Book One is complete on-line

4 - last days

During January 1981 another event began to unfold that would take more than the next ten years to manifest. For decades I tried to locate my birth family, my parents had always told me that they did not know who my birth parents were. I had my original birth name on my birth certificate, Terry Miller. I am sure that I got myself adopted just to get away from that name. Even at three-years old a Leo knows there place in the world and if it is not royal enough then it must be changed. I had spent years without any leads with the Miller part of my origins. There were too many Millers in every phonebook that I would look in to track down a potential father. On my birth certificate, it says father, Lawrence Miller and my middle name at birth was Lawrence, Terry Lawrence Miller. On my records was my birth mothers name, Maveureen Elizabeth Billenger. I had tried for years to find someone connected to me with that name but to no avail. I frequently wrote Rensselaer County Department of Social Services in Troy, New York and asked if they would release information about my mother.  All I knew was that I was adopted out of the Vanderheyden Hall estate, originally called the Troy Orphan Asylum. On the Internet I discovered that Vanderheyden Hall has “provided housing to many orphaned and troubled youth”. Now that makes me feel good and no doubt would provide me raw chromosome level material to work with using every subliminal tape, religious belief and drug known to change but of course one cannot bleach or change what is. I wrote letters for many years in hopes of discovering anything about my origins. I would get generic letters stating there was no information to give. After a few years I began getting a little more information and in mid-1977 I was told about my parents:

Figure 111 Mom #2 adopted mom- holding Sacha  May 1981 Hawaii

RENSSELAER COUNTY
Department 0f Social Services
133 Bloomingrove Drive
March 25, 1977
Mr. Terrell Adsit 501 Stevenson Lane, Towson, Maryland
“Your efforts to obtain some definite information about your biological parents in your letters dated 11/24/74 and again on/ 2/25/77 are certainly understandable.
You have the information that you were placed in Vanderheyden Hall in 1949. Your parents’ marriage had been dissolved, and your mother was unable to take care of you properly. She tried to make a home and failed. After much thought and deliberation, she made the judgment that her child's best interests would be met by freeing him legally for adoption in a good family who would take care of him as she could not.

Accordingly, you were placed in adoption with Mr. and Mrs. Adsit in October 1950. The Adoption was finalized in the Court in December 1952.
“…your parent’s marriage had been dissolved and your mother was unable to take care of you properly. She tried to make a home and failed. After much thought and deliberation she made the judgment that her child’s best interests would be met by freeing him legally for adoption in a good family who would take care of him as she could not.

I hope that you have had a reasonably happy young childhood with your family. They were so eager and happy to have you. And I hope also that the above information relating to your background will help you. Please be assured that your parents had your best interest in their planning for you. They wished for security, a home, with parents who would be able to care for you and who were able to meet the needs of a young child.
Sincerely ----Supervisor, Children’s Services and ----Supervisor of Adoption.”

Years later I would realize what crap that was and none of it was true but I could not hold the people writing to me in the mid-1970s accountable as they were obviously writing from some notes that were placed in my file. I will come back to this when I write about 1982 and again for 1988 and finally 1995 when through a chain of circumstances, I found members of my birth family. The road to discovery began in early 1980 soon after Sacha was born and a couple of decades later there would be significance to what I had come across in Honolulu.  I had written another one of my letters to the supervisor of children's services at the Department of Social Services Rensselaer County in New York only this time I added that I now had a son and I would like to have some information on my parents. I received a letter back saying there was no other information except for what I was given in regard to my mother, Maveureen Elizabeth Bellenger. I immediately knew something had changed. On my birth certificate the name was Maveureen Elizabeth Billenger and I had been checking phone books for years, especially in upstate New York and inquiring about the name of Billenger but no one had ever heard of a Maveureen Elizabeth Billenger. There was no one in the phone book with that surname name, and now in 2004 there still is no name of Billinger in the phonebook. But Bellinger? Yes, there are about twenty of them. When I saw the different spelling, I rushed off to the Honolulu Public Library and looked through New York’s Capital District Area phonebook. I wrote back to the supervisor of children's services and told her of my discovery and she said that Bellinger was the right spelling and that what was on my birth certificate was a typo. I had spent many years looking for someone with the wrong name. I rang several of the names in the phonebook but no one claimed to know either my mother or I. The matter would not surface again for seven more years. 

