Running to my Roots, Part Two

Tags

adoptee, adoption, birthfather, cultural heritage, family, healing, Italy, reunion

As an adult adoptee looking back, one of my regrets was not growing up with my Italian heritage. In my recent memoir The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption, I lamented this “deprivation.” However, I DID meet my Italian-American birthfather. I was able to travel with him to Abruzzo, where he was born. It was to be the last time I saw him, as he passed away shortly after our return. This is the second part of my essay about our trip to Italy…

My relatives in Abruzzo welcomed me, their American cousin

I ran every morning of our two-week stay in San Martino Sulla Marrucina. The miles melted away. Propelled by fascinating sights, smells, sounds and sensations, I was hardly aware of moving. I glided by the town’s gothic style cathedral, the tobacco shop, the nursery school, multistoried buildings with flower-laden balconies, graceful patios, tiny cats peeking from doorways, sheep, chickens, olive trees and grapevines. The town’s dogs barked and lunged as I ran by. Lucky for me, they were chained or fenced in. By the third day, I thought I’d run every cobblestone street and traversed every steep, narrow alleyway.
But I was wrong. One of my rewarding outings came about as a result of a funeral. A village dignitary had died, and I was invited by my cousins to join a procession to the “camposanto.” Thus on this morning, I walked rather than ran. The entire population of San Martino had joined in the solemn on-foot parade to the final laying-to-rest of the deceased. After interment, my cousin Carlo pointed out many tombs that contained his (and my own) late kinsfolk. All the while, I made mental notes of possible new running sites. I discovered a narrow path, just beyond the village proper, that descended to a lovely valley and forest.
After the funeral and from then on, this path was my favorite running destination. I went from my aunt’s house to the “camposanto” to pay respects to anyone who might have been related, however distantly, to me. That accomplished, I explored the paths beyond. In the marvelous way that running has of leading us to we don’t know where, I powered my way up small roads through cultivated fields and olive groves. During several forays, I rambled through dense forests, each time discovering something new.
One day, I spotted a garden plot of red chile peppers that looked just like those of my native New Mexico. Another time, I spotted a prickly ball along the road, a small animal something like a round porcupine. Was it dead or just hibernating? When I returned, cousin Carlo told me, “These animals are very useful. They kill garden pests and are also good to eat.” When they feel threatened, he added, they curl themselves up into balls.
A week before the end of my Italian sojourn, the weather turned colder. Until now, it had been summer. The sky became moody and the moist air promised rain and the coming winter. On one of my final runs in Italy, I took along a bag and collected fallen autumn leaves to press and take back to America.
On my next-to-last day in San Martino, I ran through town, passing my favorite little lady and her three cats, the post office,the tobacco shop. Just as I was heading back to my aunt’s house, Carlo and his wife Bianca drove up beside me, stopped their car and invited me to go shopping with them. When we reached the town of Guardiagrelee, it became obvious that their mission was to buy presents for me — handmade lace, a brass oil lamp, pottery, a cookbook written in English and Italian.
The day of my departure, I took a predawn farewell run, and then it was time to return to Rome and the United States. My wish to meet with the dad I’d never known had been granted, at least partially. So much time had passed, “water under the bridge” my father called it, that we might never become closely bonded father and daughter. However, sharing San Martino with my father was precious beyond words. Miles of running through his village enriched my memory bank forever.

Discovering my birth father’s homeland expanded my horizons!

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Adoptee Reunions: Be Prepared for EVERYTHING

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoption, birthmother, Memorial, Pat Goehe, reunion

Note from Elaine: Guest blogger Pat Goehe passed away last month. She was loved and appreciated by a host of friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico and around the country. To honor her memory, we are republishing one of her contributions to The Goodbye Baby website. For Pat, meeting her daughter for the first time after 32 years was a life-changing experience.

Birthmother/daughter reunion – Pat knew the day would come and it did!

In Pat’s words…

As I think about the reunion with my daughter after she found me, the thing that benefited me the most, was knowing that in fact she had been adopted by a wonderful couple.   Those who have read my original blog posts may remember I indicated  something had happened in one of my classes which made me wonder if my daughter had a negative experience similar to one of the students in that class.   So it was such a relief to meet her adopted parents and see that they were so wonderful.

