SOMEONE NAMED, "MARIAN" Published 9 August 2001    Atlantic Highlands Herald

“Someone named, Marian, will help you put all the pieces together.”
An old Italian man from Hoboken, NJ  

When my husband and I were ready to buy our first house, one of the first towns we looked in was Cliffwood Beach, NJ.  We told our real estate agent that we wanted to live “as close to the water as possible.”

One of the houses he showed us was near a “cliff,” on a dead end street.  It was a pretty house, but it was a little too close to the water for my liking.  I knew that I wouldn’t be able to relax for a second, whenever our young son was playing out in the backyard. 

We thought about the house overnight, decided against it, called the real estate agent in the morning, thanked him, and kept on looking.

That was in 1978.  A few months later, we bought the house we currently own.  We moved in, started a new life, and forgot all about the house in Cliffwood Beach.

But thirteen years later, that house popped right back into my head again.  And a year after that.  And in the years since.  In fact, that house and its precise location has eluded me and perplexed me on and off for a long time.  Then, about a month ago, I pulled my car right up to it at last! 

“That’s it!” I said to myself with glee.  “That’s the house!  I found it!”

I had been looking for that house for so long, I couldn’t believe I was finally looking at it.  I had been combing the Cliffwood Beach streets; I had searched my husband’s desk drawers, hoping for a snapshot of it.  (We had always taken a picture of all the houses we looked at.)  I was hoping that we had a piece of paper with its address written on it.  But it was so long ago; I guessed that we had thrown all the papers out.

“I should have known,” I whispered to myself.  “I should have known that house would be right around the block from Marian’s house.  It was right under my nose all the time!  Well, right under Marian’s nose,” I chuckled to myself.

But let me back up a little.  Let me take you back to 1991, when I was searching desperately for any information about my biological mother (I’m an adoptee).  I was trying to put a medical history together for our son, who had recently undergone the first of three heart operations. 

An investigator was trying to help me at the time.  My mother was one of those women who “fell through the cracks.”  The last time that Social Security had heard from her was in 1954.  Death records in the state of New Jersey were filed under “date of death.”  Not knowing if she had remarried (and, if so, what her married name was), and not knowing if she had died (or when) made it almost impossible to find her.  I needed either her permission or her death certificate, to have access to any of her medical records. 

In the meantime, time was running out.  Our son was having more and more life-threatening “episodes,” of rapid heart rate.  And he was getting closer and closer to his corrective heart operation.  The doctors were pushing me to get as much information as I could, before that operation occurred.

“It’s like she just evaporated,” I moaned to the investigator.  “It’s as if she just disappeared into thin air.”

“Hang in there,” he would say to me day after day.  “We’ll find out what happened to her… eventually.”

“Eventually,” I complained to myself.  “I don’t have enough time for “eventually.”

One day, I called the investigator’s office, as usual.  He was uncharacteristically “out of the office for the morning,” his secretary said.

“Hmmm,” I said to myself.  “That’s unusual for him.  I wonder where he is?  He’s never out of that office.  He’s probably disguising himself as a woman, or posing as a homeless person, trying to get information about my mother.”

We were that desperate.

After lunch that day, he called me. 

“Well, I might have a break in your case,” he said to me. 

“Really?” I cried.  “A break?”

“Don’t get too excited now,” he cautioned.  “It might be nothing.”

“What?  What?” I pressed him.  “Please tell me!  Did you find something?”

“Well,” he said.  “I’m kind of embarrassed to tell you where I was this morning.”

“Embarrassed?”  I said.  “Why?”

“I was in Hoboken,” he said.

“Hoboken?”  I asked.  “Why are you embarrassed about that?  Do you think she might be living in Hoboken?”

I was confused.

“No, no,” he said.  “Uh.  Well, there’s this guy I know in Hoboken, who uh…helps people like you find people.”

“Really?”  I asked.  “Is he an investigator?  Is he good?”

“Actually,” he hemmed and hawed, “he’s a psychic.”

“A psychic?” I exclaimed.  I was shocked.  “You went to see a psychic?”

“Yeah,” he answered sheepishly.  “He’s an old Italian guy, who lives in an apartment in Hoboken.  He helps people like you.  I don’t know if you believe in that sort of thing, but he told me something.”

Honestly, at that point in my search, when I had gone to every state agency, every hospital, every cemetery, every church, every old neighbor, every priest, every nun, every police department, every school, every senior citizens’ building, every nursing home, every “halfway house,” every mental institution, every relative, and every stranger who might have even vaguely been connected to my mother, I was ready to believe in anything.  I was ready to dress up as a witch, fill a cauldron with pig’s blood, and attempt to conjure up her spirit. At that point, when my son’s very life was on the line, I would have committed any crime and be willing to burn at the stake for it. 

May God help me.  Such are the depths of a mother’s love.

But, I digress.

