May 15, 2002

• If you came expecting the latest chapter of SuSu’s addictive ambivalence crisis…sorry to disappoint.

  
  

  SUBJECT SHIFT–HANG ON!

  
  

  I think (awaiting confirmation email), through the magic of the web I have just found someone I lost track of over thirty years ago.  We were married to each other then, but had been separated for a few years.  I’ll back up to when we were together…

  
  

  Sick off and on the first 20 years of my life, when I met him I was in a severe autoimmune flareup.  He was a GI, I was a car hop.  Then we married, had a baby, I entered nurse’s training and he was transferred to Japan.  I was able later to join him there, where the asthma and allergies worsened. 

  
  

  Sick first, then addicted to the pills the docs gave me, and never (I must admit) Miss Mental Health, I was a basket case.  One hot day at Travis AFB right after our flight from Japan landed, I became the victim of a catastrophic medical mistake. My mother-in-law came to the rescue and took our little boy because I could barely care for myself.  My marriage wasn’t steady then and it quickly fell apart.

  
  

  I fumbled, stumbled, worked, partied, and ended up with Hells Angels before long.   I got strung out on speed even quicker.  It made my autoimmune symptoms go away…until it wore off.  Then my inner landscape was black.  A few years along, I was in jail when a much forwarded letter reached me from him.  He said our son was fine, he was a civilian now, and the boy lived with him.

  
  

  Not a day had passed that I hadn’t missed my son.  Many times I was weepy and seriously bummed over the course my life had taken, most of the pain focused on the offspring I’d left along the way.  I gratefully answered his letter and waited for a reply.

  
  

  Then I was moved from the county jail to the state prison.  I learned that mail was not forwarded:  institutional policy.  My skin crawls as I key those words.  I tried as soon as I could to write another letter to him, but it came back marked “moved-no forwarding address.”

  
  

  That was 32 years ago.  Ever since I’ve had this machine and modem I’ve tried people finders, White Page services, every free-of-charge or dirt cheap thing I could think of to find him and our son…except a simple web search…**d’oh**  If I hadn’t been searching out ancestors that way, I wonder how long it would have taken me to get there.

  
  

  This evening I entered his full name in the Google search box, and got results.  I visited two of his websites and sent him an email.  This comes on the heels of my finding half a dozen or so cousins and some half-siblings in the last few days.  Can we say…REUNION…children? 

  • 2:12 am
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