I was pleasantly surprised at the time of the original reunion that she was involved in the arts, and that she had moved to California the very same year that I went there on a years’ sabbatical leave from my college.  Her field was music and also management and an agent for film composers.  I was dabbling in the film industry as well.   Another surprise was to discover we both were in love with the song from a Disney movie …. “somewhere out there….”    In fact, while celebrating one of my birthdays shortly after the reunion  at a favorite place, one of the singing waiters came and said there was another request for me.  He went on to say my daughter had called and requested it.  She knew I would be there that evening.

The old “nature or nurture” question was back in my mind.  At our very first meeting she ordered the same salad dressing I always do.  At one point where I excused myself to go to the restroom, she commented “So that’s where I get my pea sized bladder from!”.  And as originally talked about, when she called me for the first time, I couldn’t get over how much she seemed like me.  So much more than the daughter I had raised.  She’s also a “worry wart” like me, usually overbooked in the “to do” lists, and there’s no question that we are both sensitive, emotional people.

What advice can I give to adoptees or the birth parents seeking a reunion?  Be prepared for anything.   If you have a scenario developed where it’s a glorious reunion, it may not be.  If you have other children and you hope all will become one big happy family, that too may not be.  It hasn’t been in my case. If you are haunted by needing to know, then by all means search.  I hope you have a happy outcome.   To me, the not knowing was the most difficult of all.   I was prepared for whatever I would find, good or bad.  She found me,  and it has been good.  Perfect?  Is anything ever that?

Editor’s Note: Pat Goehe was a lifetime teacher who worked in all facets of communication and related arts. She taught students at the secondary and university level. Perhaps the most meaningful communication of her life, however, occurred when her daughter Linda, after decades of separation, contacted her. Pat was a frequent contributor to The Goodbye Baby website and the author of Annemarie and Boomer wait for Grandma and Annemarie Learns to Whistle. In keeping with National Adoption Month, we pay tribute this wonderful birthmother and to all birthmothers. Pat, you are missed!

Pat relaxes in Santa Fe’s Rose Garden Park

The Dad I Scarcely Knew

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Italy, reunion, separation

Note: Adopted people have two fathers: the original and the adoptive. On Father’s Day I thought about Giovanni Cecchini, the original, all day. Lately, as I massively declutter, I’ve come across albums with photos of my original father and me the few times we met. I’ve come to realize that Giovanni, my original father, did the best he could.

The stated mission of my memoir The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries is to “let the past be the past.” In my concluding essays, I suggested that “bygones should be bygones.” Since the publication of The Goodbye Baby, I’ve had second thoughts about those “bygones.” In the case of understanding ones adoption, the “bygones” adage may not be entirely true. History has been coming back to me, and I’m seeing things differently.
During this season of Father’s Day and the upcoming Summer Solstice, I’m thinking a lot about Giovanni Cecchini, my birth father. These are not comfortable thoughts, but rather regrets and self-recriminations. My birth father and I were never really together, as WWII was raging when I was a toddler. He was always out at sea, and the ill-fated marriage between Giovanni and my birth mother Velma was unraveling even as it was just beginning.

At age five, I was adopted by new parents. My adoptive father Richard, until his death a decade ago, was a major influence throughout my life. A professor of guidance and counseling at the University of Virginia, he was my advocate and hero. I deeply admired him. Giovanni was a shadowy background player, someone I saw just a few times in my life

The occasions I saw that original Dad, I was so full of hurt and resentment that I blew it. After we’d made contact (I was 40; he was 75), I accompanied Giovanni to his birthplace, San Martino Sulla Marruccina, Abruzzo, Italy. We stayed with my aunt and third cousins, my own flesh and blood. I was thrilled to be in Italy, in the land of my father’s birth, and I was hoping that we could get to know each other. I expected him to be the father I’d always been missing. It became obvious that he was hoping to see the four-year-old little girl he’d left behind.

We were sitting one morning at the tiny kitchen table of Cousin Josephina and I asked, “What are your memories of my mother, of Velma?” Giovanni replied, “Well, to tell the truth, you kind of remind me of her.” Retreating into a curmudgeonly silence, he did not elaborate.

I took the remark as a slap in the face. I was hurt beyond words. Father/daughter interactions went downhill from there. The Italian cousins were delightful. It was wonderful meeting them, but the father I’d hoped to bond with eluded me. He put it this way. “Too much water under the bridge.” I did not see him after our trip to the old country and he passed away a few years later.

