I have always known I was adopted. I really never cared to meet or find out what my birth mother looked like. I was scared. I pictured a scraggly, skinny lady with long fingernails that grasped onto her pack of cigarettes. I pictured her wearing a tube top and had such blonde hair that was really absent of color. She may have had a hump on her back. I always pictured her the same. Dear God, I didn’t even want to picture my real siblings.
When I was a freshman in college, my sister went to a club one night and saw a girl standing nearby who she thought looked just like me. She went up to her and told the look alike about our amazing similarities and jokingly asked if she was adopted. Yes, as a matter of fact, she was…November, 1956, Wheeling, West Virginia. Same as me. She also was told that her birth mother stayed at the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed mothers. Wow, seriously? What are the chances? So, we met. We did look alike. We compared likes and dislikes. The only thing I remember is that we thought we should get blood tests and that her name was Joyce. She was from Steubenville, Ohio, and she may have later married a butcher….I never saw her again. But, I just know she is my twin.
I think about this often. Her birth certificate didn’t have the time of birth. Mine didn’t have a hospital listed. Something was fishy. I found out later from the present director at the Crittenton Home that birth records before 1960 were deliberately burned. What? Why?
So, one year for Christmas, my brother had gone to Charleston to look up his information from his adoption and got mine also. How funny. The birth mother on birth certificates was supposed to be marked out, but mine had a narrow line running through the information. I now had my birth mothers name…Nancy Jane________. Well, when I was little, I used to tell my little friends that Marilyn Monroe was my mother. Just happened to be driving through Wheeling, West Virginia and decided to stop off and give birth. I figured that Nancy Jane was just code for……Norma Jean…This made so much sense. Well, except that I looked nothing like her. So, that’s why they burned the records. To cover up a cover up. Of course.
The other interesting tidbit was that I found out that my birth mother (now that I admitted it probably wasn’t Marilyn), had another set of twins. So, I have a twin, twin half-sisters, and a mother, that I hope isn’t wearing a tube top. Well, she would be in her early seventies by now. Let’s hope she isn’t wearing a tube top.
So, okay, maybe I am not Norma Jean Baker’s daughter. But, I’m someone’s daughter. And I’m someone’s sister.
So, Joyce, my separated at birth twin. I think I am going to start looking for you.
I hope I look better than you.
