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 State ... way up there ... north of God, it seemed ... in the tundra ... a place that didn’t, that doesn’t, even exist according to anyone in New York City.

I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I must have been VERY good today!’

Mentally patting myself on the back for whatever it was that I clearly did so right, I gorged myself on the meal with my two sisters, with Mom and Dad. For once, I ate that Giant’s vegetables without complaint.

After dinner, my sisters were sent into the autumn evening to play while I was beckoned into the living room for a chat.

‘Oh-oh. Maybe I hadn’t been so good after all. Maybe it was a trick and I am in BIG trouble now.’ I thought.

My mother sat next to me on the davenport (my Grandmother’s old-school word for it ... I didn’t know the word ‘sofa’ until the fifth grade) while my father pulled the straight-back chair from his desk to sit across from us. They looked really serious and somehow sad. My mother did the explaining.

‘We love you very much. You should know that. After we had your older sister, we wanted another child. You know that we had two babies that didn't live, your brother and sister that are in heaven. The doctors said we could not have more children but we really wanted more so ... we looked and we looked and ... we found you. A friend of your father’s works with children that don’t have homes (mind you, this was 1969-1970 ... very different scene than today). He helped us and we chose you. Today is the day we brought you home with us as our daughter.’

She was struggling for words, I remember. She looked really scared, as did my father, like they thought I might explode or something. They started to cry, at some point. Even my Dad and he NEVER cried. I was shocked by their tears. I think I started crying, too, but that was in the middle of what they were saying. By the time they got to the end, I had no idea why they were so scared because...