• March 30th Letter from parents saying they were coming to Hawaii
• May 07 Parents arrived 2.30 PM drove around island
• 08th went to Maui with parents
• 12th parents back to NY

My parents came to visit in May, and it was the last trip my parents would take together. My mother was seventy-five (as well as my father). She was quite incoherent and seldom had a clue to what was going on. Mom #2 had Alzheimer’s symptoms and within a few months would be hospitalized for another twelve years before dying. She did classic stunts like holding Sacha upside down when she had him on her lap. She would walk into the closet thinking it was the bathroom. My father said when they got back to Clifton Park she became worse. One day he could not find his wife and thought maybe she had wandered into the woods that were behind our home in Clifton Park or maybe even had wandered down the road. My father had the neighbours looking for her and after several hours my father opened a closet, and she was standing there thinking she was riding on a bus and she complained that none of the passengers would get up to give her a seat and she was so tired from standing up. We took my mother and father on a short trip to the neighbouring island of Maui and then sent them back to New York with me telling them I would be there in another year with wife and son in tow. For some odd reason I believed that.
Every once in a while, I get this really stupid notion that I have control of my life and I go ahead and make plans. Then of course reality taps me on the shoulder or kicks me in the balls and I hear a distant laugh in some ill-fated cloud only to discover that my plans once again have turned to shit. And I realise as all humans who are truly conscious must realise at any given point in time that we have absolutely no control of our life and we are nothing more than sparks of evolution being tossed to and fro on the cosmic canvas of someone’s dream.
Lesia announced again after my parents left that she was going to go back to Adelaide and if I ever wanted to see my son again I would need to follow along. I do not recall my reaction at the time as so much happened, which is the nature of experiences, after a while only a few experiences stand out, but I must have not resisted. I probably thought at the time that it was all adventure and whenever I wanted to I could turn us all around and come back to the States. Whatever my thinking was at the time I found someone to buy my car out of storage in San Francisco and I gave up the idea of going back to Maryland. I do know that Lesia had said that we were going to Adelaide so that she could sell her house and pack up her belongings so we could move to California. Why I believed her then I have no idea – little of whatever she said to me would not be anything more than an apparent line to manipulate the moment in the direction of her future or current desire.

5 - arrival

Book 1: Leaving Australia, 'Before the After'

• Focus: This book covers the earlier part of Neuage’s life, detailing his journey from childhood through various phases up to a significant transition point. It explores his experiences as an adoptee, a hippie in the 1960s, a member of the Holy Order of MANS cult in the 1970s, a single parent in the 1980s and 1990s, with a 10th grade education until the age of 44; then a student pursuing higher education from 1991 to 2010, culminating in a PhD and being a professor and teacher in New York, Australia, China.
• 

Terrell Neuage, (dual citizen USA/Australia) is a South Australian/New York poet, writer, and digital artist known for his evocative poetry and extensive research on conversational analysis in on-line communciations (including communication in the AI era; from sharing information to making sense of it). His best-selling autobiographies;Leaving America (Before the After) & Leaving Australia (after) – exploring life as a hippie, brother in a California Cult (Holy Order of MANS) as Brother Terrell Adsit, Astrolger (40-years) to non-believer, and adventures in Australia, single parent, tofu manufacturer/street artist, China, the USA & fifty+ other ountries. From high school drop out, Shenendehowa Central School, Clifton Park, New York at age 16, back to school at age 44 (BA & Masters from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia) to PhD from the University of South Australia at age 58 to knocking on your door at age 77.