Adoptions and mystery

By the time I was 2 months old, I had two names. Mary Elizabeth C and Sandra J.

I didn't know the first name until I was in my 40's. Sandra J was my adopted name.

Growing up, I'd try to imagine where I came from. My usual imagination was that they were royalty and had to flee from their home country. So, I was placed with adoptive parents to hide my identity so I wouldn't be murdered. Maybe that's where my love of mystery novels comes from.

I read that the famous author James Michener was left on a door step, he never knew his actual birthday nor anything about his biological parents. Does that explain why he wrote long sagas about generations? He was trying to find his own roots.

Sometimes, I imagined I was the daughter of a movie star. As I got older, I imagined my dad was my real dad and he'd had me through an affair. I tried to get information from relatives but no one could help me. It was really awkward trying to pry out information about my dad's imagined affair. He had a laundry route during the war and took clean clothes to the houses out in the country and picked up dirty laundry. I'm sure he visited and stopped for lunch or coffee. Daddy was always a talker and quite handsome in his youth. It was easy to imagine an affair especially since mother was not my favorite type of person.

Through the years, I became involved with adoption services. Through the job, I found a judge in Austin who would open adoption records. I wrote to him and he ordered the Bureau of Birth Records to open the sealed file.

I couldn't wait to get it in the mail and promptly drove over to Austin. A young clerk probably 10 years younger than me looked at the judges letter in my hand and grudgingly brought out a large envelope that was sealed with red wax on the back. She opened it and said I'd better not lose the copies or they'd not open the envelope again.

I thought that was rather snippy. The rudeness couldn't erase my excitement to see my real name. I had been named Mary Elizabeth C. It had the name of my mother but no name for a father. It had my adoption papers and the name of the town my mother was from.

Let's say the name was Gobbler. I was amused and said "I'm a Gobblerite!" I sat down in disbelief that I actually knew my real name. My birth name. I was by myself but savored the moment like I'd found a pot of gold.

Later, my brother (adopted) wrote to the judge and had his records opened. I helped him find his mother and family.

I called the first C in the Gobbler phone book. There were several names but I wrote to one and hoped I'd picked the right one. It was some time before I got a reply. I'd picked a distance elderly cousin who was in a nursing home but her daughter knew immediately who I was and called my mother who lived in another state by then. She wrote that she was contacting my mother and would get back to me.

The ending/beginning was when I met my mother and brother and sister and their families. We have had a good relationship and I think that it would have been such a waste of a life never to have known my sister and brother and families.

My mother has since passed away. But, we had a great relationship and I am thankful to the Austin judge who had the courage to open the records.

Genetics is a powerful force in families. My mother and I shared many similarities. We both were/are pickle fanatics. Mom even ate pickles for breakfast. She made delicious pickles and canned them as sweet pickles or dill pickles.

I do not have her green thumb. Mine is a brown thumb from all the plants who have had the misfortune to darken my door. We were both athletic and were active in sports. We looked enough alike to be sisters.

A lot of adopted kids miss not looking like someone. We may not resemble our adopted families at all. I remember as an adoption worker, we'd try to match hair and eye colors between the adopted child and adoptive parents.

Sometimes, it's obvious about an adopted child's love of education. You often find a child that doesn't like school and his/her biological parents didn't like school either.

Addictions are passed on from parents to child.

I had a love of horses from an early age and found that my biological father raised quarter horses on his ranch.

Open adoptions should be practiced. It isn't natural not to know your biological family and promotes almost a schizophrenic personality split between the biological and adopted personalities. The unknown of a person's life is far worse than not knowing what happened. Also, as health knowledge evolves, it's important to know one's genetic inheritance for future health problems.

When I was younger, a doctor took a blood sample and got all excited because he thought I was anemic (ie: leukemia). I didn't feel bad but he still put me on vitamins with iron. I felt so bad taking them that I stopped and immediately felt better. Years later, I found that I had Thalesemia, an inherited blood disorder that had been passed down in the family. Without family history, it would have been a rare diagnosis and I wouldn't have known what I had.

Now, good or bad, I know my families medical history.

What an absolute relief.

Death and Dying

I just got an email from my friend Sally. She is in Houston with her daughter. This is a difficult time because the daughter's 48 year old husband is dying of cancer and has only hours or a few days to live. He's being moved to a hospice today. His two children are still in high school and they've had to grow up quick. They have stepped up to the bat and have helped take care of him and their mother.

