Well now we need to flash foward five years to Christmas Eve, around nineteen seventy five. I remember the car ride to my grandmother's house. My younger sister BethAnne was around five years old and my older brother Billy was around thirteen and myself, Timothy, around eight. The conversation went something like this.

"What do you mean she's there? Forget it, we are not going!" said Dad.

"We have to go. The children are so looking forward to it," said Mom.

It was true we always looked forward to Christmas Eve at Grandma's. It was my mother's mother and my aunt and uncles and cousins would always be there. It was a magical time when I was a kid.

"What do you mean we are not going?"I asked my Dad.

"Yeah, what do you mean?" Mom asked.

No reply came from my Dad and we all continued to my Grandmother's. I was very curious but I was happy we were on our way and didn't think much more about it.

When we got to our grandmother's my aunt, Lori was visiting with her husband,Rob. What I didn't know was about to bubble to the surface. "You see, I was meeting my Aunt Lori for the first time or, so I thought; I began to tell her about my history."

"Even as a child I loved to tell the story of my life and a set of fresh ears was always welcome. My aunt seemed terribly interested in what I had to say."

"I was left in a foster home by my mother when I was three," I recounted.

"That must have been terrible for you," she replied.

"I miss my mother so much and many times I had cried myself to sleep thinking about her."

"I'm sure your mother had a good reason for leaving you," she said.

"Oh, I know why my mother left me," I replied.

"How could you possibly remember; you were only three?" she asked.
"She left me because she found a new man who didn't want kids," I said.

"So she left me in a foster home. I remember the day she left I asked her 'Are you coming back?"

"Yes," my mother had replied.

I don't know why, but I had the feeling she wasn't coming back. She didn't come back, or at least so I thought. That's when things got weird and they were about to get a lot weirder.

"See I didn't lie," my aunt said.

Thinking my aunt had simply misspoken, I said,"She did lie. She never came back."

Later on after we opened the gifts I was sitting on the sofa and staring at my Uncle Rob. I wasn't just staring.

You see five years earlier, the day before my mother and her new boyfriend were going to put me in a foster home, they took me out and asked me what I wanted to do. I wanted to ride in one of those push pedal cars. So they took me to a junk yard and they paid the junk guy some money to let me ride the car around.

At the age of three I knew what was going to happen. Don't ask me how. As I rode my car around I stopped in front of my mother and her new man and I stared at them. Partly because I was hoping the guilt would make them change their mind and because I wanted to remember this man-this man who was separating me from the only thing I had in the world.

I parked in front of them and stared at him. Burning an image of him in my mind and hoping guilt would change his mind. They told me to stop staring so I pedaled on. Well, here I was five years later sitting on the sofa looking at Uncle Rob in his chair.

Somewhere from my subconscious came the memories of a three-year-old and without even realizing it, I was staring at Rob the way that I stared at him when I was riding that pedal car five years earlier. I was trying to poor the guilt on him all over again, without even realizing what I was doing. Just then poor uncle Rob became very distressed.

"Oh my god. He is staring at me the way he looked at me that day."

Racked with guilt he put his hands over his ears and was making this high pitched whining noise rocking back and forth. I must admit, I didn't really know what was happening. Later that night when things had settled down, my aunt and uncle talked with my parents, they argued for some time.

"I told you, I knew we shouldn't have come here. I knew this would happen," My dad said loudly.

They seemed to come to a settlement and my aunt came to me and asked me an even more peculiar question, at least I thought so at the time.

"Would you like to come live with me and Uncle Rob?"

Here it was the answere to all my wishes posed to me in a question. Here it was Christmas Eve and five years since I sat on Santa's lap and asked for my mother to be returned to me. I didn't even realize the corallation between my christmas wish when I was three and the chance I had been given on Christmas it self till I began writting this.

Well I thought about just saying yes, but I wanted more to go on. I still wasn't sure. I wanted to know if she was my mother.

"Why would I want to do that?" I asked.

"I think you know." She said.

My father immediately interjected. My father who had lied to me about who I was, would now rob me of the one chance I had at reuniting with my mother.

"That's it. You have your answer," he said.

I was immediately ushered off into to some other room. Later I tried to ask questions about what had gone down. I would not get any further information. With the ease of an eight year old, excited about Christmas. I quickly forgot the whole thing.

On the car ride home my mother asked, "Why did you tell your aunt about missing your mother so much?"

"She seemed interested," I replied simply.

"Well you shouldn't do that," she replied.

"Okay Mom," I said.

Well that's the story except that when I got older my mom told me that my Aunt Lori and my uncle Rob had broken up.

"That's too bad," I said earnestly.

"You are the main reason," She said.

"How could that be," I asked.

"Just trust me," She said.

I wish this part of the story had a happier ending. Reading it back now it makes me sad still. So close but yet so far. I still havent got anyone to confirm that she is really my mother. I hope she dosen't feel to guilty about it. I think part of the problem was that after being seperated from my Mom for so long I had made an idealic picture of my mom. Almost angelic in nature. So when I actually did meet her she didn't come close to the image I had created for her. She probably never would have either. You see I was not in love with her anymore. I was in love with what my mind had created her to be the last five years. I just didn't realize it till now.