Chapter Forty-One

I went to the store the next day and purchased a sympathy card. I addressed it when I got home and inside the card; I wrote a small letter, explaining who I was. The very next day I mailed it.

I waited each day and each day I received nothing in the mail. Then about a week later I received a phone call. It was Mama. My heart jumped out of my skin. Excitement built up inside of me until I thought I would burst.

The mama who I had not seen for so many years, the mama who truly loved me, the mama I craved to be with once again, had called. Oh how I had waited for so many years for this moment.

I should go back a step or two before continuing on because I bet you are wondering about my step-mother. We got along alright but I never felt that bond that usually is there between a mother and her daughter.

In fact, I remember life with her growing up was pretty quiet,until my baby sister was born. I didn’t realize it then, but when I grew up and went through some adult therapy; I learned that I was a normal, jealous kid.

I didn’t see myself as a normal, jealous kid though. I saw the differences. Mother smiled so big when she was taking care of baby J. I didn’t remember her smiling at me like that. She spoke to everyone about the new baby. The baby taking a bath, her bottle, getting up with her through the night. I never heard mother talking about me to others.

She spent lots of time when she was home from work with her little girl. I never really thought I was ever her little girl. I really didn’t understand what the distinct difference was but I knew there was a difference, a feeling I carried within my heart. A kid, even at ten years old, knows certain things or at least feels from her heart.

When mother called out my name, it was to set the table or to remind me to take my bath or check on brother and see what he was doing or telling me to go outside and ride my bike. I don’t ever remember mother sitting down with me in her spare time. She didn’t read books to me. We didn’t play tea parties together. This was the difference between sister and me. I felt like the out cast and I felt that way as I got older and saw the way mother treated her compared to me.

I did things that once grown-up, I realized I did it for attention. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff a ten-year old, quiet kid like me could think up.

To be continued…

Chapter Forty

By the time I was thirty-six, I had a family of three children and lived in Warsaw. For some unknown reason that I didn’t figure out at the time, we decided to move a way from our home town and move about twenty minutes farther a way.

I enjoyed the new home and our neighbors were kind. The schools seemed to be adequate. Life was good. One day, I bought a local newspaper. We were all sitting at the Pizza Hut and I decided to open the newspaper. On the second page, there it was.

I gasped for air for a moment, and my husband asked what was wrong with me.

” I see it! I see it! It’s my mama. Her father has passed and there is her name and the city and state she lives in!”

He looked at me and said nothing. I placed the newspaper aside, with each word of the obituary glued to my mind. We didn’t speak about it again, but inside I was like a jumping jack bean. I couldn’t wait to get home.

Upon entering our front door I grabbed a pop and sat down with my husband, telling him I was going to find out her number. My thoughts were racing. I asked my husband should I tell her over the phone who I was? Or should I write her? What should I do? I think my husband didn’t have any idea what to do, so he remained quiet.

The first thing I did, was call phone information and ask for her phone number. That was a piece of cake. I next called her but I didn’t tell her who I was. I just told her that I was a friend that knew her dad back home and I would like to send a card. I asked her, knowing she wouldn’t give a stranger her address, but she did. I quickly wrote it down and thanked her for the information.

I hadn’t seen my mama since I was five years old and had been searching for her since I was thirteen and now I am thirty-six and I have a piece of gold in my hand, her name, address and phone number.

I knew in my heart that the reason I had moved out of town was that God knew I could find my mama.

To be continued…

Chapter Thirty-Nine

From the author. These chapters I have written is what I have dealt with for most of my teen years and up. These chapters are what has made me who I am today. Sometimes on sad or low days, I will still question myself on the most important topic; What’s wrong with me, that two mothers didn’t want me.

I will be jumping ahead because from the time of that day when my real mother tried to get in the house and see me until my teens and grown-up years, most of it is a blur still.

I remember when I was thirteen, my grandmother explaining to me how rotten my real mother was. I had never seen my mother throughout those empty years and I couldn’t believe what was being said right now to me.

In my mind, hearing these nasty comments, I was defending mama, as even at thirteen, I understood life enough to know it had to be so hard to try to raise two kids when she was but a kid herself.

This is the point of my life when I made the decision and got the determination to find her once again. I was going to find out why these comments were being said and where she was living and why she never came back to see me when I turned sixteen. She had promised my mother that she would be back when I turned sixteen. I waited all day on my birthday and cried myself to sleep.

I didn’t get my answers that I longed for until I turned thirty-six years old.

To be continued…