This could have been 3 or 4 posts!!

Something has been making me a bit emotional lately (as if you couldn't tell from some of my earlier posts...). I've been moved to tears more easily than normal. I seem to wear my heart on my sleeve most days. Though there's nothing wrong with being emotional, it does leave me feeling quite vulnerable at times.

The only thing I can gather so far is that it's been an ongoing thing since just before my birthday. ...the day I was born those years ago. It reminds me that I'm adopted (click her for that). But it also reminds me that someone else wanted and loved me so much that she gave her all for me.

Most of you don't know all the story. So to make a short story long, I'll fill you in a bit.... (Sorry it's SOOOOoooooo long.)

I was adopted at 4 months old. I know that I have an older brother. He is four years older than I. I've never known him aside from those first four months of my life with them. I don't know if he remembers me. I don't know if I haunt his dreams today. I don't know what kind of nightmares or inadequecies it causes in him knowing that one day, one child disappeared. What does that mean for him? And was he abused, too? That terrifies me. They ran with him so quickly when my mom tried to keep us together and adopt him, too. That confused me greatly as I grew up. Where is he today? My birthmothers name (at the time) was Evelyn White. (She was between 24 and 26 years old -- about 5'4".) My birthfather's name was Ronald Brady. He was a 30 year old, about 6'4", and a mechanic at a university in Jacksonville, Florida in 1966. It was a "friend of a friend" private kind of adoption. There was no real information there. It was truly a "private" adoption. Even if all the records in Florida suddenly opened up like a book, it is likely mine wouldn't be in there. It was THAT private.

When I was 4 months old, my (adoptive) mom heard that a family had just given birth to a daughter. They didn't want her. They'd already planned to place her with another family with two young boys. At the last minute, that family had decided they'd rather not adopt a child at that time. (The mother decided she'd rather go back to school.) So she was left to look for someone, ANYONE else to adopt this baby girl. It doesn't mean she was evil (as I soon learned), it just mean she may have been desperate. ...desperate to get me out of that situation and into a safe one.

My mom was married to an evil man when she adopted me. She was told she couldn't have children. As soon as the adoption process started with me, she became pregnant with my sister. I'm not sure he was so mean in the beginning, but this man was a drinker and became horrifically abusive. She wanted to leave him. It made him so angry that he threatened to kill her two daughters if she talked of it anymore. One day, he came home drunk and waving his gun around. She said she had to leave. He told her she would not -- as he gathered up her two daughters. Now understand that he considered my sister his only "real" child, so he pulled me into his arms and put the gun to my four year old head -- threatening to kill me. She screamed and cried and begged for him to stop. Luckily, God intervened and he 'passed out' before he could finish his job and end my life. My mom grabbed us both and ran to a neighbor's house, begging him to drive us from Florida to her mom's house in Kentucky. And the beautiful soul agreed to help her. She literally left everything behind, leaving with only the clothes on our backs. She was welcomed home with open arms. But he wasn't to be deterred. He found out where she was and followed her there.

My only memory of that first Christmas with my extended family in Kentucky was him breaking in the door on Christmas Eve, waving his gun around. It took a couple of uncles and cousins to gain control of him, but not before he shot a hole in the floor (of course that wasn't what he was aiming for). The sheriff came and took him away. We were forced to visit with him because he was still our "dad." His lawyer (literally) tried to bribe us to see him by putting two or three pocketfuls of change on the table and saying we could "go for ice cream"). Even then, our four and three year old minds were still terrified of him and would not be bought. So he did what he considered the next best thing. He kidnapped my sister. ...literally. Right off the street. He walked up behind mom, who always held us both by each hand as we walked down the street, and grabbed her and ran in the opposite direction. He did give her back later, but it was still terrifying.

He came into my uncles house while we were visiting him once. There were four uncles there playing cards, and they moved toward him as he came in the door. He raised his gun to aim, and three guns pointed back and shot. They shot three of his fingers off in an attempt to make him drop his gun. And he continued this until we were older as well.

One of the last times I remember seeing him, he was driving toward us in his car while my mom and I (I was 12) drove to the grocery store. He realized who we were, and drove straight toward us, opening his car doors to make sure he ran us off the road. He still wanted us dead, no matter what. I haven't seen him in years, and I do believe he has died, but my mom's protective nature has never once wained. She literally put herself in front of us anytime it was necessary. She would have given her life for us. Of that I have NO doubt. And on Mother's Day, I always remember that. She was/is one of the fiercest mama bears of all when it comes to her cubs.

I did see him once again when I was much older and had my own cub. He looked a bit like Colonel Sanders. And can you believe that just looking at him at about 80 years old while I was in my early twenties and was also with a buff, totally strong military man, didn't make me one less bit terrified? I almost peed myself just looking at him.

There's a poem I read once about giving flowers. The person was talking about the fact that they would much rather receive flowers while they were alive and could enjoy them instead of on their grave when they couldn't. I've sent my mother flowers at least on Mother's Day and her birthday every year since I read that poem. It's the very least I can do. And she enjoys them so much that I wish I could afford to send her flowers every month... But at least I have the knowledge that she is "enjoying her flowers now."

My mama has been a "mother" to me in every sense of every word that could be used to describe mothers. She has scrimped and saved. She has made sure we always had food to eat and a roof over our heads -- even if that meant she had to do without -- which she did often. She worked menial jobs to raise us. They never seemed menial to me. She always taught me the value of money. We would ask for so many things, as children do, and she would reply that the money "just wasn't there." When I said I didn't understand (didn't she have money in her purse even as we spoke?!), she sat me down with the bills and what money she had. She made a list for me and had me add it all up for her. Then she subtracted the money she had so I could see that there was truly nothing left. We couldn't go without elelctricity or rent. We couldn't go without food. To be totally honest, I was eight years old, and that's when I truly understood money and where it goes, and why we can't just spend money because we have it.

She never, ever treated me any differently than any of my sisters. As a matter-of-fact, I received my greatest compliment a couple months back. I was speaking with my younger sister about something that involved heredity. She warned me that we all had to be aware of certain hereditary diseases that seemed to run in our family. I reminded her that I was adopted and still wasn't sure about what I had to be wary of getting. She said, "That's right. You're adopted. I keep forgetting." See what I mean?

I hope I followed in some of her lessons. I believe I've been the best mother possible. And maybe that's what gets to me sometimes. I hope and pray that I taught some of those lessons to son. Now, in about 3 weeks, I'm going to be a grandmother. I just hope I can be as good a grandma .

So now a day (or two) after Mother's Day, I'd still like to say to my own mother, "Happy Mother's Day, Mama!! Thank you ever so much for being my mother. You mean the world to me! You are my heart. You deserve SO much more than I can give you. You deserve the world. But you have all the love that I have in my heart, and somehow I'm not surprised to know that that will suit her just fine! I love you, Mom!"