Summer sun always did the illumination dance on the lake. I liked to squint and look as close to the bright, reflective bits as I could until sun spots blurred my eyes. I had begged to be allowed to go a year early to no avail, but my time finally came in June of 1982. I was 12 years-old and going to the summer camp where I had been desperate to go for three years. Truth told, the only reason I had been so obsessed was that it was where we took my older sister every summer … and I was well-immersed in the rigors of big-sister... more

I am a hug-o-holic. OK, maybe it's not quite an addiction, but physical contact is important to me, whether it be hug or hand shake (unless it's one of those 'wet fish' kind of hand shakes ... if that is the only option, I can happily stick to contact of the eye variety.) Apparently, this might be an adoption related thing. There are plenty of studies that show how important 'bonding' is in those first hours of life, not to mention physical affection throughout a baby's first year … and I won’t even get INTO the whole impact of not being breast fed.... more

The exponential growth of my concentric circles with each life step, each choice, has been staggering from my early diaper days of immediate family, a circle of five, but this is not extraordinary in the least. It has probably been the same for you. What also may have been the same for you and fascinating to me, is how many of the people in each growing circle have been related to adoption: either adoptees or birth mothers (I have never met an admitted birth father) or parents who have already adopted or want to adopt. The numbers... more

Like most people, as I was growing up my circle of acquaintances, friends and contacts grew and grew.

From just playing with the immediate neighbors and cousins, I went to a small Catholic school in our village with a class of twenty-or-so children. From that small elementary/middle school, I went to the public high school in our area where suddenly I had more than 300 classmates, not to mention inadvertently meeting loads of other people through various activities. After high school, I went to a small-ish... more

All I could think about, in my clearly advanced eight-year-old brain, was my best friend. We had the same name (both first AND middle) the same long, dirty-blond hair, the same color eyes, the same favorite color. We both were in love with Ponch from CHiPS and our birthdays were exactly one month apart. The only difference between us was that my best friend celebrated TWO birthdays, the lucky dog. She had her regular birthday, like mine, but she also had a SECOND birthday because her parents got her... more

I came home from school one day to find that my mother had prepared my very favorite meal: Shake-n-Bake Pork Chops, baked potatoes, some sort of vegetable, and homemade angel food cake with FRESH strawberries for dessert. The vegetable, more than likely provided by the ever-so-delightful Jolly Green Giant and his pals (hence the reason FRESH deserves capital letters,) must have been my mother's own addition as there was no vegetable that was my favorite, except maybe corn-on-the-cob, living as we did in the rural north country of New York... more