Face to Face

I grew up knowing I had the identity of one person, but with two names.  One name represents who I am and the other name was who I could've been.  It was that other name that had me curious all of my life.

I always knew I was adopted.  My parents told me at a very young age and I've always been extremely proud of it.  It made me feel so special that I was chosen to be a part of such a terrific family.  Through the years my parents told me as much as they could about my birth family.

Then several years later on what started out to be a typical cold January day in 1995, changed when I picked up the mail at lunch time. Amongst the daily junk was an unfamiliar hand-addressed envelope to me, with no return address.  As I drove back to work, I ripped the letter open and began to read it. I had barely had the first sentence read when I began to s hake so badly I had to pull over to finish reading the letter.  As the words filled my head, my stomach tightened, my eyes welled with tears and my body shook uncontrollably.  This letter was from a genealogist doing a search for a birth mother to find her daughter.  I couldn't believe what I was holding was actually happening!  My birth mother had found me!  In the back of my mind I had a feeling this day would come, but still never imagined that it actually would.

I didn't even remember driving the rest of the way back to work, I was such an emotional basket case. It was almost as if I had an outer-body experience.

Throughout the day I repeatedly read and reread the letter. The words kept tugging at my brain which made it difficult to focus on anything else.

That evening I couldn't wait to tuck my two young daughters into bed so I could be alone to ponder over what was happening and the events which were about to unravel.  I carefully unfolded the letter, laid it on my bed and slowly read it sentence by sentence, over and over.  It had me so rattled I could barely sleep because I knew what I first had to do.