Paul Breidenbach, 43, has lived in Elmwood Park since 1989 and is a single parent with a 4-year-old son named David.
He was born in Colombia, and says that for the first four years of his life he was abandoned by his parents. He was looked after by other homeless and abandoned children until he was adopted in 1975.
He has vague memories of that time, but distinctly remembers hunger and the things he had to do to survive.
“I was skin and bones and that was a really rough life,” he said. “I remember a dirty floor, a black house and banana trees.”
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Food was hard to come by.
“I was bow-legged because I was malnourished until the orphanage started picking kids up off of the street,” he said.
He was adopted in 1975 when he was 4 years old and he moved to the United States, first living in San Jose, California before later moving to Elmwood Park. It was a strange transition that had a profound effect on him.
Q: What are the negative and positives you believe that comes with being adopted?
A: One positive thing about being adopted is you have a second chance in life. It has negative qualities because it’s hard to bond, hard to trust, you don’t know what [your adoptive parents’] motives are. The emotional connections; I had nothing to base it on and it was hard for me to grasp. There was no connection or blood connection, so I questioned everything.
Q: What effect did your early childhood have on your life after being adopted?
A: Because I was malnourished in the early part of my life, I became a hoarder. I would stash food everywhere [in the house], but we had a dog that would get the food. I was a pretty quiet guy coming up. I had a hard time bonding with my family members. The hardest person I had hard time bonding with was my mother. I had a good life. I had everything that I needed and now that I think back, what I really needed was understanding.
Q: Will you ever tell your son about being adopted?
A: I told him briefly but I will probably repeat the cycle as he gets older.
Q: What have you learned from being adopted and your early childhood?
A: Compassion, the fact that I didn’t have it made me overwhelmed with it. It let me stick with my son because I didn’t have my biological parents, so I’m driven to maintain a good relationship with my son because I didn’t have that with my biological parents.
Q: Did you ever find your biological parents?
A: No, everybody told me they died. I have been interested in going back and see my hometown, but never made it back there.
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: I’m a musician. I’ve been playing the piano for 12 years. I have a lot of drums sets at home. I do a lot of biking, hiking and climbing. I’m a physically active guy. I love cooking.
Q: What’s the upside of being a single parent?
A: You can influence your child in a way that’s in the best interest of him and give him my positive qualities. Taking the opportunity to use all of my hobbies and use them to help him to grow.
Q: What’s the downside of being a single parent?
A: You have to do it all by yourself. You don’t have that other secondary person to help you out. If you want to tag somebody in, because you’ve reached that level of frustration, there’s no one to tag in.
—David Pollard, Pioneer Press
Shout Out is a weekly feature where we get to know and introduce our readers to their fellow community members and local visitors throughout suburban Chicago.
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