In retrospect, I would change that moment at the kitchen table in Abruzzi. I might have changed the subject, been more open and loving, transcended my “poor little me” attitude. And if only I had. In the case of these fragile reunions with birth parents, there may not be second chances. A saving grace is the relationship I have with Giovanni’s second wife Margaret. Family members, no matter how distant or difficult, are to be cherished.

(This post was originally issued in 2013.)

Your feedback in invited. Please comment, and join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption-colored glasses.

Sharing is Caring:

Tags

adoption, China-Burma-India (CBI), Gratitude, Letters, Love, reunion, WWII

I’m working on a new edition of my WWII book of letters, From Calcutta with Love, to be published in 2019 by Pajarito Press. Herewith, one of my favorite epistles. My adoption history begins with a 1930s love story, that of my adoptive parents Richard and Reva Beard. They’d been teenage sweethearts in Findlay, Ohio, they married in 1937, and they put off starting their family until my father-to-be earned his doctorate from Ohio State University.

For six years, while Richard earned his PhD in clinical psychology, Reva taught elementary school. When it turned out that they were not able to have children, they decided to adopt. The outbreak of World War II, however, further delayed the formation of a family.

Richard was drafted and sent to India. He served as a clinical psychologist in charge of a neuropsychiatric ward at the 142nd General Hospital in Calcutta, part of the China-Burma-India theater of the WWII. For 18 months, my future adoptive parents were separated by 6,000 months. My mother-to-be lived at home with her parents in Findlay, Ohio. She continued to teach school and inquired into adopting a baby. Without a dad in the home, however, adoption proved impossible.

Devoted to one another for a lifetime, Richard and Reva exchanged letters every day of their wartime separation. Sometimes they alluded to adopting a child; Always they reaffirmed their strong love and devotion for one another. My divorced birth mother attended college where Richard was a guidance counselor. As far as I can tell, she asked him to help her by taking my brother and me. I was five and my brother nearly two.

Years later as I read through my parents’ wartime letters, I was moved and inspired by the depth of their love. Of all the confessions of love, this is the one I most cherish…

Calcutta, India
May 29, 1945
Dearest Reva,
You asked why I had white roses delivered to you on May 16. It was a sentimental and romantic gesture in which the traditional meaning of the colors of flowers was invoked. But to my way of thinking I could as well offer a white rose upon the altar of my love for you each day. Purity is as much a lovely characteristic of your being today as it was the first time I touched your hand in 1930. By some miracle, your contact with life—with me— has not coarsened you. I reflect upon you and me in the car under the moonlight, in the front room listening to “Moon River,” and in the bed we have shared, I am aware that I have approached you each time as a man who knows his love for the first glorious union of body and soul

Waiting for the war to end, Reva lived for letters from India.

How much our separation has meant to me I dare not put on paper. Perhaps, just before I sail for home, I may try. But rather by far that I be permitted to demonstrate in a real way what I mean. You will not have to cling to me, you are me.

Perhaps in all this I am idealizing, but I think not. this low, weary year has given me time to consider many things, the significance of which has been blurred in the past. Clearcut, sharp and pure, etched against the certificate of our union as a palm tree silhouettes against the blue of a late Indian evening, is the world-crashing, world-engulfing, between-you-and-me eternal fact: I am so glad that you married me.

Goodnight, precious Ritter. I’ll help moisten that pillow soon, from which I have so often seen your large brown lovely eyes watching me. They are looking down on me now, Reva.

In devotion,
Dick

I’ve recounted my adoptive parents’ story in From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard. Their love for each other became a gift of love for me.

*********************************************************************

Join Elaine for reflections on adoption, writing, hiking and life in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Your comments are invited.

 

Adoption Reunions: Be prepared for ANYTHING

Tags

adoption, birthmother, Finding, Nature, Nurture, reunion, Searching, separation

Note from Elaine: Guest blogger Pat Goehe is a frequent contributor to The Goodbye Baby website. Meeting her daughter for the first time after 32 years was a life-changing experience. It has been two years since she first wrote about their reunion (http://bit.ly/1M2dGlW). Pat is now moving forward with personal goals, specifically writing projects.

Birthmother/daughter reunion – Pat knew the day would come and it did!

In Retrospect…

As I think about the reunion with my daughter after she found me, the thing that benefited me the most, was knowing that in fact she had been adopted by a wonderful couple.   Those who have read my original blog posts may remember I indicated  something had happened in one of my classes which made me wonder if my daughter had a negative experience similar to one of the students in that class.   So it was such a relief to meet her adopted parents and see that they were so wonderful.

