Jennifer met Michael through her best friend, and my aunt, Helen. Jennifer spent a great deal of time at the Gibson’s home growing up – the Gibsons’ home was always full of activity and food and was a nice diversion for Jennifer, who was an only child. Her father died while her mother, Grace, was giving birth. And Grace went on to raise Jennifer largely on her own.
When they fell pregnant, both sets of parents forbade Michael and Jennifer from marrying as Jennifer was still in high school, and Michael away at University in Cape Town. As a result, they had no choice to give me up for adoption as marriage was the only acceptable social structure within which to bring a child into the world of late 60s Rhodesia. While pregnant with me, Jennifer stayed with family friends at a farm in Rhodesia, Darwindale, that she and Michael would go on to manage as on-site managers, and then bought in the mid 90s just prior to Michael’s all-too-early death. He was 45.
Jennifer and Michael married in 1972, and had Nina. Liam came along 10 years later in 1982.
As Granny Grace tells it, (though I have a feeling she might have a penchant for well-intended dramatization), after Michael’s death, Jennifer went on to build Darwindale into one of the largest tobacco farms in Zimbabwe. Sadly, she lost the farm to Mugabe in 2001, and fled with all the animals she could fit into her trucks. She and her partner, Chris, landed in Livingstone, Zambia where they bought a farm on the banks of the Zambizi River, where Chris and Liam now live.
Jennifer died in May, 2009 after a difficult bout with Lou Gehrig’ disease. She was only 59. Shortly before her death in November, 2008, she and Helen went for a walk – Jennifer in her wheelchair surrounded by her dogs (they called her the “hairy dog mother” as she was always in the company of her four-legged friends) -- on the farm in Zambia. That’s when Jennifer told Helen about me (I don’t believe she’d shared the story with anyone up until that point). Helen asked if it would be OK with Jennifer if they looked for me. Jennifer said she hoped they would, and shared with Helen how scared she was to tell Nina and Liam about me after keeping my adoption a secret for so many years.
As Nina told me the first time we spoke on the phone, she was blown away that her mom had kept my secret from she and Liam for all those years. Helen told me that Michael struggled for many years with my adoption and many times wanted to reach out and find me, though Jennifer convinced him otherwise. I think this was out of an immense, unwavering respect for my parents, Robert and Jeanette, and an unwavering commitment to the decision she made on April 25, 1970 to give me up for adoption.
In much the same way, I was at peace with being adopted, and out of a great appreciation and respect for the pain that Jennifer and Michael must’ve gone through in making the decision to give up their first-born child, I chose to not pursue Jennifer or Michael out of respect for their decision. It’s uncanny how we both had the same mindset, yet so very sad that it kept us from ever meeting again. In the end, though, that was Jennifer’s wish. As Nina says, “all Mum’s need their secrets.”
Paul, Nina’s best friend, and our host in Harare, says he envisions the three of us – Liam, Nina and myself – together at Jennifer’s grave on the farm in Livingstone. It’s hard for me to imagine how that’s going to feel – surrounded by my siblings in the presence of a woman whose determination, strength and love for her children brought us together after 40 years.
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