MORE...but not the REST of the story...

You know, when you live with something all your life, it becomes ordinary. Forgetting the potential shock value, the subject of my last post was supposed to be a mere commentary on how weird it is for me to do those 'birthday' things. I even read my horoscope with a jaded eye.

There's a lot more to the abandonment/adoption story - mostly concerning the 9 months between the time I was found and the day I went home with my adoptive parents. But you'll have to wait for that. I think I've already freaked some of you out - and not intentionally! So I'll give you another part of the story that is more light-hearted than those tragic first nine months of my life.

We're flashing WAY forward, to around 1999. I saw one of those "Unsolved Mysteries" programs - which I NEVER watch. They had found the body of a young girl at some point in the mid-1970's and couldn't determine her identity. A sheriff in this particular area of Florida decided to reopen the case, as it had haunted him since her discovery. He commissioned an age-regression study - figuring she might be some type of runaway. He was in hopes that a formar teacher, classmate, minister, etc., might recognize her. As the regression was displayed on the television, I started feeling panicky, pacing the room. As the girl was portrayed as a younger and younger person, she became the spitting image of myself as a teen, then a pre-adolescent, then as a child. Buck-teeth and all. At the end of the segment, the host (Robert Stack, pictured here) looked directly into the television with one final clue: "The woman apparently had given birth to a child in the last few years." My jaw dropped.

I consulted with my husband; I had never been on a mad search for my birth mother - but this was too big to ignore. Even though I had been found in California, it didn't mean that my birth mother stayed in the state. I wrote down all the details I could remember, and then called the sheriff's department that had been featured on the show. They were clueless. I spoke with several people at the department, and since I couldn't remember the officer's name - no luck. All I wanted to know is if they could perform some sort of DNA analysis to compare mine with hers...and you can imagine how far that got me. When I finally found someone who could recall something about the case, they commented that the officer I needed to speak with had retired. On to contacting "Unsolved Mysteries." After several unsuccessful attempts to phone the show, I finally emailed them through their contact screen on the web site. What did I get for my efforts? A nice letter, acknowledging my contact, and a promise to let me know if anything further developed in the case.

As silly as it may sound, I still think that woman could have been my mother. Her image is still in my mind. It was that year that I decided to take more practical steps in order to discover the true story of my abandonment.