Two Adoptions, One Family: A Story of Two Brothers
My search for my biological parents yielded no results. My brother's journey was very different.
One day in 1958, when I was five, my mom asked me if I'd like to have a baby brother. Setting a pickle jar on the nightstand, she dropped a penny in. "When you fill this jar with pennies, you'll get a new brother."
I woke up one morning to discover that the jar had disappeared, and there was my new baby brother, lolling in my old crib.

"His name is Marty," Mom said.
"How come you didn't get fat?" I asked. "Other mommies get fat when they get babies."
"Well," she said, "Your brother is adopted."
"Adopted?" That was a new word to me.
"He had another mommy who couldn't keep him. So she gave him to us to take care of and love. Just like you."
Just like me?
At least, that's the way I remember it.
Growing up, Marty and I never discussed being adopted; in fact, we hardly spoke at all.
We Didn't Talk About Being Adopted
In the 1950s, it was a different world. We lived in Delano, a small town in California's rural Central Valley, and being adopted carried an unspoken stigma. Growing up, Marty and I never discussed being adopted; in fact, we hardly spoke at all. Five years is a huge chasm when you're a kid. But both of us were acutely aware of something askew whenever we were introduced to new people. I was brown-haired, volatile and asthmatic; Marty was blonde, affable and athletic. It was obvious that we were different — not only from our mom and dad, but from each other.
Like countless other adopted children, I'd often daydream of an alternate life with my "real" parents. Sometimes, I'd broach the subject to my mom. Her forlorn response was always the same: "Have we been such bad parents?" I'd skulk back to my room feeling terrible.
Years later, I found out my brother had been doing the same thing and getting the same results. Eventually, we learned not to ask.
Searching for My Story
In California — then as now — adoptees had no legal rights to know the identities of their biological parents. In 1963, I secretly wrote a letter to the hospital where I'd been born asking for any information about my birth parents and put it in our mailbox for pickup.
A few days later, an official-looking envelope addressed to me arrived with a handwritten letter inside claiming to be from the very nurse who had delivered me. She shared that both my biological parents had been married — but not to each other — and they each had other families, which meant I had siblings. She also wrote that my mother had wanted me to know that giving me up was the hardest thing she ever had to do.
In 1963, I secretly wrote a letter to the hospital where I'd been born asking for any information about my birth parents and put it in our mailbox for pickup.
Years later, I began questioning the credibility of this odd Good Samaritan midwife. Did that letter really come from the hospital? Or from a place much closer to home? The letter, like the answers to those questions, has long since disappeared.
In those pre-Y2K years, resources for adoptees were few and far between. My covert attempts to find my parents had to be conducted through the US mail, dealing with well-intended but ineffectual adoptees advocates, associations and registries.
The primary caveat was that all parties involved had to individually volunteer to meet one another of their own volition — an unlikely alignment in life, let alone adoption. My efforts inevitably led to a dead end — and what can you do when you're under 18? In time, I reluctantly surrendered and embraced the mystery.
By the time I left home in 1973, I'd long since resigned myself to a lifetime of never knowing my real parents. Marty went on to college, got married and started his own family, eventually settling down in Santa Barbara. But his quest to find his birth parents persevered long after I'd declared detente on mine and had a vastly different outcome.
My Brother's Search
I didn't know that my brother had known his birth mother's name for years. Our mom had worked as a nurse back in the '50s for a local family physician, Dr. Williams. In May, 1958, a 19-year-old girl named Esther Parker walked into his office complaining of abdominal pains and was stunned to discover she was about to give birth to a child — a child she didn't know she had been carrying and was in no position to raise.
After a long talk with Esther and her mother, Dr. Williams called our house, asking my mom and dad if they'd be interested in adopting a new baby. They started making room for a new addition to our family, and I began filling a pickle jar with pennies.
Around 2017, Marty heard about Ancestry.com, the popular website where you can trace your genetic lineage. Curious to find out his bloodlines, he sent out for a test kit.
Patience and persistence are not among my virtues, but my brother Marty has both in spades. One day in the mid-1980s he was driving through the Central Valley and saw the exit sign for Delano. Impulsively pulling off the highway, he headed to the Delano High School library and began thumbing through old school yearbooks from the 50s.
Sure enough, there she was in a black and white graduation photo: Esther Parker, Class of '57. Her round face bore little resemblance to Marty's more angular features. Still, Marty had found tangible evidence of his birth mother, captured in the moment of time just before he was born. He snapped a photo of a photo and drove home. It would take almost 3 decades for the other shoe to drop.
