A Badger and a Hedgehog

a love story

Dear all - first, I am sorry to bombard you with two messages in short succession. And second - I am sorry if you read this when I first published it two years ago … but as today I am up with my mother on her 82nd birthday, I felt moved to share this story again … if you have been affected by this please do drop me a line x

Twenty years ago today I was stood on the platform in Oxford, waiting for the train that was going to take me to Liverpool. I was more filled with panic, pain, excitement and fear than I had ever been before - or since. I was going to meet my mother - my birth mother - who had held me for just ten days before giving me up for adoption 36 years before.

I had always known I was adopted. At one point during adolescence my parents asked me if I was interested in finding out more and I said no - one set of parents is plenty I had discovered - even ones I seemed to rarely see, thanks to choice of boarding schools for me a few weeks after my 8th birthday.

Then when I was 35 I got a phone call, from my mother - the woman who had adopted me in 1966. She was terribly upset. A few days beforehand my parents had received a letter from the Children’s Society. This letter destroyed my relationship with my parents. The letter stated that my biological mother was interested in making contact with me - and that the Children’s Society had been unable to find me (because they did not look very hard) and wondered whether it would be okay for my parents to pass this news on to me.

The letter had arrived on a Thursday, complete with a note saying that the person they would need to talk to, had they any questions, would not be back in the office until Tuesday. My parents stewed for the weekend - trying to come to terms with a situation for which they were completely unprepared - when they signed the contract of adoption back in 1966, they were guaranteed that this could never happen.

They could have kept quiet, but they did tell me, and then left me with the ultimatum that, unless I committed to making no efforts to following this through, they would consider themselves relegated to foster parents.

There followed a very difficult year while I tried to work out a way through this - my parents were so angry with me, and in such pain. But could I just ignore this contact? I was about to get married - I was about to become a father (the pregnancy happened after the proposal I should add!) And I wanted to learn more about me … I was so very different to my parents, and why shouldn’t I be - we were thrown together by chance.

Don’t worry, you are not getting the whole painful story, that would be unfair. I decided to be deceitful. That I would tell my parents that I was still deciding what to do, but in the background, reach out to this woman and assess whether it was worth the risk of taking it further.

So I contacted the Children’s Society and was instructed that I could exchange letters with Anne - my birth mother - via them. They were to be open letters so they could assess whether we were reasonable enough to be given more information - neither of us knew where the other lived.

Eventually they decided that we were okay - I had begun to get a picture of Anne, she had been a teacher, she had spent a lot of time abroad with her husband, she had no more children. My biological father was much older than her and had died years before. And that she had decided to make an effort to find me until she turned 60 - and on her 60th birthday, if she had got nowhere, she would put it to one side and get on with the rest of her life.

And that is why I was at the station, on the day before her 60th birthday. Waiting for a train - that was cancelled.

For reasons I can’t explain, I had determined I did not want to speak to her on the phone. I wanted our first words to be exchanged in person. Everything was arranged by letter. So I was left with no choice, I had to call her - as she was due to meet me at the station. I was trembling - and yet the brief conversation was normal.

Eventually, via Birmingham, I got to Liverpool and there she was. So small, like a little bird. And we hugged, and it was normal. And it was so much more than normal. We sat in the back of the car while her husband, Edward, drove us to Birkenhead. We were in contact the entire journey. It was like falling in love. It was beautiful.

By the end of the day I did not want to leave, but had a train booked and I did not want to interfere with her 60th birthday. She drove me to the station and joined me as we walked to the platform, to find that this, the last train of the night, was cancelled, and there was no choice but for me to go back to hers and stay. So I was there for her 60th - and I will be there for her 80th tomorrow.

There is much talk of nature and nurture - about which holds sway in the development of a child. My parents had no real interest in nature. I was sent to a school which aimed to get students into the city, church or army. While there I realised I was an atheist, helped form a Peace Society and went to Greenham Common, and failed to develop a capitalistic attitude.

Meeting Anne I found a connection that had never been there with my parents - and this is obviously what they feared more than anything. In Anne I found someone who cared passionately about nature, who picked up the nickname of ‘badger’ at school, and is still called that by many friends. I found that my biological father was a campaigner - had marched with Martin Luther King. I found a connection and a home that had been missing my entire life.

My parents are now both dead and I am free from the duplicity I needed to engage for 16 years. Anne is still there, we speak most days, and she is my dear friend.

So - the connection to this petition? Well, partly I just wanted to share this story as I have never written it before. And partly wanted to share with you the heart of the campaign - it comes from Anne - and her love of nature that has somehow carried through to this small hedgehog.