Why Finding My Birth Father Has Changed My Life

When I found Carole (my birth mother), she gave me my father’s name and two old black and white photos. One was of him, cheeky smile, wink on his face and leaning on a veranda rail. All bravado looking. The other photo was of him in his work uniform, standing in front of the bus, sign barely readable. Dalbert John Kingi, that is the name of my birth father. He didn’t even know I existed and this was rather terrifying. How do I knock on the door of someone’s life and announce that I am your daughter, who you knew nothing about? Surprise!

I was heading up to Auckland, to meet my friend Treena and as I didn’t really have much information to go on, I wondered if it was really possible to find him. On the plane, I looked at the quick selfie I had taken in the cafe with Carole and myself. She was reluctant, I was insistent. The photo seemed funny to me, I have dark curly hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin. Carole has blond straight hair, a pale complexion and bright blue eyes. I have a smile on my face, Carole is almost scowling (probably trying not to). She seemed a little terrified by the whole encounter, I guess it was a sudden crash landing in her ordered life. Especially difficult as I was still a secret to all her family. I looked at the photo and decided I must have thrown more to my father’s side of the family.

I recounted in my mind what had just happened. My life had dramatically changed in the space of three days. It only took a day to find her, my mother, and I wondered about the choices she had made. While being so grateful that she didn’t proceed with a more permanent solution to her inconvenience, I wanted to know why she had given me away. This is always the question, why? As a teenager, I had been angry with her. Of course, I didn’t know her, so I made up scenarios in my mind of what must have happened. Each time I replayed this fictitious account, the events became more dramatic. By the time I had turned eighteen, I had hated her and with this feeling of rejection, came anger that ate at my soul, I hated me too. It was always the question of why? What’s wrong with me? Now here she was, I had met her and her story was a common one. Nothing dramatic and it had very little to do with me.

Could I really find him?

Carole didn’t have much information to go on, other than my father’s name. They had a mighty fine few months, he was good looking and played the guitar, like a lot of Māori boys, then they went their separate ways. She didn’t know his people or his place of origin, she remembered he had told great stories, but didn’t even know if they were true. He joked about being from the King Country, but she didn’t really know if that was a real place or just another story. She did, however, believe that the day would come that I would want to know, so when I met her for coffee, she gave me his name and the two old black and white photos.

I was sceptical, but Treena’s husband Dean was absolutely convinced that we would not only find my birth family but that I was probably related to someone he knew. “This is New Zealand”, he said, “of course we can find him”. “It really can’t be that easy”, was my response, but silently thinking, can it?. Google, of course, is the first place to begin such research and it didn’t take too long before I found an article about Brownie King (a.k.a Dalbert John King), a musician in Whangarei, who was recording an album. Dalbert is a pretty specific name, I hadn’t even heard it before. So if someone is using this as a stage name, then they would have to be related. This article was from 2010, that was six years ago. It had a picture with the write-up and if this was Dalbert, then he looked good for his age. More likely it was his son, which would make him my half brother. This article about Brownie was our starting point and Dean set about phoning every pub and club in Whangarei, every place Dalbert or Brownie had played or had even been seen.

He never knew that I existed.

I Facebooked message every person in the article, all the band members, the recording studio, anyone who might know something, but no one answered me. No one knew anything. Dean kept phoning from one place to the next, but he also couldn’t find anyone who had seen him recently. Then Dean decided to go systemically through the white pages, searching for a D.J. King, in the North. I was entirely doubtful, I had lived in Australia all my life, the thought of systematically going through the white pages to find someone related to Dalbert, seemed absurd. Undaunted by the challenge, Dean kept dialling numbers and sure enough after a few more dead ends and a few more phone calls, Dean was talking to a cousin. Someone who actually knew the family, someone who gave us the news that we had not wanted to hear. Dalbert had died, years ago.

I was entirely deflated, everything came to a crashing halt, my father had died. As I let that information sink in, I thought about all the things I would never have the opportunity to say. This was definitely not like on the TV show. There would be no meeting, no reconciliation, no more answers to my many questions. No hugs, or even acknowledgement of my life. He had never known that I even existed. I couldn’t believe our search could end like this.

We had travelled from Australia to New Zealand and through both North and South Islands, from Christchurch to Auckland, how could it end this way? The random cousin from the white pages search said that Brownie was still around and that he could find out his number. Did we want to find Dalbert’s son, my half brother? Of course, I needed someone to ask about the man I would never meet and when I searched for his Facebook page, the person looking back at me looked so much like Dalbert, it made me cry. Something deep within me knew this was the right person, this was my brother.

I was the product of an affair.

Carole had already left town when she found out that she was pregnant with me. She didn’t return to tell Dalbert, she had already made up her mind what she was going to do. She had heard from a mutual friend that Dalbert had been married when they were kicking around. She said she hadn’t known that at the time. Dalbert had been driving the bus around town, when he should have been at home. Even though I couldn’t meet Dalbert, there could be a whole family I was related to and then that overwhelming, yet familiar sense of fear kicked in again. Dalbert had an affair, it was a fun-filled few months, but I was a ‘passion flower’, the product of little slap and tickle on the side, that no one knew about. How will his family respond to that news?

Treena’s Facebook research ended up finding a connection through one of their friends, a cousin, who knew Brownie. So before the end of the night, it became clear, Dean was right, we did find my birth family and they were friends with my cousin, he did know someone I was related to and it really wasn’t that hard!

What do I do now?

I found them, I had to let that soak into my brain. I had found both my birth mother and father in under a week. The rollercoaster of emotions was overwhelming and the biggest heartache was knowing that I will never meet my birth father and he never knew that I existed. He had quite a big family, four children to his first marriage, six to his second and me in the middle. The man had a lot of love to give. I was the product of an affair, a baby that no one knew about. What should I do now? Do I go knocking on the door of these people’s lives? Would they even want to know me? Will they hate me?

Everything had changed for me, I had changed. I now knew where I came from, the tribe my father belonged to and the circumstances of my birth. Nothing would ever be the same for me and I didn’t really know what lay ahead of me, I just knew one thing, I had to return to the country of my birth, I had to go home.

Froyle Davies
I’ve been a visual artist for over 25 years and now I tell my stories.
Let me inspire you with this beautiful free print, ‘Above the Stormy Waters.’

Cheers Froyle