The Unknown Boy...

 

Quantum physics states an object can be in two places at once. It states other things, too, but for this discussion, let's stick with that. Quantum physics opens the door to possible mutliverses, where a thing--even a person--can exist in two different realities.

I feel I've always lived in two realities, the one I know...where I was adopted into a family and raised by loving parents in a home with two adopted siblings.

The other reality...it never happened. It's the reality where I wasn't adopted but raised by a single parent in another part of the country with a sister five years my senior and not knowing how on earth things would work out.

The one was reality...the other, exists only in speculation.

Several years ago, after my mother passed away and decades after my father died, my family gave me an Ancestry.com test for Christmas. I took it and sent it in. The results came back. I found many new things about my genetic history, mostly that my family is centered around two geographic locations...Arizona and Texas. This makes sense since what little I do know about my birth parents is my mother was from Arizona and my father from Texas. That's pretty much it.

The Ancestry.com system allows you to see and contact those who are genetically related to you. I had one that was pretty close--a 1st or 2nd cousin who lived in Arizona. Back in February 2019, I gathered up the courage and sent him an e-mail. It was short saying I was born in November 1965 and asked if he knew anyone in his family who had a baby and put him up for adoption.

Crickets.

Nothing.

I waited, a week, month, even years...no response. I thought maybe the family didn't want to talk about the little boy left behind. I never sent a follow-up e-mail...didn't want to make things worse. Things stayed the same until last month. That's when my cousin responded. The e-mail he sent me said his aunt had given up a boy for adoption and wanted me to call him. He gave me his number. I called him that night.

We spoke, exchanged information. His aunt is my birth mother. She was a single mother at the time already with a five-year old daughter. The relationship between herself and my birth father didn't work out so she made the incredibly brave and selfless decision to allow another family to raise me at their own.

On the call, I asked my cousin why it took so long for him to respond. I wasn't prepared for his answer. He said he didn't respond because no one in his family knew I existed. You see, my birth mother never told anyone about me. My older step-sister was too young to remember when she and her mom traveled to Utah to have me, and my birth mom never told her family she was pregnant.

In all the scenarios, in all the possibilities of my other reality, I always thought others knew about me and maybe they wondered what ever became of the boy given up for adoption those many years ago. Nope...I was the unknown boy. I then asked my cousin about my birth father. He said that from what he understood from his aunt, she never told the birth father she was pregnant.

What?

You mean, the only person to know of my existence on my birth parents's side of the family was my mom?

That's what he said.

As an adopted person, you wonder what it will be like when you make a connection to the "other" family. How will they react? What questions will they have? Turns out, no one on that side of the family ever had those question. They never wondered what happened to the little boy.

They didn't know.

We spoke on the phone for several minutes. I wanted to know about how my mom was doing, questions I've had all my life. Some were answered...some were not. He told me my mother's health was not good--had not been good for years. He said she was in hospice care. My cousin told that they were going to visit his aunt/my mom for Thanksgiving and we could do a video call. 

I'd get to meet my birth mom.

On Thanksgiving last month, we made the call.

To be continued.