Lament for a lost child

Singer-songwriter Mia gave her son up for adoption 26 years ago, but has only now put her loss into music, writes Sorcha Hamilton

There are more than 6,000 people on the National Adoption Contact Preference Register, which was launched in 2005. Since then, there have been 290 matches made through the service, which offers assistance to all parties: adopted people, adoptive parents, natural parents or family members affected by adoption. The register aims to facilitate contact; however, this will only be indicated where both parties are registered. It also allows applicants to state what level of contact they wish to have. The register is under the Adoption Authority of Ireland, a statutory body which holds a file on each adoption carried out in the State under the Adoption Acts of 1952-1998. Adopted people can join the register at the age of 18.

There are also a number of agencies - Adoption Ireland, Adoption Loss, Adoptive Parents Association of Ireland and Barnardos, among others - that offer support or information and tracing services to those affected by adoption.

Links: www.adoptionboard.ie, www.adoptionloss.ie, www.adoptionireland.com, www.barnardos.ie

Mia often wonders if she has passed her son in the street. Or if she has sat near him in a bar or restaurant without knowing. "The feeling has been described as a missing jigsaw piece . . . the loss is unbearable sometimes. But you can't go around thinking about it all the time - you'd be a wreck."

Mia (Maria Parsons) is a folk-jazz singer living in Co Wicklow and she has just written a song about giving her son up for adoption when she was 18. When Mia became pregnant in 1981, she fled to Germany hoping that no one would find out. But when she lost her job there after her pregnancy was discovered, she returned to Ireland where she was strongly encouraged to give the baby up for adoption. Written nearly 26 years later, Song for My Son is a beautiful, moving lullaby about a mother finally allowing herself to come to terms with her loss.

"Looking back now, I was so naive," Mia says, laughing. "I had this plan that I would go off and pretend I had a friend who had had a baby and died . . . I thought I'd come back with the baby and everyone would say you were really good to take your friend's baby."

When she returned to her family in Dundrum, wearing baggy jumpers and hoping to go unnoticed, she was soon found out. "I was at the tail end of that nasty stigma against single mothers," she says, explaining how she went to live with a family in Blanchardstown until she had the baby. "It was the done thing at the time. I remember I was dropped at this big church with my little suitcase. It was terrible. I remember having to go down underneath the church and knock on different doors . . . and then the priest introduced me to the family," she says. The family she stayed with was very kind and helpful, but Mia felt hidden away. "It was like it didn't happen. There was just denial on everybody's part."

Mia gave birth to a boy at Holles Street hospital in Dublin in 1981. She had the baby for five days before giving him to the adoption services. "I was absolutely devastated having to say goodbye . . . it was just the worst moment you can imagine. My sister was there and she was hugging me and the two of us were just bawling crying." When she left the hospital she was told to stop crying. "And that was the end of my crying - I couldn't cry. I came home and I was treated exactly the way I was before."

The memories came flooding back, however, when, more than two decades later, her dog had pups. "We decided to give two of the pups away and the person came over to take them and as he was leaving he said, 'say goodbye to your Mummy', and that just opened the floodgates. It brought me back to that moment when I had to put the baby down in the cot and say goodbye to him."

That night she went down to the beach in Kilcoole, where the words of the song came to her. "It's not as if I'd forgotten," she says, "but it was like something just opened up that day." In the song Mia wonders about her son - what he looks like, if he lives nearby - and pleads for his understanding and forgiveness: "So many questions now to ask you/ Like where you've been or what's your name/ And though we know I had my reasons/ Every one of them seems lame."

Mia then asked Drazen Derek, a Croatian musician, to put music to the lyrics. "We tried it out at a party one night - I sang it and I kind of broke down towards the end of it and realised that the whole room had broken down. I think it has touched a lot of people affected by adoption." Soon after, they recorded the song, which features on Ocean and Other Short Stories, a collaboration between Mia and Drazen. Now 44, Mia has had three children since.

"I look at my own daughter, who has a child, and it's so different now." She wouldn't have let anyone tell her what to do, says Mia. "I was just so submissive when it happened to me. I didn't really question. I just thought this was my lot."

Mia has made many attempts to inquire about her son through the adoption agency. She was met, however, with an unhelpful, even hostile response: "The first time was when he turned 13. I went into the office and this woman sat me down and said: 'As far as I remember you had no interest in this child.' I was completely taken aback . . . I just remember feeling like dirt, like I did back then for being pregnant in the first place."

After a few weeks, the agency returned word that he was doing well.

"I didn't want to rock the boat for anybody," says Mia. "I just wanted to know that he was okay. As far as I can see, the whole adoption system hasn't changed a bit - I think they still treat you the same." Mia has also added her name to the adoption register, which aims to facilitate contact between parties affected by adoption.

Song for My Son - which at times sounds like a raw, open plea - was written in the hope that some day she will make contact. "I don't want him to feel I'm being a stalker or invading his space," Mia says. "I just want him to hear it, and to hear that I'm here."

Ocean and Other Short Stories is on Doggybag Productions and is available in Road Records, Dublin