I was pleasantly surprised at the time of the original reunion that she was involved in the arts, and that she had moved to California the very same year that I went there on a years’ sabbatical leave from my college.  Her field was music and also management and an agent for film composers.  I was dabbling in the film industry as well.   Another surprise was to discover we both were in love with the song from a Disney movie …. “somewhere out there….”    In fact, while celebrating one of my birthdays shortly after the reunion  at a favorite place, one of the singing waiters came and said there was another request for me.  He went on to say my daughter had called and requested it.  She knew I would be there that evening.

The old “nature or nurture” question was back in my mind.  At our very first meeting she ordered the same salad dressing I always do.  At one point where I excused myself to go to the restroom, she commented “So that’s where I get my pea sized bladder from!”.  And as originally talked about, when she called me for the first time, I couldn’t get over how much she seemed like me.  So much more than the daughter I had raised.  She’s also a “worry wart” like me, usually overbooked in the “to do” lists, and there’s no question that we are both sensitive, emotional people.

What advice can I give to adoptees or the birth parents seeking a reunion?  Be prepared for anything.   If you have a scenario developed where it’s a glorious reunion, it may not be.  If you have other children and you hope all will become one big happy family, that too may not be.  It hasn’t been in my case. If you are haunted by needing to know, then by all means search.  I hope you have a happy outcome.   To me, the not knowing was the most difficult of all.   I was prepared for whatever I would find, good or bad.  She found me,  and it has been good.  Perfect?  Is anything ever that?

Editor’s Note: Pat Goehe is a lifetime teacher who’s worked in all facets of communication and related arts. She teaches students at the secondary and university level. Perhaps the most meaningful communication of her life, however, occurred when her daughter Linda, after decades of separation, contacted her. Pat is a frequent contributor to The Goodbye Baby website and the author of a children’s book Annemarie and Boomer wait for Grandma, the first in a series. In keeping with National Adoption Month, Pat reflects on her reunion with daughter Linda.

Pat relaxes in Santa Fe’s Rose Garden Park

Longing to Belong

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, Adoptees in Literature, Belonging, birthparents, Eckhardt Tolle, Emily Giffin, inner peace, reunion

“Home is where the heart is.”
-Pliny the Elder

The yen for authenticity is a universal quest.  To paraphrase Meister Eckhardt

The Adoptee’s Quest: Feeling at home in the world.

Tolle, “we long to know who we REALLY are.” This knowledge comes from within but also from our environment and the people immediately around us, our families.

It’s been said that the road to adoption recovery is a search for authenticity. Adoptees must choose from two family trees, one biological and another through adoption. In writing my memoir The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption, I realized that neither family tree was the answer. My feeling of being “at home in the world” had to come from a source within, a gradual unveiling, a stripping away of masks I’d assumed for a lifetime.

Much of my healing has come from reading. Not just nonfiction books about adoption, but novels. Not surprisingly, adoption runs as a theme through much of literature. One of the best contemporary novels I’ve read about adoption is Emily Giffin’s Where We Belong. In this beautifully told story, a birthmother and birthdaughter meet for the first time when mom is thirty-six and daughter is eighteen.

Author Emily Giffin captures the nuances of adoption reunion.

Marian Caldwell is a television producer fulfilling her dream in New York City. With a jazzy career and picture-perfect relationship, it would appear that her life is just as she wants it to be. But her daughter Kirby Rose’s inconvenient appearance produces the key to a past that Marian thought she had locked away forever. For Kirby, the discovery of both her original mother and father bring about a reevaluation of her adoptive family and her thoughts about the future. In other words, the reunion changes everything.

As Marian and Kirby embark on a quest to find the one thing missing in their lives, each comes to recognize that where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves. A place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.
Giffin’s characters ring true, from the first knock on the door by Kirby to Marian’s final comment about a life transformed by the reunion: “It is not what I planned — this day, this moment, these unlikely relationships, both old and new. Yet I feel overcome with peace and certainty that, for once, I am exactly where I should be.”

Join Elaine every Monday for insights on adoption and life.

Message from a Birth Mom

Tags

adoptee, Attitude adjustment, birthmother, child adoptee, daughter, empower, Gratitude, healing, reunion, Searching

Editor’s Note: Mother’s Day has special meeting for Pat Goehe, who—after decades of waiting and wondering—finally met the daughter she’d never seen. The reunion was wonderfully rewarding, and it has greatly enriched her life. For anyone who is hesitant to seek a lost daughter or son, she recommends moving forward.

