A woman stopped me at the Walmart deli counter and stared at me for almost ten seconds.<\/p>\n
Not a quick glance.<\/p>\n
She was studying my face.<\/p>\n
Finally, she whispered,<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look exactly like someone I used to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled awkwardly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA girl named Catherine.\u201d<\/p>\n
My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe died in a car accident in 1987.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Catherine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman went completely still.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was adopted in 1987.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her basket slipped from her hand and hit the floor.<\/p>\n
She grabbed my arm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your birthday?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMarch 14.\u201d<\/p>\n
She covered her mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was her birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
I had always known I was adopted.<\/p>\n
My parents had told me when I was young that my biological mother had died around the time I was born.<\/p>\n
But there had never been many details.<\/p>\n
I was adopted through a private agency.<\/p>\n
My parents paid $12,000.<\/p>\n
The agency closed in 1991.<\/p>\n
There were no records.<\/p>\n
At least, that’s what I’d always been told.<\/p>\n
The woman slowly reached into her purse.<\/p>\n
She pulled out an old, faded wallet photograph.<\/p>\n
A young woman was standing beside a hospital window, holding a newborn baby.<\/p>\n
I looked at the baby.<\/p>\n
Then at the woman’s face.<\/p>\n
Then back at the baby.<\/p>\n
My heart began pounding.<\/p>\n
There was a small birthmark on the baby’s left wrist.<\/p>\n
The exact same birthmark I’d had my entire life.<\/p>\n
I whispered,<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that’s Catherine.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at the young woman’s face.<\/p>\n
It was my face.<\/p>\n
My eyes.<\/p>\n
My smile.<\/p>\n
My nose.<\/p>\n
Everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho was she?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
The woman started crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was my best friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
She told me Catherine had been nineteen when she became pregnant.<\/p>\n
Her family didn’t want the baby.<\/p>\n
They pressured her to give the child up for adoption.<\/p>\n
Catherine refused.<\/p>\n
She wanted to keep her baby.<\/p>\n
But a few weeks after giving birth, she died in a car accident.<\/p>\n
The woman had believed the baby had died too.<\/p>\n
Until that moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Catherine died in 1987, how did I get adopted?\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman shook her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what never made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pulled another document from her purse.<\/p>\n
It was a photocopy of an old hospital record.<\/p>\n
The mother’s name was Catherine.<\/p>\n
The baby’s name was listed simply as:<\/p>\n
Baby Girl.<\/strong><\/p>\n But underneath it was a handwritten note.<\/p>\n \u201cTransferred to private placement.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I felt sick.<\/p>\n \u201cTransferred where?\u201d<\/p>\n She gave me the name.<\/p>\n It was the same private agency that handled my adoption.<\/p>\n Suddenly, pieces of my childhood started falling into place.<\/p>\n My parents had always avoided questions about the adoption.<\/p>\n Whenever I asked for information, they told me the agency had lost the records.<\/p>\n But now I wondered if the records had ever been lost.<\/p>\n The woman looked at me.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was something else.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCatherine didn’t die immediately after the accident.\u201d<\/p>\n I stared at her.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was alive for several hours.\u201d<\/p>\n The woman told me that before Catherine died, she had repeatedly asked hospital staff about her baby.<\/p>\n She had been terrified that someone would take her child.<\/p>\n She had begged them not to let anyone separate us.<\/p>\n Then she handed me another piece of paper.<\/p>\n It was a letter.<\/p>\n Catherine had written it from her hospital bed.<\/p>\n The handwriting was shaky.<\/p>\n The first line said:<\/p>\n \u201cIf my baby survives, please tell her I never gave her away.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I couldn’t stop crying.<\/p>\n For decades, I had believed my biological mother had abandoned me.<\/p>\n She hadn’t.<\/p>\n She had fought for me.<\/p>\n Even from a hospital bed.<\/p>\n But there was still one question.<\/p>\n Why had my parents paid $12,000?<\/p>\n The woman looked at me.<\/p>\n \u201cI found out years later that Catherine’s family received money.\u201d<\/p>\n My blood ran cold.<\/p>\n \u201cMoney for what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor signing papers giving up their rights to you.\u201d<\/p>\n I couldn’t speak.<\/p>\n My adoption hadn’t simply been a sad story.<\/p>\n Someone had arranged it.<\/p>\n Someone had profited from it.<\/p>\n And Catherine had never agreed.<\/p>\n The woman took my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve searched for you for thirty-nine years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I promised Catherine.\u201d<\/p>\n She pointed to the photograph.<\/p>\n \u201cShe made me promise that if you ever came looking for her, I’d tell you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at the baby in the photograph.<\/p>\n Then at the woman beside me.<\/p>\n And finally at the birthmark on my wrist.<\/p>\n For the first time in my life, I knew exactly where I came from.<\/p>\n Before we left the store, she gave me the photograph.<\/p>\n I turned it over.<\/p>\n There was a sentence written on the back in Catherine’s handwriting:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you ever see this, know that being forced to lose you was never the same as choosing to leave you.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I held that photograph against my chest.<\/p>\n My biological mother had been gone for nearly four decades.<\/p>\n But somehow, she’d still found a way to tell me the truth.<\/p>\n And that day, standing in a Walmart deli aisle, I finally stopped wondering whether my mother had wanted me.<\/p>\n I knew she had.<\/p>\n She had been fighting for me until her final breath.<\/strong><\/p>\n A woman stopped me at the Walmart deli counter and stared at me for almost ten seconds. Not a quick glance. She was studying my face. Finally, she whispered, \u201cYou … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-honglay"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132750,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132741\/revisions\/132750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/132742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honglay168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"