By the new millennium, the emergence of the internet and social media was revolutionizing possibilities for connecting through new platforms like Myspace and Facebook. Around 2017, Marty heard about Ancestry.com, the popular website where you can trace your genetic lineage. Curious to find out his bloodlines, he sent out for a test kit.
"I didn't realize when you do the test, it connects you with others with a similar DNA," Marty says.
He discovered he had a female relative somewhere out there in the world named Lee — possibly a second cousin. Sending her a private message through Ancestry, he wrote, "My name is Marty Uhler. I was born May 9, 1958, in Delano, California. My mother is named Esther Parker. Do you know anything about her?" He received an unexpected reply: "Hi, Marty! I'm from Delano, too!"
Acting on a long shot, Marty asked Lee if she knew anyone who may have known his biological mother back in Delano. A few weeks later, he was surprised to get a voice message from Lee urging him to call her immediately. He told me, "I called, and she said, 'Marty, I'm not your cousin! I'm your sister.'"
Apparently, Marty's family tree had been planted in his own back yard. Lee's father, Bill, had also lived in Delano during the 50s. Now in his late 70s and in failing health, he'd recently moved into a nursing home in San Luis Obispo, about 90 minutes up the coast from where Marty lived. Lee had called her dad to ask if the name 'Esther Parker' rang a bell from his days in Delano.
It did.
An Unexpected Discovery
Bill reluctantly confessed he had known Esther back in high school, and that later they "had a night together" but he never knew anything about a pregnancy and child.
While looking for his mother, my brother had inadvertently found his own father.
On impulse, Marty decided to make a pilgrimage to meet his father unannounced. "I figured if I just show up and see what happens, what did I have to lose?"
Arriving at the nursing home, an intern directed him to Bill's room. Marty entered to find a thin, older man lying asleep on the bed. The ears and face were instantly familiar; he'd seen them in the mirror every day of his life. Putting his hand on Bill's shoulder, he softly repeated, "Bill, it's Marty. Lee's brother." Slowly the old man's eyes opened to see the son he never knew he had.

"He was friendly and kind," Marty recalls. "He said, 'Yeah, I've heard about you.' He was open and curious."
Marty showed Bill a few photos of his own kids — all bearing a resemblance to their paternal grandfather. The two spent maybe 20 minutes together, until Bill drifted off into sleep again. My brother's time with his biological father would prove fleeting; Bill died a few months after meeting his son.
But there were bigger revelations to come. Lee's mother had also attended Delano High and remembered that Esther Parker had later married a man with the last name Willensky. Marty had been looking for Esther Parker on Facebook for years, but when he searched for Esther Willensky, her page popped up immediately. A widow in her 80s, she was living in Visalia — 80 miles from our old home town of Delano.
"It took me a while to work up the courage to write her," Marty says. "I left a private message on her Facebook page: 'Hello, Esther – my name is Marty. I was born in Delano. I think you might be my mom. Would you like to connect?'"
Soon a card arrived in Marty's mail. "She wrote how happy she was to hear from me," Marty says. "She said, 'I've always wondered about you and prayed for you all these years.'" Marty suggested the prospect of meeting and, surprisingly, she agreed.
The next week, a diminutive white-haired Esther Willensky welcomed Marty inside her home. There was an awkward hug, a tour of the house, and light chit-chat.
"Her demeanor was almost flat," Marty recalls. "Not emotive, but de-motive. Kind of like I was a neighbor stopping by." They went out to lunch, exchanged pictures of their kids, took a photo together, then Marty began the drive back home. It took longer than usual — long enough for him to watch the sun set over Morrow Bay until there was nothing but afterglow.
The Shared Story of Two Brothers
Esther Willensky passed away in 2019. Since then, Marty has gone on to meet several half-brothers and half-sisters, all warm and welcoming.
"The strange thing is, we're biologically related but we don't have the history and knowledge of each other's lives like you and I do."
"The strange thing is, we're biologically related but we don't have the history and knowledge of each other's lives like you and I do," Marty told me. "There's a part of your heart and consciousness where there is attachment. I feel that's what I have when I think about you and Mom and Dad."
In 2020, our mom moved to an assisted living center, and I returned to California. No sooner was she inside the building when COVID hit, and Marty and I could only wave to her through a window. But it brought the two of us closer together.
We talked often over burgers and beer and pizza — remembering long-ago vacations, pets, holidays, grudges — the bonding detritus of a shared past. Mom died the following year, and we scattered her ashes into the same bay where our dad's were scattered.
My brother and I are closer than ever before, the distance between us now just a matter of miles. We've learned that "real parents" may not share your bloodlines, but heartstrings are another matter. In a journey spanning decades full of questions and curiosities, that long-ago jarful of pennies paid off with countless unforeseen dividends. For both my brother and me, it was the investment of a lifetime.