Sally and her husband just finished taking care of her "Aunt" Betty....who was sick for over a year with cancer. Do death's really run in 3's? I've always heard it. It's probably just a wife's tale. Just this week, Sally's brother's son's wife passed away suddenly of a young age. She was well one day and gone the next. Her 3 children are in elementary and in high school. They had no warning their mother was sick and no time to prepare or say goodbye. I'm sure, had their mother known, she would have talked about life and her hopes and dreams for their future. She won't be here for their graduation , their weddings or to see the grandchildren as they come along.

Which makes us aware that life is never a given. Death is just as much a part of life as birth. One we celebrate and one we mourn. The older you get the more deaths you experience. In some, it's a tragic death and in others it's just a normal passing from one existence to another.

I remember a science lab. The professor was changing a liquid into a gas visible by a blue color. As the liquid bubbled and turned into a blue vapor, I had a pivotal moment. We may be in the physical body one day but turn into another element the next. We are never really gone but continue to change into different molecules.

Might our molecules continually change or compress into different combinations? Can we change them ourselves through our cellular connection? Is there a cosmic consciousness?

My dad was so afraid of dying that he would have nightmares and scream during the night. As a child, I heard his cries through the bedroom walls. There was no one to comfort me and I felt so tiny huddled under the covers.

No wonder I carried a fear of death that was profound for most of my life. Nothing in the bible ever calmed my fears. The after life was always conditional. If you didn't believe in Jesus, you were doomed to hell. I thought of all the poor souls that were born before Jesus and down in hell because of their birth dates. I thought of all the other people on earth who were of other religions. They always seemed nice to me and I couldn't understand why they would be in hell. It was a very confusing time and frightful.

Then, I came upon psychics who proposed to have contact with those who had passed over. For me, it all came together. They try to contact us but usually we are so afraid that we deny the incident or refuse to acknowledge they have tried to contact us. I remember when Marvin died. It was several days afterwards that the phone in our bedroom where he had died began to ring. The hairs on my arms stood up. The phone was disconnected there. Yet, it was ringing.

I firmly believe that he was just trying to keep in touch. I have no proof but there have been many other contacts from friends and family who have passed away over the years.

RL, who works for me, was at his mother's bed side when she died. She'd suffered from diabetes for years and had been on dialysis. Finally, she refused to take it any more. As she lay dying, all the family was around her. RL said he heard a lot of birds chirping and asked everyone if they heard them. They didn't. When the nurse came in, she said RL's mother had passed away. RL told her about the birds and she said, "We'll put that down as the time of death."

When my dad died, he sat up suddenly in his hospital bed and opened his arms as if he saw something. He said "Jesus, Jesus, take me!" And, then he died.

I am glad that my dad didn't die alone. He wasn't afraid any more.

When my mother was getting close to the end of her life, she told me that Momma came to visit her. She was so glad her mother was there. She was in her right mind, not on any medication. Just the simple awe of her mother being there. Granny had been dead for years but I firmly believe that she came to take her daughter home. Mother died a few days later.

A longer life gives us the advantage of experience if we accept it at face value and don't try to analyze it to death. No pun intended.

Golden Years Depression?

I find myself getting into a deep depression over the ravages of advancing age. Mostly, it's over the lack of mobility, agility and stamina. There was a time several years back that it was trying to take over my life. I think I have heard that this is common in the elderly. Depression can be from isolation. I sometimes feel like I am obviously old and that may be repulsive to others. I feel that we might belong in an old folks home where we won't offend anyone if we drool or drop our food. That's why I've considered getting a face lift to become more socially presentable. Then I see people who've had unsuccessful face lifts and don't want that to happen.

One way to combat depression for me is to set goals. These can be short range or long range. For some time, I've begun to get active in political Tea Parties. I have a passion to see America return to the way I knew it years back. This current presidency of Barack Obama has unleashed a need to try to lend a hand in correcting what he is destroying through the Democratic majority in congress and in the house and through his Czars. I am only one person but together with others, I think we can turn things around. For years, the ACLU has eroded our religious freedoms or symbols of our Christian faith. Madeleine O'Hara, with her atheists stance, did the initial damage through destroying prayer in schools and school functions. I think that children should be exposed to a Christian religion if they are not exposed to it at home. A simple prayer will not hurt any child. Hopefully, it will give them a foundation for behavior that they have not gotten at home. For those who don't want to participate, they can attend another class. The ACLU is systematically destroying Christian symbols in the government offices. They bring suits and are awarded sums of money that they then turn around and use for more suites. So, we can see a long procession of destroying American ideals and what's been great about America.

