Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw  

Chapter Six: Secrets (continued from here)

I believed him. He knew Darin and I were afraid of her. Dirty dancing nude for him was fun at first. The next time we went into the woods, he brought the girl next door. “Bean show Jane how you dance. Remember what I said I would do if you don’t.”

I began my dance.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY.

Dr. James Dobson, Founder and Chairman of Focus on the Family says adoptive parents can be vague and hold back the truth from the adoptee. He says they don't have to acknowledge adoptees were born from another mother and father. He has it all wrong about adoptees and so did the late Dr Milton Levine, a New York pediatrician who wrote books and offered advice on raising children.

Our Guestblogger is Melinda Warshaw ,an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Six: Secrets (continued from here)

The sex play began after I turned nine which I acted out with my plastic horses. I wasn’t into bestiality per se but Rob was verbally, physically and sexually abusing me. The torment lasted for years but I was too scared to say anything. It would affect my entire life.

Rob was so sneaky that he managed to seduce Darin and me separately. Neither one of us knew the other was being seduced and abused. We trusted, loved and feared him, which was a recipe for disaster. Our love for him was free and came from the heart but a nasty brew of angry emotions was churning inside of me as a result.

Our encounters of the ugly kind happened in secret when Mother and Father were busy entertaining downstairs or on a vacation. Not until we had our clothes off during strip poker did he ask if he could touch us. First, there was touching my breast and then it was me touching Darin’s penis. It was gradual. We were too young to get it. I guess the monster child figured out how to separately seduce us.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Five: Snake (continued from here) 

“I call you. I have a full house,” said Rob. “What do I have?” I asked him. “Two Kings and you lose. Now you have to take something off,” he ordered just like Mother ordered us to do things. “What do I have?” asked Darin. “You have a pair of Aces and you have to take something off too,” said Rob.

Darin lost his shirt, his pants and his underpants too. We were totally in his power. Rob had the door locked and stuffed a tissue in the see through key hole so no one could look in and see what he was doing. I began to cry and beg him to let me put my clothes on and all he did was laugh. The only reason he left the room was when he heard one of the grownups come up the stairs or down the hall. We quickly put our clothes back on because Rob told us to because he was afraid to get caught.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw,an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Five: Snakes (continued from here)

He ventured deep into the woods around our house to hunt and trap his prey lugging home fish buckets’ full of the slimy serpents from the ponds and streams One time, over a dozen snakes escaped from their cage and slithered all over the house. I came home one day to find Joy Ella on a chair in the dining room screaming at a black racer water snake that had fallen from the second floor on her head while she was vacuuming. What a sight she was with her hands in the air and the tops of her knee-highs disappearing into the rolls of fat above her knees screaming.

“Oh my land and Jehovah help me. Is it poisonous?” she cried as beads of sweat dripped from her face.

She had the same reaction to mice, too. I kept telling her not to be afraid and held her hand while she reluctantly stepped down off the chair. Then we ran into the kitchen where she felt safe.

I have to admit that I knew how to frighten her. All I had to do was put one of Rob’s cicada shells on the end of my finger and wave it in her face to make her run up the attic steps in the kitchen to her room in the attic. I didn’t know she could have had a heart attack.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Five: Snakes (continued from here)

Jack had leg braces and a back brace and walked on crutches for two years after his operations. Pins stuck out of his legs, and he eventually ended up with scoliosis. His spinal cord slowly bent into an angle instead of a straight line. Mother’s friend whose son, Johnny, had cerebral palsy came over often carrying her son writhing in her arms for a play date with Jack. I was never invited but told to play upstairs in my room quietly while they were there. His arrival and departure was always very secretive but my eyes always managed to see him for brief moments out my bedroom window as his mother carried him in and out the front door to her car. My deep sense of compassion for people with a disability and especially Jack was born of this.

Mom continued to drink. She told me years later she couldn’t stop Father’s romance with bourbon Old Fashions. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” she told me. 

Apparently, he passed out at the dinner table quite often. I thought he was just tired from so much work. It seemed there was yet another darker aspect to high society and lots of trouble in paradise. 

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw 

Chapter Five: Snakes (continued from here)

Dad, Jack and Rob transformed an entire room in the basement into a spaceship, control board, light switches, control knobs and all. We extinguished the lights after blasting off to some planet in outer space to simulate deep dark space. Darin and I kept the chameleons we brought home from the Ringling Brothers Circus in shoe boxes with holes punched in the tops in that small dark room. Mother bought us the lizards with the little white strings tied around their necks that had a safety pin on the end to pin them on our shirts as pets. We loved to watch them change from green to brown and tried keeping them alive with little cups of sugar water in the boxes and some dead flies.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight.

This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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

Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Five: Snakes (continued from here)

In our seemingly lovely home roamed Rob who was mean and totally insane. He put on a phony, sweet persona in front of our parents, but when they were gone, he turned into a sadistic fiend and hurt us. Darin and I were afraid for our lives; neither knowing that the other was being terrorized threatened and abused by Rob. He was very clever and managed to slowly weasel into our lives under the ruse of, “Let’s play cards,” or some game to get us to take our clothes off. We played games inside the house and outside all the time as children. We had a fifty-acre playground. He was the one who put cherry bombs in our neighbors’ mailboxes and shot off a homemade rocket that blew a hole through a neighbor’s roof. I knew he was the one who pulled down the panties of the little girl who lived near us when she came over to play with her brother and Darin. Rob enjoyed watching the little girl run home in tears trying to pull up her undies that he pulled down around her ankles. He made go-carts with engines in them that raced around our front circle.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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 Melinda A. Warshaw

Chapter Four continued: To the Manor Born

His snake hunts were legendary. The 45-rpm record player in his room cranked out the blues and later Motown all day and all night long. He even managed to hook up an illegal phone line in his bedroom right across from my bedroom.

The summer room, off the living room, was completely taken over with electric toy Lionel trains for Jack. Father built a wall-to-wall table across the room for a Lionel (3-rail) track, which included a number of switches and sidings. Jack built little houses, created bushes and roads. He made mountains out of plaster of paris and painted them to create a realistic scenic model railroad. Father bought two Santa Fe streamliner engines and some Pullman passenger cars and even a baggage and observation car plus a number of freight train cars. The electric trains ran 'round and 'round whistling and smoking through the beautiful miniature manmade countryside.

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored 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 Melinda A. Warshaw  

Chapter Four Continued: To the Manor Born

No one in my adoptive family ever wanted to do anything with me that I liked to do. There was a special place reserved only for Mama in my soul. Some mornings upon waking in tears my thoughts were of her and the longing to be with her so my life could begin. I kept Mother at arm's length waiting for Mama to return and rescue me. No one could ever take her place and I missed her. The loss of my natural father was also an issue but not as strong in my mind. They were all that mattered to me, but it seemed like I didn't matter to them. This separation ate away at me like acid and I was only ten years old. A good day was one when I didn't think of being adopted at all; a bad day was when being adopted was all I thought about. None the less I kept adjusting to my adoptive family without realizing I was losing much of my genetic self in the process.