Grandma's Granny's Family Album

  “Agathe! Come look!” Adam whispered, appearing at the bedchamber door of the small cottage where she was tucking in the children with prayers and kisses. She shook her head at him and he silently backed away. “What is it Mama? I want to see!” came a shrill little voice. “Sshh. Go to sleep,” was the firm command in return. Agathe tiptoed out of the dark room to the kitchen, lit only by the corner stove, and sank down on the bench. A chilly breeze shook her as Adam entered the cottage. “Look!” he whispered again. Feet planted on the floorstones, she sighed. “Look at what? I am sitting down. I haven’t sat down all day.” “I don’t know what it is. A star, maybe. It’s huge.” Agathe blew out her breath and stood heavily. Whatever the new thing was could not be worth having to get up after a full day, a full week, of harvesting wheat. But there would be no rest until Adam was answered. She pulled on her cloak and stepped thru the narrow doorway. It  was  worth it. The biggest o...

I couldn’t help him. Not with all my family tree charts, genealogy how-to books, and CDs of the Social Security Death Index. Oh, I had ideas, and methods, but none of that helped. My ancestors were traced back 200 years, and I couldn’t get his to the first generation. His mother. My first husband started searching for his birth mother when he was a teenager. Together, we searched on and off thru the 18 years of our marriage, in between the babies, jobs, and houses. These are the facts we had after decades of research: His birth name, birthdate of 1962, birthplace of Manhattan, all confirmed. A letter with “non-identifying information” from the adoption agency: she was a tall brown-eyed brunette Protestant, he a tall blue-eyed blonde Catholic. We knew people who had found their birth mothers, who had found “non-identifying information” to be complete fabrication, lies made up by the agency to entice adoptive parents to choose certain children. So we didn’t know how much, or which parts,...