After Michael’s birth, Mom was allowed to care for him for three days before he was placed with an adoptive family from Pittsburgh. She had knitted him the yellow blanket with ducks, which accompanied him into his new life.
“I held him, fed him, and sang to him for three days. Then Sister Agnes took him away, and I never saw him again.”
Mom eventually married my father, who knew about her first child and accepted her past without judgment. I was born in 1971, after two miscarriages, and she devoted herself to raising me while keeping Michael’s existence hidden.1millionstories
Part 2 of 3
For more than sixty years, she believed that revealing her secret would bring shame upon our family. Now that her son had reappeared, she was terrified that I would see her differently.
Part 3: The Letter That Arrived Six Months Too Early
Mom explained that everything had changed in April when a woman named Carol Reiner contacted her from Pittsburgh. Carol was Michael’s wife, and she had discovered his biological family after their daughter Jenna took a DNA ancestry test.
