No Pictures, Just a Story

She was at the wedding. I didn't take her picture, though I desperately wanted to.

I'd heard her story online last year, but had no reason to connect her to anyone I might know, other than the fact that she went to the church my son once attended. Jim had left a tag for his friend (in this case Saturday's groom), but the friend had never responded and I forgot all about the story until last Saturday when a thin, older woman showed up among the guests at the wedding.

The pastor looked up before the rehearsal, and said, "Isn't that -----? I didn't know she would be here." And there was talk of her connection to Dan between the pastor, his wife, and a couple others who I don't recall. As they spoke, her story came back to mind with the sudden realization of who the woman was. She was connected to the groom in the wedding because she had once been his mother in law. (There is something about this guy. He loves deeply and completely. I suppose that is why both his ex in laws were in attendance, seated in the front row between his parents and me. Honestly, I wondered what was going through their minds... But that is another story.)

Before the ceremony began or the guests were seated, this woman was sitting alone waiting. I decided to sit by her and introduce myself. "Hi," I said, "I'm Martha. I'm Jim's mom."

We sat and chatted about nothing, and then she looked at me and said, "Last summer I had something very interesting happen to me. I found out I was switched at birth." And then she told me her story, and it was just like the news story I'd read.

I wonder how many people have grown up in the "wrong" family. It's kind of a scary thought in a way. I'd left this comment under the FB link to the news story last year...

"One of the reasons my dad was born at home in 1932 was that my grandma was afraid of this kind of thing. It almost happened with my Uncle Art. She knew the baby they brought her one day was not the one she'd held previous. She complained to the nurse who assured her it was her baby, but there was another woman down the hall putting up a fuss about the baby they brought her too."

My daughter did an Ancestry DNA test a few weeks ago. She smiled when she told me she was going to find out if she was really adopted, and I'd asked if she sent any family tree information in along with her test. She said no. Well, I turned out to be her mother, just like I knew I would. She's mine.