**********************************************************************************

As I started to write this piece I’m reminded of a Christmas song that begins something like “So this is Christmas and what have you done?”   That’s probably a bad version, but it is what sticks in my head.  Only now I want to say, “So this Mother’s Day,  and what have you done?”
Without question for a birth mother and the child she chose to give away, Mother’s Day is a troubling time for both.  Recently a former student of mine put on her Facebook Page, “Mother’s Day and where is mine………..”

There are times in our lives when we must consider whether to jump into the void or not.  Deciding to search for a child is just that,  a void.  There is no guarantee that the outcome will be positive or even productive.  But is it worth the jump?  Certainly one can go through life never searching, but it is Mother’s Day that tugs at our hearts.  Where is he/she?  Does she wonder about me?  Is he angry that I did the unforgivable and gave him away?  Would knowing the “why” help?  Does she look like me?  Could we be passing each other daily and not even know it?

Some of you probably have read my story of reunion.  Was it worth it?  Oh yes!  Would I do it again?  Without question.  I must confess that over the yeas if I don’t hear from her for a period of time, the voice inside of me says, “Well Pat, why should she stay in touch…you gave her away!”  But then she call or emails.  Recently I’ve learned to remind myself that those who I did raise often are lax about staying in touch as well.  Children get busy with their own lives.

Should you search for your child?  I can’t answer that for you.  Some may not want you to find them.  Some may want to take advantage of you.  You may want to take advantage of them.  So many possibilities but always a question mark.  The “abandonment issue” remains a constant problem for both mother and child and never so much as when Mother’s Day arrives each year.   As you think of all the possible outcomes along with the tremendous emotional turmoil involved, I would ask you to also think of this.  When you lay dying, will you still wonder where that child is?  Maybe now is the time to take the leap.

Pat Goehe knew that someday she would meet the daughter who was adopted out at birth

Part IV “Somewhere out there…

Tags

adoption, Adoptive Family, Birth Mother, Birthdays, families, reunion, Siblings

Part IV – “Somewhere Out There…”
I think back to the time I was living a year in LA on an academic leave. I kept driving

Birthmother/daughter reconnected. It took 32 years for mother and daughter meet again, but now they have bonded — forever.

by the exits to Burbank. It became such an obsession I finally just turned off and drove through the town. I headed up an Arts Program in Illinois and frequently did “dog and pony shows” promoting the program. I was haunted by the song from a Disney movie, the lyrics starting with “Somewhere out there…” Linda has just moved to Burbank the same year I moved to LA. She was a flutist and had her own company at the time. I was part of a panel at Northern Illinois University for our Arts Plan. Linda was playing flute in the group which played before were I was introduced. I found out she loved that song as much as I did.
I have a place I “hang out in” and have what 
I refer to as my adoptive family.

I always celebrate my birthday there. They know never to come singing “Happy Birthday” or anything like that, but each of the singers will sing my favorite song that night. A friend and I were there this one year and it was such a lovely night. As they do regularly for birthdays, there were glittery things all over the table; they sang my favorite songs, gave me a free dessert. It was all wonderful. Then here comes Richard, a very large man, saying ,”Well Pat, here’s another song for you. We just got a call for this from your daughter.” I’m thinking, my daughter doesn’t even know I’m here or anything about my so called adoptive family. I start asking questions and Richard’s reply was, “Hey, all I know is we just got this phone call; it was your daughter she she asked if we knew this song. I said yes, and she said please sing it for my Mother’s birthday. And so they did. “Somewhere out there…..

Friday:Pat’s blog marathon concludes. Of course, as adoptees and their families (both adopted and original) know, the story never really ends.