Public education has been infiltrated over years by a socialists ideology that threatens American democracy. Students are turning away from America, turning away from the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance. The terms "greed" and "evil" are symbolizing the American idea of democracy. After World War II, Hollywood showed a positive American soldier coming home from war. They depicted soldiers being greeted and welcomed home.

Since the Viet Nam war, the press and TV commentators were so negative against the war and solders that they were spit on by the public, causing more mental distress on the solders than almost the war itself. After Jane Fonda's obvious anti-war activities caused many soldiers to be tortured and killed, the press has been more cautious in their slanderous approach toward the soldiers and their ire has turned toward the government (mostly Republican). When George Bush was president, there was a daily press release of the soldiers killed in Iraq. With Barrack Obama as president, you NEVER see anything about the soldiers that are still dying in combat. He has not brought anyone back home nor stopped the wars.

So, how do we stop the inequality of the press, the public school system and the Hollywood liberal actors and producers?

There is a public, a citizen who has known for years that what was depicted in the news and newspapers was not what they thought. I had long scratched my head at what the newspapers reported, wondering if I was crazy or that I was the ONLY one who thought as I did. Then, Rush Limbaugh came onto the scene. He was the voice of reason. He was the voice that echoed what I had felt and thought all those years. He was the one who put a voice to it, who found people gathering around the radio in a release of emotions to finally find someone who thought like they did. The audience expanded and gradually you encountered more and more people who thought like you did.

Now, we have a wonderful FOX TV station and 24 hour programming. It's the ONLY station that explains both sides of the issue. The other stations still insist on presenting only their side of a situation. It's never more obvious than the Al Gore man made Global Warming misconception.

When you get to be 74, you have been around long enough to logically know that weather cycles. I have gone through the dust bowl, good rain years and bad rain years. I've gone through droughts and through monsoon years. Weather cycles.

But, our local school system would not present both sides so that the students could judge for themselves. They would only present the Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Most of it has been shown to be a lie. They use the fear tactics and depict poor baby polar bears dying. There was a documentary put out in England to rebut Gore's "documentary". The local school systems would not allow it to be shown. Gore's lies have become a means for taxation and a life style that puts us back into the dark ages. There will be famine and disease because of the lies and the radical groups that cling to it.

For instance, the EPA wanted to put a tax on cattle because they produce a methane gas from their digestion system. A tax on cattle, "to reduce atmospheric methane" would be devastating to the little farmer. The big conglomerate cattle producers have to pay taxes at a much smaller ratio than the independent, local ranchers. If they'd passed their National Animal Identification program, the program would have run every small independent person who just raises cattle or animals for a little extra income to go out of business. Only the big conglomerates would have stayed in business. For instance, they would have had to identify only 1 chicken per hundred. The little farmer would have had to identify every chicken. It would have been the same inequality with a cattle methane tax.

If the big conglomerates take over, there will be a big spike in grocery prices. Because of the global warming spoof, there already has been a big increase on energy such as gasoline and diesel. This sends the prices sky rocketing for groceries and every day needs.

Common sense has to be brought to the fore front. We cannot let the big governments, the international community or the big conglomerates run our lives to the extent that people cannot exist or survive. People must get active in their government. They must run for office. They must run for office to correct the wrongs being done. We cannot let career politicians who no longer care or can identify with those who have made this country great continue to pass laws and legislation that benefit only a privileged few .

There is a movement known as GOOOH that is trying to do this very thing. They want to get people to run for office who will promise to abide by the constitution and to uphold the constitution. If they fail to do this, they have to step down from office. It's easy to become active if you are a GOOOH candidate. Take a look at them and join.

Arm signals for safety's sake

I remember driving my grandmother's 1935 Ford car. It had neat window shades that you could pull up and down. It always seemed to smell musty. But, as I drive today, I am continually amazed at the lack of using turn signals. It's so easy to use. You push the signal up or down to turn left or right. It's so simple and easy. It is a safety feature that lets you know what the driver is planning. You aren't a mind reader so it would surely help if you knew if he was turning and which way. I grew up having to roll down the window and stick my arm out to signal my intentions. You stuck your arm up if you were turning right. If you made a left hand turn, you stuck your arm straight out. To signal a stop, you let your arm drop down. We had to do this in rain, sleet or snow. The rain or snow would pelt us in the face. Things are so easy now. With speeds and traffic increasing, it just takes a little courtesy to turn your signals on. We aren't mind readers. For your safety and mine, please use your turn signals.