“Okay,” I said to my investigator friend.  “Out with it!  What did he say?”

My heart was beating faster than a lamb, who was about to be sacrificed.  I couldn’t believe that we were going to get a break.  A break!  After two years of dead ends. After two years of disappointment.  An unfamiliar feeling of happiness flowed through my veins.

“Well,” investigator said, “The old guy told me that someone named, Marian is going to help you put all the pieces together.”

“Someone named, Marian?” I said.  “I don’t know anyone named, Marian!”

My short-lived happiness ebbed and that old black feeling of frustration (that I knew so well) came flowing back again.  I was like a “leaf that’s caught in the tide.”

“Are you sure”? the investigator asked.  “There’s no Marian in your life?”

“Well,” I said, “the only person I know, who is named, Marian, is my friend’s mother.  That’s it.  I have a friend named, Miriam*, but not Marian.

“Well, maybe your friend’s mother knows something,” he replied.  “I’d go with that.”

And I did.  I went with anything.  I admit, I felt very foolish, listening to the words of a psychic.  I almost didn’t want to tell my husband, for fear that he’d give me one of his, “You’re crazy” looks.  But, as I said, I was willing to try anything.  I needed a miracle at that point in my search.  I needed magic.  And in this case, some would say I was using black magic, and it had me in its spell. 

I comforted myself by thinking, “That little Italian man in Hoboken didn’t mean me any harm.  He was trying to help me.  More importantly, he was trying to help my son.”

I daresay, I had many a phone slammed in my ear, by a well-meaning, law abiding, Bible fearing person, who I thought would help me, once they found out that I was adopted. 

“Sorry, we don’t help adopted people.” 

They claimed that they were “only following the law,” or “trying to do the “right thing,” despite the fact that my son’s life was on the line. 

So much for “laws,” and the “right thing.” 

But that was the end of the whole “Marian break” for a year or so.  My friend’s mother, Marian, had tried to help, but we couldn’t find a connection between her and my mother.  So, I put “Marian,” whoever she was, out of my mind. 

But, once in a while, that little old Italian man’s words would come back into my head.  But only vaguely.  And when they did, I quickly put them out of my head as utter nonsense.

But then we had another “break in the case.”  By this time, I had asked for the help of another investigator.  We had uncovered an old marriage certificate of my mother’s and an old friend of hers was listed as “The Matron of Honor.”  Her address was noted on the marriage certificate! 

“A real break this time!” I said to myself.  “Not some voodoo nonsense.”

Well, we found that matron of honor, living at that same old address.  It seemed like a miracle. 

“Unfortunately,” she said to me, as we stood on her front steps, “your mother has been dead for many years.” 

My heart stopped.  I felt paralyzed.  I was more disappointed at that news than I ever imagined I could be.  What had started as a “medical” search for my son had gradually become a “personal” search for me.  A search that I had recently hoped would lead to me meeting my “real mother.”  I was also disappointed because I had since learned that not much medical information could be gathered from old records.  I knew that my mother could be a greater help to my son if she were alive.

But then the woman said, “Wait a minute!  Maybe Marian can help you!”

“Marian?” I asked.  “Who’s Marian?”

“She’s your sister!” the woman said with a smile.  “You have another sister!  After your mother lost you and all the other children, she moved to this town and had one more child.  Her name is, Marian.”

I almost fainted.  I felt “icy fingers up and down my spine.”  Then a light went on.  Marian!  The name the psychic had given me.  Suddenly, the words of that psychic came flooding back to me.  And I felt tears flooding my eyes.  I just couldn’t believe it.  A sister.  “Someone named, Marian.”

When the woman told me that Marian lived in Cliffwood Beach, I was even more shocked, because I had recently found a brother, who also lived in Cliffwood Beach.  Not only did they both live in the same town, but their houses were two traffic lights apart, right off the same highway.  Actually, if you stood on my brother’s roof and threw a stone, straight as an arrow, it would land right on top Marian’s roof. 

I thought about all those years my mother had visited Marian, not knowing that her son’s house was a stone’s throw away.  A son that she hadn’t seen since he was eleven months old 

It wasn’t until I got home that night, that I thought about that other house.  That house we almost bought in Cliffwood Beach. 

After meeting Marian, I told her about the house.  “Wouldn’t it have been something if three of us wound up living a few blocks apart?”

It sure would have been something. 

Marian and I learned that we both bought our houses in 1978, which means that we not only would have been living around the block from each other, but we would have been moving into our houses only a few months apart.   (Our sons, born four months apart, the same year, were both eleven months old at the time.)

That little old Italian man from Hoboken has since died.  And whether you believe in his powers or not, he did say that “someone named, Marian” was going to help me. 

And someone named, Marian, did.

*  As it turned out, my sister’s name was mistakenly listed as “Miriam,” on my mother’s death certificate.  My mother died on July 12^th, my friend, Miriam’s, birthday!

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