A Story of Adoption continued...chapter 3

So my search begins....I didn't even know where to start. I called my friend Debbie who always found detective work interesting and facinating. I figured she would have some ideas or at very least she would help me with mine. That night we both started calling all of the Davis' in the Edmonton whitepages. Probably one of the most stressful ways to find someone. Blind calls to people not knowing if at one point you will hit a jackpot of some kind. I had such anxiety that my heart was pounding and I could feel myself trembling. I would call a number and when someone answered I would say "I am working on a family tree for a friend and I am looking for someone by the name of Mary Jean Davs. This is most likely her maiden name"
Most of the time I would get that far and the person on the other line would say "No, sorry, no one here by that name" Or they would just say "NO" and hang up. Debbie was having the same bad luck as I was. I remember at one point asking "Do you know a Mary Jean Davis?" and the person immediately hung up. That really freaked me out because I actually thought it may have been her and that I had scared her. After a few hours of anxiety and stress I decided to give up on the cold calls. We had no luck and something was telling me it was a waist of time. I must give us both alot of credit, we made it through about 300 names before we quite.
Almost all of them!
Next, I went online. I looked at every possible website out there for "People looking for people"
Most of them were in the US and with her name being so common it was all dead ends. So I began to network online and by phone with other adoptees and Mom's looking for their kids. I remember developing a huge support network for myself during this time. There were so many people looking for people and they all had ideas to offer me. One person suggested going to the reference library and trying to find her through a voters list. Since she was of voting age when she had me maybe there would be some record of her. Another dead end.
I remember finding an old Edmonton phone book from back in the early 40's. I thought for sure this was how I was going to at least find my grandparents. It had very few listings~apparently there were not too many Davis' in Edmonton back then. This book actually had the names and phone numbers but it also listed occupations and names of children. I tried to find her family but no luck. Maybe they weren't living there back then. This was the hardest part of my search. I had so little infomation to go on that I worried that I was going to miss a clue staring me right in the face. And one thing I discovered was that the more information I had, the more information people were willing to give. People don't want to be exposing someone or getting someone into trouble. It's such a funny thing.
So for weeks my husband would drop me off at the library and come back hours later. Each time hoping that I had found a lead. No such luck. The more I searched the more I realized just how little information was out there. It was almost as if I became desperate to find her. I had never been so curious and it all seemed so far out of my reach. It was so hard for me to remain positive with not even a little bone thrown my way.
When I reached my late teens, I started a yearly Birthday tradition. I would wake up and go to the store and by a Toronto Star newspaper. I would carefully look through each page of the classifieds hoping she had posted something.
During my search at the reference library I tried to find my birth announcment in the Toronto star~no luck. Then I looked through archives. I would look at the classified ads for March 7th (my Birthday) dating back to the late 70's. I was hoping to find something titled "Looking For My Biological Daughter" Such a romantic notion but I hoped.
I remember thinking my best option at this point in my search was to hire a private investigator. I had a friend growing up who's father was a private investigator. So I called him. He was more than willing to help. I gave him everything I knew and then just waited....and waited...and waited until one day he called. He had no news for me. His search turned up nothing. She was not an easy person to find and I knew this when I called him. There were so many "What if's"
What if she is married and goes by her married name?
I know she was BORN in Edmonton but that does not mean she grew up there. And if she did grow up there, how do I know that is where she went back to after leaving Toronto?
So my emotional roller coaster continues....what now?
Well, I called all of the contacts I had made over the months of searching. I don't remember how but I got to talking to one woman who had recently found her biological daughter. She had been searching for her for years. All she knew was that her daughter lived in Ontario. She had an idea that I had never thought of and it seemed like such a long shot. She had placed classified ads in newpapers throughout Ontario for years. This was how she eventually found her daughter. She suggested I place ads in all the major newspapers throughout Edmonton. She thought it would be best to post them on significant occasions such as our Birthdays & Mother's Day. She made sure to prepare me for the fact that it could be years and take many ad posts before I get any calls. If any.
So I called the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Post newspapers. I inquired about placing a classified ad. When I started to tell the man on the phone the purpose of my ad he told me that there were some rules and limitations to what I could say in the ad. Here is what he said,
"If you want to post her name in the ad then we are not able to put anyting in the ad that indicates that she is your biological Mother. If you just put her initials then we can say that she is your biological Mother."
I remember calling back the lady who suggested the idea in the first place. I had no idea what to say and needed some help. There was so much to think about. For starters, I did not want to post anything that said I was "Looking for my biological Mother" because I feared getting calls from lonely, potentially crazy, women saying "I'm your Mother"
I wanted to eliminate that possibility as best I could. I also worried about the ad revealing something about her life that she had possibly kept a secret from her friends and family. I did not want to expose her secret. What if she was happily married and had a family who knew nothing about her past? This could ruin her life. It would also be a bad foot for us to start off on.
So after careful consideration, here's what we came up with,
"LOOKING FOR MARY JEAN DAVIS. WE FIRST MET IN TORONTO ON MARCH 7TH 1973. PLEASE CALL ALLISON COLLECT AT..." and I left my phone number. I know that she signed my birth order and therefore she knew my name was Allison and only she would know the significance of the date March 7, 1973. This seemed like the best wording for the ad. So the ad went into 2 major newspapers for 4 days each. From a Wednesday through Saturday.
Once the ads were in place I began to imagine all of the potentials who could see it. A friend, a family member, a sibling. There were so many people who could see it. I remember lighting a candle one night and for the first time in my life I prayed. I prayed with all my heart until tears were streaming down my face. I was begging G-D to please help. "Let me find her, I need to"
The next day the 2 newspapers kindly faxed me a copy of the ads to my work. My boss walked up to me with this long sheet filled with little ads and there was mine at the very bottom. Like a needle in a haystack. There must have been 80 classified ads on the page. This was so discouraging. You would need to be looking for this ad to see it. And if noone was looking, there was no way anyone was finding it.
So now I had to play the waiting game.....
I will continue the story soon....thanks for reading!