A Mother and Family Found

(May 7, 2004) Kristine Metoyer found exactly what she was looking for and discovered what she least expected.

Her long, painful search for her birth mother finally brought her face to face with the woman who'd given her up for adoption more than 30 years before.

It introduced her to sisters she never knew she had. It opened up a whole new family for her.

Yet it also forced her to accept that the one thing that had haunted her the most - why her mother gave her up - would never be adequately answered by a mother Metoyer could never fully know.

And she had to come to terms with the fact her mother needed more mothering than she was capable of giving to her newfound daughter.

Today, four years after Metoyer first met her birth mom, she continues her search for relatives - and many answers.

'I had no history'

In a sense, Metoyer had been looking for her birth mother since her parents told her at 6 that she was adopted.

As a child growing up in Elmhurst, she'd fantasize that her "real" mother was a princess.

As an adolescent, when relations with her adoptive mother grew strained, she longed for a parent "who would give me what I needed."

But it wasn't until Metoyer was grown, married and living in Carol Stream with her own family that her search began in earnest.

"I was getting older. ... I just thought, now's the time. I had basically no history to pass on to my kids," said Metoyer, now 37. "I was looking for answers."

She did have a few clues. As a teen, her adoptive mother had shown Metoyer her adoption file. From that, she learned she'd been born Grace Marlene Mollie in Chicago to a woman named Justina Wildova. Eventually, Metoyer went to court to have her birth certificate unsealed.

But the big breakthrough came when she stumbled upon a query posted two years before on an obscure genealogical Web site.

Someone named Victoria was seeking information about her family. Her mother's name: Justina Wildova.

Within a few minutes, on that day four years ago, Metoyer was on the phone with Victoria Jandran, who lives in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

"We were looking for you," Jandran told her. "Have you talked to the others?"

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Metoyer's adoptive mother had told her she had a sister. She learned from Jandran that there were more sisters. Metoyer would ultimately learn that, altogether, Justina Wildova gave birth to six girls, none of whom she was able to raise to adulthood.

Why? That answer also came from Jandran: Their mother had a history of mental illness, including schizophrenia.

But that wasn't the biggest revelation that came out of that first conversation. Jandran told Metoyer that Wildova was living in government-subsidized housing for state wards in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, just 30 miles away.

Metoyer hung up the phone and got in her car.

Roaches and smoke

She stopped and picked up some groceries on the way into the city, hoping that would get her past the building's guard.

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She buzzed Wildova's room and she came downstairs to meet her.

"I could tell just by her eyes, a hazel-ish color," Metoyer recalled of that first meeting. "I just knew. It's so weird. This 75-year-old woman, smoking, dirty, no teeth, in an old dress, but I just knew. I'm just shaking inside, but I didn't want to cry in front of her."

What she found was a frail old woman who weighed 84 pounds, looked malnourished and was living in a barren room. There was a cot with yellowed sheets in a corner, cockroaches on the floor. There were a couple of cereal boxes on the refrigerator, but nothing inside it.

A porcelain cross and a couple of flowers on a small television seemed to be the room's only accoutrements. Wildova's smoking left most of the apartment with a jaundice hue.

Metoyer later learned that though Meals on Wheels delivered one meal to her mother each weekday, she would scrounge in Dumpsters or go to a nearby halfway house to find food, and on weekends she survived mainly on soda and cigarettes.

Metoyer gently told Wildova who she was and the woman simply said, "OK."

It was unclear whether Wildova fully understood. But Metoyer continued to visit her week after week, each time gingerly pressing her for more information about her past.

While Wildova welcomed Metoyer into her life, she offered few clues to help Metoyer and her sisters piece together their history.

It was sometimes impossible to separate the wild assertions of a schizophrenic from the truth.

While explaining how she came to live in Chicago, Wildova would abruptly shift to a story about how she swears she'd met with Lee Harvey Oswald, or the time she helped kill Elvis with a karate chop, Metoyer said.

Search for answers

While Metoyer worked on building a relationship with her birth mother, she also was reunited with Jandran and another sister, 47-year-old Cyndy Mott of Nashville, Tenn., who helped fill in some of the blanks.

Mott, whose facial features and laugh are nearly identical to Metoyer's, started her own search for her family in the late 1970s, eventually tracking down her father, James Mollie, at a veterans hospital in Florida just before he died.

Mott said Mollie revealed precious little of his past.

What she did learn was that she'd been born in 1956 near Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany. Mollie had met Wildova, a native of what's now the Czech Republic, in a bar.

They'd married after Wildova became pregnant. She followed Mollie back to the United States, and over the next two years, they'd had two more girls.

But as her mental illness worsened, Wildova found it harder to care for her daughters, who now speculate she had a nervous breakdown. She abandoned the three girls and their father relinquished them to the foster care system in Alabama, where he was stationed at the time.

Mott knew nothing more until she received a letter from Jandran in 1994. Jandran was the youngest of the sisters, and because Wildova never formerly relinquished custody of Jandran, she had an easier time accessing documents about her past.

Finding pieces that fit

Metoyer, Mott and Jandran now keep in regular contact and are getting to know each other and their families. Metoyer has also developed a relationship with her birth father's sister, who lives downstate.

And as Wildova's health worsened, Metoyer moved her to the Oak Brook Healthcare Centre so she could get the constant care she needs and be closer to Metoyer's family. She's registered there as Justina Wild.

Her room at the nursing home is bright and homey. Photos of Metoyer and her family are kept on a dresser near Wildova's bed.

Before Metoyer found her, Wildova spent her days loitering on the street corners near her complex in Chicago. Now she spends her time in arts and crafts sessions and senior parties, and watching performances put on by volunteers.

There are still plenty of pieces that don't fit. For example, records indicated Wildova and her husband divorced in the early 1960s, yet Metoyer and some of her sisters were born after that.

There was some indication that Wildova and Mollie continued to see each other even after their divorce. But Wildova also talks about a man named Andrew Smith who the sisters believe may have fathered one or more of them. But Metoyer concedes it's equally possible that Wildova made him up.

And the pieces that have fallen into place haven't always provided closure. Two other sisters have chosen not to involve themselves in the family reunion. Metoyer, Mott and Jandran also believe, based on their research, that there's a sixth sister named Joyce and are still trying to find her.

Metoyer herself is writing a book on her experiences searching for and finding her birth family and hopes to travel to her mother's hometown in the Czech Republic to trace more of her mother's history - and her own.

"Maybe somebody knows something," Metoyer said. "You never know."

She has also lobbied for changes in the law to make it easier for adopted children to access their records. And Metoyer, who works for Metropolitan Family Services, a social service agency in Glen Ellyn, continues her charity work, helping other families who are coping with mental illness.

And she's learning to accept the limitations of what her mother can offer her.

"The hard part was realizing that there will never be that part of her (that will ask), 'How were you treated?'æ" Metoyer said. "She buried that so deep, it's just not in her. Our relationship began the day I went and saw her."

More than anything, Metoyer said she now realizes that being put up for adoption was the best thing for her and her sisters, even if she'll never fully know why that happened.

As Wildova struggles with not just schizophrenia but also emphysema, diabetes and heart disease, Metoyer said she simply feels blessed to know her for as long as she can.

And she's silenced that nagging little voice inside her that said, "Why do you want to go and have a relationship with this person who didn't want you?"

"It's not for me to judge," Metoyer said. "I don't have animosity toward her. She made her choices, and I don't blame her, because I would not be here today without her."

Found: Two sisters chose not to reunite with others.

For detailed information about schizophrenia and treatment of schizophrenia, visit the HealthyPlace.com Thought Disorders Community.

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