The Birthday Party – Part III

Tags

adoption, Birth Mother, Birthday celebrating, birthmother, Extended families, Grandparents, reunion

Much later I realized how difficult it must have been for Linda to see all those pictures

Pat looks back on dealing with the reunion as it affected both families

to meet her real Grandma and Grandpa but not as their granddaughter. I began to make plans the following year for a surprise dinner party in Los Angeles for Linda’s birthday. I had a former student who was living out there make a reservation at Barrymore’s Restaurant and also get in touch with Linda’s boyfriend, soon to be husband, Joe. I contacted my son who was then living in the Bay area. By then he knew about Linda. I wanted him to come for the party. Linda knew I was coming to LA for my Ojai group but she didn’t know I was coming in earlier for her birthday…the first time since her birth that we would be together on that date.
I wish I could say that my daughter and son were now very connected with Linda, but they aren’t. There have been some attempts but I have come to realize you can’t force things like that. I did decide to tell my Mom before I went out for the birthday party. It was one of the hardest things I had to do. My Mom’s comment was “Oh Pat. I can’t tell Dad this. He could have a heart attack. He wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand.” She later wrote me a letter and I told her the issue was closed. Silly me. My Mom was such a great lady. Someone who always adored the many grandchildren and later great grandchildren. In my mind I could see her sending a beautiful card and letter for Linda’s birthday. I later realized that it wasn’t fair to expect anyone to go with the news rapidly. After all, how long had it taken me to deal with this. But, I am glad I did tell my Mother. Now many members of my family and friends know about Linda. They always want to know if we’re close. And we are in so many ways. She had two brothers and a sister, all adopted. They and her extended family are very close. When she married her husband I told her early in the planning stages that while I would love to be there, I felt it would be inappropriate. She was grateful that I made this decision. But, on the day of her wedding, both she and I talked later about wishing we were there together. I happened to be in the LA area when her daughter was born and held her as my new grandchild. Her adoptive parents have been wonderful. I always received a note in a Christmas card each year. They are up in age with health issues now. One of Linda’s brothers have passed on. While she isn’t closely connected to my extended family, she feels free to share with me the ups and downs of hers. Over the years there are times when I feel we haven’t been in touch. My mind always jumps to “Well for heaven’s sake; you gave her up what do you expect?” Linda hates that. She is just a very busy and successful professional woman and Mom. (To be continued. Tomorrow: “Thinking Back”)

Part II – “Are you my Mother?”

Tags

adoption, adoptive parents, Birth Mother, families, reunion, Siblings

Pat’s story (con’t.) – She and Linda were apart for 32 years.
“Did you give birth to a daughter in St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, IL in March of 1959?…

Birthmother/daughter reunion – Pat knew the day would come, and it did!

Are you my Mother?” Pause, while I sit there paralyzed. She goes on. “Because if you are, I want to thank you because I’ve had a wonderful life.”
I felt I had no choice. We talked on and on and I felt like this most certainly was my child. At one point I told her I would be in California in the fall because I was part of a group that met in Ojai several times a year. She responded. “ I’ll do you one better. My Dad will be coming to St.Louis for business. I will come with him, and we can meet. It’s in two weeks.”
Oh my God…two weeks!!!!! I was teaching. My daughter and her two sons were just moving into a condo with me so she could go back to college. I decided I would do what I had to do but telling my family then would not be an option.
The appointed day I thought I would have a heart attack. My heart kept pounding like never before. What would she look like? I gave her up at birth and never ever saw her even as a new baby. What would happen? I got to the motel and knocked. She opened the door and I said, “You are beautiful”. We hugged. She explained that her parents and a nephew both came and went to St.Louis so she and I could do this reunion alone. Shortly after that another knock came. It was one of our local florists who was late in getting there. Linda had ordered a bouquet for me. We were to meet with her parents later in the day for dinner.
I took her to my office at the college; introduced her to colleagues. I remember being so excited and happy. We picked up my other daughter and dropped her off to pick up her boys. I introduced her as the person who had called but not as a half-sister or daughter. Later we met up with her adoptive parents in the motel. What I remember most was that they reminded me so much of my Mom and Dad. What I found somewhat strange was that her Dad especially kept telling me how they had taken Linda to Poland; they were of Polish heritage. Other trips and everything. I kept feeling like they were trying to prove to me they had done a great job in raising my daughter. I in turn was constantly thanking them for what they had done. It was just very strange.
We went to dinner with plans for Linda and I to drive the 30 miles to my parents’ home. I had called earlier and said that it was actually Linda, not Michelle, but that she’d like to meet them. So much later, past my parents’ bedtime, we got there. We talked briefly and Mom told me to take Linda back to the “telly room” as they called it and show her the collection. Mom had a bulletin board where she posted all the grandchildren’s pictures. We did that. As we prepared to leave both my Mom and Dad gave her a big hug. I took her on a quick drive through town and then back to the motel. We promised to stay in touch, and we did.

Tomorrow: Part III- The Birthday Party