TMI

I'm not one who believes in too much information. As I claim in my profile, my life has always been an open book. That being said, if you stick around the blog long enough, there will be some things said that will embarrass my family. Not to worry, though. They are due the payback. After all, they've been embarrassing me for years now.

I am a prochoice, gun controlling, gay, HIV Positive, very left leaning, Episcopalian. I was raised by a family of wolves in the Ozark mountains. They didn't give birth to me, but they did adopt me and my biological brother. Growing up, we had what I believed to be a cookie cutter family. I was certainly the black sheep of the family.

Well, to give you the quick rundown on my life, I was born on the hill (that's what they call Fayetteville, Arkansas: Home of The Razorbacks). My mother was very young and quite frankly not interested in having children, although I was her second at an already young age. Apparently, contraceptives were not very well circulated at that time. My brother was born a year before me, by the same father, as far as I know. My mother kept us around her family for the most part. She was in and out doing things young unattached mothers do.

Needless to say, Mother headed to Dallas for the weekend with a friend somewhere areound 1981, leaving my brother and myself, three and two years old, respectively, with a babysitter. The babysitter wasn't aware unfortunately of my mother's apparent sudden memory loss. Well, a couple weeks passed and the babysitter was beginning to get concerned that Mother had forgotten to return to the hill to pick up her kids. While speaking to a cousin of her's in Mountain View, a city two hundred years back in time, the babysitter told her cousin about us over the phone one day. This wonderful woman and her husband were two angels with room in their home and hearts for two lost bos like us. They were a married couple in their forties which already had two grown daughters to keep them busy, but they had enough love to go around. So, they loaded up the truck and drove the three and a half hour pig trail to pick up my brother and me when the babysitter said she would have to get social services involved. The woman and her husband hadn't even seen us but they couldn't bear to think of two young brothers being split up. They picked us up, no legal adoption or anything, and brought us to Mountain View where they gave us a great home together.

We stayed with our new family for a brief while before Mom's memory of her two children returned. She then decided to drive to Mountain View to reclaim us. Our new family begged her to let them keep us but Mother wouldn't budge. Her situation was better now and she wanted a chance to raise her kids. So, she loaded us up and drove us back to the hill.

After a few months and several phone calls from our displaced new family, Mother was persuaded to return us and pursue a legal adoption process. I guess things got bad again for Mother. The family elect drove back to Fayetteville and met Mother at at a lawyer's office where she signed over custody of us forever.

So that's how my brother and I came to be . Well, there is much much more to this sorted story for later blogs. In fact, there is so much more that I'm leaving my life an open ended question to you my readers. If you would like to know something, just ask. If I know the answer, I may tell you.

THIS IS MY BEST INTERPRETATION OF THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE ADOPTION OF MYSELF AND MY BROTHER. IT IS BASED ON A LOOSE COLLECTION OF FACTS GIVEN ME BY MY ADOPTIVE FAMILY WHO MAY HAVE BEEN A LITTLE BIASED. IN ANY CASE, I WOULD HAVE BEEN TOO YOUNG TO HAVE ANY ACCURATE MEMORIES. NAMES HAVE BEEN OMMITTED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT. LET IT BE SAID, THAT I NOW HAVE MET MY BIOLOGICAL MOTHER AND WE HAVE WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A TEXT MESSAGING RELATIONSHIP. I HAVE FORGIVEN HER FOR GIVING ME AWAY, AS SHE AFFORDED ME A CHANCE TO GROW IN A SOMEWHAT MORE STABLE ENVIRONMENT. SHE IS MORE THAN WILLING TO ACCEPT ME FOR WHO I AM,IF THAT'S ANY CONSOLATION.