘can you go and have a look at a house?’ I says, ‘a house’, ‘yeah, ha,
ha’, ‘where is it?’, but Maureen didn’t tell me that she’d already bought
the house over the phone unseen. She says, it’s er Waltham Place, and I
say, ‘that’s where I live pet. What number?’ ‘number 6’. So, Beryl and I
went along and we knocked on the door, made and appointment to come in and
look at the bungalow and er went back home and it was, I couldn’t make the
day go fast enough to phone back to me sister and tell her what the
bungalow was like and erm, I just had to put on and put on and I finally got
and said, ‘look the bungalow’s nice, it wants a few things done to it ye
know but it’s up to you if you take it or not’. She says, ‘is that right?’
I says, ‘aye’. She says, ‘well bro, I bought it over the telephone’. She
says, ‘I bought it’ I says, ‘ye bought it?’ she says, ‘yeah, we are coming
over in about a fortnight to three weeks’. She says,
