June 7th 1972.
The story often changed, or more was disclosed as the years went by.
Two facts never changed.
I was born on June 2nd.
I went home to my new family on June 7th, my adoptive mothers Birthday.
It was often said I was a gift, going home on my mom's birthday.
With the anger and adolescence I began to think I was no gift at all, but rather stealing the light from my mother's own special day.
My mom never made me feel that way, no, I did that all on my own.
I could only imagine what my own feelings would be.
Bring home a baby on my Birthday?? It's supposed to be your own special day, and I made her have to share it.
I was told that I had to stay in the hospital for 5 days because I was premature. It was true that I was premature.I was tiny weighing 4 pounds 11 ounces. My parents said I had to be in an incubator for those five days, why shouldn't I believe that to be the truth?
"I'm contacting the hospital to find out my birth name." I told her.
"Birth name? What do you mean? You know your name." she replied.
"Well mom, if I was in the hospital for 5 days, then you had not yet adopted me, I had to have another name." I said with strength.
I asked her to tell me the story again.
This time, there were two new "facts".
"Mom, why did you have to wait five days to get me?" I asked.
"They had to run blood tests on you. They had to make sure there were not any drugs or anything in your system. Also, I had a health scare. We had to deal with that first. Depending on what the results were from my own scare, I had to decide if we were still going to get you. Your blood tests were fine and my scare was just a scare, so we decided we would adopt you." she said as I allowed her to speak without interruptions.
I insisted that because I had "no family" for five days, I would have had to have had a different name, and that I intended to find out what it was.
We finished out that conversation. I reminded Shannon that patience, and asking the same thing over and over would some day pay off.
It was the following month that I got Dottye's name, my sisters name, and also my name.
My mother was right in a sense.
That is, unless "Girl Moore" can be considered a "name".
I did write to the hospital with in a couple of months of finding Dottye at a grave. The answer to records, even writing as if I was never adopted at all, was that they had been destroyed. It had been over 25 years, and I imagine that they may be telling the truth. I would never know anything especially about those five days.......
or so I thought.
It wasn't much but when I got some of my documents from the courts, after my sister spoke on my behalf and I sent them Dottye's death certificate, I did get one document pertaining to my hospital stay. It was a letter from a doctor to my parents attorney. It stated that while Dottye had done drugs on several occasions while pregnant, I showed no ill signs of it. I later tracked down the doctor who is retired but gave permission to his old office manager to search archived records. She took a day to search through storage which was above and beyond what most folks have offered and actually followed through on. She called me with the news:
"It's odd. I did find one piece of paper pertaining to you. It was not in a file though. It was in a box of files but there is not a file for you, just this one piece of paper that was in the box with other patient files."
She sent me a fax of it, and it was the same letter that I already had.
I couldn't help but to smile though.
She had really gone above and beyond. I get a warm feeling with every day folks go above and beyond like that.
I did not share this information with my mother until 6 years later, which was last year. It was just before the bomb of a fight hit between my mother and I. Before the fight I had offered to share the letter with her. I told her : "I will mail it to you, and address it to you. It seems that when ever I email anything to dad pertaining to my adoption he ignores the email. It is possible that my emails are not getting to his in box. So, while I will give him the benefit of the doubt, I would feel more comfortable making a copy of this and mailing it to you so I can be sure that you get to see it."
A week later we had a heck of a fight and I decided that anything she wants pertaining to my search or paper work along the way she can get herself.
So you see, Birthdays aren't all horrible. Each year or close to it I am able to sneak just a little more information out. And it may not help me to find my birth father, but it helps me just to know or to try and know the truth.
And I may never feel like I was some sort of special gift to my mother, but I do know that she had the same choices that Dottye had. Just because my father wanted a daughter doesn't mean she had to go get me that day, her birthday.
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