The Very Beginning (I promise this will eventually be about genealogy)

I don't remember not knowing my dad was adopted.  I don't remember an earth-shattering revelation that my grandparents were not my grandparents.  I vaguely remember my dad explaining what "adopted" meant, but it didn't seem like a big deal.  If you asked him, my dad would tell you the very few things he remembered about his siblings and his dad, his grandmother and step-grandfather and that he remembered almost nothing about his mom, except that she was hardly ever around.  Here are a few of things he remembered:

• He had lots of brothers and sisters - Wilbur, Ernie, Terry, Freda, Karen (whom he was adopted with) and "the baby."
• Their dad caught on fire lighting the stove one morning and had to pump water on himself from the pump outside.
• They used to watch TV through the front window of the house down the street - the Andersons.
• Their dad died when my dad was 5.
• The only presents they got for Christmas came from the Department of Human Services.
• He cried for his mommy the day they took them away.
• They took them all to a jail to spend the night before taking them to the Iowa Annie Wittenmyer home in Davenport.

My dad told me stories about running away from the first day of school, running the town with his brothers and being cared for by his sister.

My aunt didn't talk about being adopted and I knew better than to ask.  She was only 3 or 4, so she didn't have a lot of memories before being adopted.  Her parents were her parents.  I also knew better than to ask my grandmother.  In 1956, when you adopted children they became yours and you didn't need to talk about it.  I talked to her about it once, when I was about 16 and needed to interview someone about a memorable event for a journalism class.  She didn't talk about why the didn't or couldn't have biological children.  She didn't talk about knowing anything about dad's biological family, although apparently she did.  She talked about the day they brought them home forward.  That was the day their life as a family  started, so that's where she started the story.

By the time I was 16, my blind acceptance of facts was waning.  "Don't you want to know where they are," I asked.  "Nope," was dad's answer.  "We came from a bad family and who knows how they turned out."  That was my dad's way of saying "end of story."  As a 5 year old, how was he aware that they were a "bad family."  As an adult, how did he know how they turned out?  He and my aunt turned out well.  But, I was a good daughter and I dropped it.  Life for my dad started when he came to Washington from the orphanage.  Except.....that wasn't true.  I wondered about aunts, uncles, cousins.  Surely my grandmother was dead - my grandfather died in 1955 and age 57.  I wondered who we were and wondered how many people out there looked like us.  Were they looking for us?  Unfortunately for my nagging sense of curiosity, it wasn't my past to explore or my siblings to find.  Our story started in July of 1956.  End of story.  Right? Oh, how wrong I was.