Our Guestblogger today is Marjorie Shaw an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are delighted that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be segments on Monday and Friday.

© 2006 All rights reserved - Marjorie Shaw 

 CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN: The Artist (continued from here)

I saw from looking at her in the photo that I had her small bones and tiny long waist and fair complexion. We were tall, thin and small boned. I had to keep looking at the pictures over and over again to believe what I was seeing. We looked alike and I was finally seeing parts of my own tall, slender body and tiny waist on her. It was very strange at first. She even wore sneakers like I do and a red scarf tied around her neck just like the red scarves on the mini polar bears on my Christmas cards I designed for my agent. We had similar bone structure. Dorothy was an Aryan, and so was I. She was my mother for God’s sake! I certainly wasn’t English and didn’t have to pretend to be like my adoptive mother anymore. It all began to make perfect sense. This closed adoption practice of hiding the truth from me and the permanent separation from Dorothy was an abomination of nature and a terrible abuse of power by the closed adoption laws. There was indeed a natural genetic pull within me to Germans as well as to those similar to the ones I lost. We were all connected by a deeply embedded grand genetic design.

There she was in another photo with a huge toothy grin on her face just like mine in a Munich beer garden on Oktoberfest right next to Leigh holding a beer stein in one hand and a cigarette in the other wearing a Tyrolean hat! They both wore glasses and were smiling.

“The only time she was really happy was when she was back in Germany,” Leigh told me over the phone.

I really saw myself reflected in her especially in the picture of her next to a huge monument on the Palace Grounds in Wurzburg, Germany.

“When I went to empty out Dorothy’s safety deposit box, I saw my birth certificate and realized I was a ‘had to get married’ baby. She was a manic-depressive and should have been on medication you know.”

He began to refer to our dead mother as the vulture on his shoulder. My realization that I was exactly like her was a sobering thought. Leigh began to threaten suicide, unlisted his phone number and never wrote to me again.

This was a lot of information to absorb all at once. I certainly was German all right and continued my research on the Franke surname.

Image Credit: pastel by Marjorie Shaw