What dreams may come

I'm not sure how many people reading this know that I'm adopted.

Well, I am. From a small town in Georgia that I've never been to. Once I printed out driving directions, planning on going there, and at least seeing it. Something came up, and I never made the drive.

I suppose it might not have mattered; all the people there I've spoken on the phone with have been incredibly unhelpful, so I imagine showing up might be met with shotguns and possibly flaming pitchforks. Well, maybe it isn't that southern, but I've never actually been there and I always imagine Griffin with red clay dirt roads, and the heat of summer beating down mercilessly.

Last night in my dream, all the houses were far back from the road. Another southern trademark, in my mind at least.

In my dream, I'd finally made my way there, and found someone in the family, though he wouldn't tell me anything about my mother (This part of the dream was more true to life than my dreams usually are). Instead he called the whole family over to his house, a rough looking shack made of aged gray wood, and there were dozens of them, all crammed in there, the screen door banging back and forth as they kept coming in. And they all just glared at me, while being as polite as possible.

We had dinner, which amounted to barbecued chicken and potatoes, and right in the middle of it I started crying, because they were so hostile to me, and wouldn't tell me anything. None of them would really speak to me, just clipped politeness. These were unknown Aunts and Uncles to my mind, brothers and sisters possibly, maybe Grandparents.

And I was that sin that came home to roost, it seemed.

I left, and walked around in the yard down by the street. There was a woman down the street, taking out the garbage, but it was really a stack of photos and drawings. I went to help her, since she was getting rid of so many, and she sort of angrily let me.

They were pictures of a young black haired woman, who might have been pregnant. She wasn't showing enough in the pictures, which were black and white mostly, but I was sure of it. She wore her hair in two short pigtails, and looked miserable. Pictures of her strong armed in the back of a car, looking resigned to her fate. Pictures of her eating cake. Pictures of her... I don't know. In some pictures her hair was different, it was red and curly, and she looked so young, even though my mother was in her twenties when she had me.

The lady wouldn't tell me who the girl in the pictures was, just kept biting her lips and looking incredibly bitter. A notebook fell out of the stack, and I picked it up. There were colored pencil drawings on the few pages, of a red headed child, happy, and in one picture curled up with a dog that looked exactly like Cinnamon, my first dog. And our handwriting was the same, for the most part.

So close that I woke up, right then.

A few tears, and I made my way to my computer, penning a new letter to my biological mother. I sent one out a few years ago, to the man who is my biological grandfather on my biological mother's side of the family. Her father, and he promised the letter would be sent to her.

I got the letter back, unopened some weeks later. He never sent it anywhere but back.

A few months ago I called his house again, wanting to send another letter, only to have someone different answer the phone. They promised that if I called back the next day at noon, they'd give me her address and phone number.

I called back, but no one answered the phone.

So this time, forearmed with the knowledge that she, my biological mother, is in Hawaii, I've just decided to skip the family in Griffin for help. I wrote my letter to her, being a little circumspect in my wording just in case my letter goes awry... This time I'm making four copies of it, and I'm sending it to everyone in Hawaii that shares a last name with me.

God speed, and good luck, letters.