Tattered Edges

I had always heard that there’s a certain instant, an exact moment in everyone’s life that alters their perception of their own humanity. I know that everything we do changes our lives, but this is not like winning the lottery, it’s something way beyond that. For some people it’s a vision, for others it’s a near-death experience. For me, it was among the worn pages of a weathered scrapbook.

I’d always thought that I had lived a relatively normal middle class life. I grew up an only child to two wonderful parents. My father taught Social Studies at the local high school until his death seven years ago. My mother, who has lived in the same house for the past forty years, was a homemaker. I guess you can say she still is. Throughout my life they never pushed me to do anything I didn’t want to do. They gently encouraged me to do my best. Even when I decided to quit college half way through my senior year to start working in construction, nothing was said.

Since my father’s passing, I’ve tried to watch over my mother. I visit her at least twice a week and take her out to eat as often as possible. On one particular afternoon I had walked into her house to find her sitting on the sofa weeping. There was a letter in her hand from a lawyer explaining that her younger sister, my Aunt Vera, had died in her sleep. Aunt Vera was eight years younger than my mother and only fourteen years old when their parents passed away. My mother and father took Vera in to take care of her. Then I came along.

Aunt Vera was like a big sister to me. She used to baby sit me and as I grew up she used to go with my parents to all of my sporting activities. She never married, and I can’t, for the life of me remember ever seeing her go out on a date. Then, not long after I graduated from high school, she moved away. My mother said after an argument with Aunt Vera she decided it would be better if Aunt Vera moved out on her own. So she did, she moved all the way to Florida. After that, Vera never called or visited. Our only correspondences were birthday and holiday cards to me, not my parents. The last time I saw her alive was some fifteen years ago.

My mother asked me to accompany her on the trip to Vera’s home to help with some boxes Vera had left for her. When we arrived, I was surprised at the condition of the house. The grass looked as if it hadn’t been cut in years and the house was in deplorable shape. We carefully entered and started searching each room for the boxes she had left. The floor creaked with our every step. A pale light filtered through the thin shear curtains revealing the sparseness of her dwelling. Torn wallpaper hung from bare walls. As bad a condition it was in, the house was immaculate. Not one speck of dust could be found.

We finally reached one of the back rooms, and there in the corner, next to a bed, were three plain cardboard boxes with my mother’s name on them. As I started to lift them up, the bottom of one of the boxes fell apart. All of its contents fell to the floor. Scrapbooks, the boxes were filled with scrapbooks. My mother hurriedly picked up a few of the books and ran out of the room. I had never seen my mother in such a state, so I followed her into the living room. There, I found her weeping, on the floor, hunched over trying to hide the books from my view. Without a word, she reached for my hand and pulled me to the floor next to her. She opened one of the frayed books and handed it to me. There before me was my life, literally, everything from faded newspaper clippings to old class photos. Why did the fact that Aunt Vera had scrapbooks of me be so upsetting to my mother? I was Vera’s only relative besides my mother, and I truly believe she loved me. So why wouldn’t she have kept such things?

Then I noticed a small piece of parchment sticking out from behind one of the photos. It was yellowed and brittle from age and its tattered edges crumbled in my hands as I carefully tried to unfold it. This is when I realized, this was to be my certain moment, the exact instant that would change my life from then on. It was my birth certificate. But something wasn’t right. There was a mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake, Vera was my birth mother.

The paper fell from my hands as the only mother I’ve ever known tried to explain that her sister had become pregnant soon after moving into my parents home. Because of the times and her age, Vera decided to let my parents take care of me. So, for the rest of their lives, they all lived with a secret they just couldn’t bare to reveal. After my graduation, Vera wanted to tell me the truth, but my parents disagreed. They saw no reason to upset my life.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t upset. But now I have a new perspective of who I am and who I’m meant to be. My new vision has guided me to return and finish college. I’m proud to say that I have opened a small care center where we support young unwed expecting women who can’t take care of themselves. There are photos of the women we have helped on three walls of my office; on the other, hangs only two frames. In one of the frames there’s a photo of my parents, all three of them. In the other, there’s an old faded piece of parchment, with its tattered edges, reminding me who I was and who I need to be.

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