Our Guestblogger today is Marjorie Shaw an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are delighted that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday. © 2006 All rights reserved - Marjorie Shaw 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: “Blood” Ties (continued from here)

Another letter to The Cradle was my last attempt to get them to tell me more. I wanted to know who might have looked like my blue-eyed son in my natural family. Jerry thought Tim was another man’s baby because he didn’t recognize the Aryan features and neither did I. I had been brainwashed to think I was English without ever thinking about what I looked like as a newborn. The only picture I ever saw of myself was when I was sitting on Gaga’s lap after being adopted.

A letter from the adoption agency arrived October 8, 1981.

“My Dear, First of all, let me make this comment that we have been writing to you since 1970. Believe me; we enjoy hearing from our “Cradle Children.” You are the one who told us that “Lumley” is the name of your birthmother. You must have your adoption decree to get the name or maybe your parents told you. If Lumley was on the decree, she did not use an alias. Attached is the letter we sent you with the descriptions of your natural parents. You could have a blonde haired child with blue eyes. What about your father’s family?

If I failed to tell you of your birth mother’s education, you can know now that she had one year of schooling after she finished high school. Truthfully, I have given you all that I can, practically all that we have. If you read your letters carefully, you will know that we cannot give you names and locations. Should you want more, you will have to go through court under our present legislation. We understand your curiosities.

Why don’t you enjoy your family and make life for all of you not only happy but also meaningful? You are so gifted.”

Sincerely, Mrs. Jean McGill, Social Worker.

I didn’t want to believe that my parents knew who my parents were all along and didn’t tell me or that this woman from The Cradle was lying to me.

“Let’s check to see if Dorothy is listed in the LaCrosse phone directory,” Jerry said and picked up the phone for information.

Our Guestblogger today is Marjorie Shaw an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are delighted that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday. © 2006 All rights reserved - Marjorie Shaw 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Worlds in Collision (continued from here)

“Don’t you see the French in him?” Jerry asked me over and over.

“I don’t recognize him at all. I have no male biological relative to compare him to. He has your dark hair and brown eyes and looks nothing like me.”

Jerry and I slept in separate rooms because his snoring and constant movements kept me awake.

“I can’t live up to any of your expectations. In all honestly, I never travel except to the track or to Mommy’s house,” he confessed one morning.

“Mommy’s house? You call your mother Mommy?” I asked realizing he was a real Mama’s boy.

What was one more disappointment? Jerry was no woodsman. He was afraid of moths and wouldn’t let me even kill one ant even though he loved nature like I did. His obsession with the bloodlines of race horses and Off Track Betting became apparent when I found a huge box full of his betting slips and came to the realization that he was gambling away all our money. He knew more about the genealogy and pedigree of the racehorses he was betting on than I knew about my own or his bloodlines.

 Our Guestblogger today is Marjorie Shaw an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are delighted that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday. © 2006 All rights reserved - Marjorie Shaw

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Worlds in Collision

“You’re Joni Mitchell aren’t you?” a woman said to me as I sat at a table with Jerry. I told her I wasn’t but she insisted and said, “Bye Joni” as she left.

“Jerry, If you don’t marry me I’ll leave. I’m two months pregnant. You have to ask my father’s permission,” I said slurring my words from the vodka in my Bloody Mary.

“To hell I do,” he answered defiantly.

I got up from the table and ran across the street into the woods crying hysterically knowing then that I would never have a father to walk me down the isle of a church or be able to wear a beautiful white wedding dress at my own wedding. Jerry bolted from the table running to catch me but I was already across the road in the darkness of the woods when he tripped and fell over a low historic handmade stonewall into a creek breaking his wrist and chipping a front tooth trying to stop me. The Justice of the Peace married us three days later wounds and all. My Aunt Dorothy, Father’s oldest sister, stopped sending me a birthday check because I married a Jew. Well that’s what Mother told me.

 Our Guestblogger today is Marjorie Shaw an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are delighted that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday. © 2006 All rights reserved - Marjorie Shaw

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Worlds in Collision (continued from here)

Mother and Father flew out to meet my new man.

“You’re living in a cottage not a house. Why does it look so Scandinavian almost like a farmhouse inside?” Mother asked with disdain as she handed me a little box with diamond stud earrings in it.

“I don’t care! It’s our cozy ranch house in the woods and I like it. It’s warm and feels like home to me,” I thought silently. What did she expect, Windsor Castle?

“Jerry is a double-talking playboy and will most likely leave you. Why have you thrown your life away?” she asked me.

“He went to Adelphi Academy and has an NBA Degree from NYU. Did you bring the Keane painting and the Montoya?” I asked her wanting to say to her, “You are a silent enabler and unlike you, Jerry is going to help me find my mother, Mother and I know you think I’m insane.”

“Your father has them in the rental car,” she answered.

I threw my entire refined elegant WASP upbringing away in her eyes and was going to marry a spoiled New York Jewish playboy with a wealthy mother and Eastern European Russian roots. She must have died inside, thinking she wasted all that money and all those years teaching me to be the perfectly mannered and refined English lady. She was horrified that I didn’t even have a dishwasher let alone was in love with a Jewish prince and not a legitimate blue-blooded one.