This story started in 1971 in California, I was underage pregnant and pretty much homeless. I had been travelling around the country and really did not have a place I could call home. I would get work in all night diners as a waitress so that I would have a roof over my head and food in my stomach. When I was not working I would walk around town or do window shopping, go to the malls and find a bathroom stall in which to be alone and try to catch some sleep. I was pretty desperate, no money, no family around, no bed to actually sleep in. I would go to the gym to take a shower and for a change of clothes I would go to the local second hand store called the Salvation Army and spend as little as possible for a clean change of clothes. It worked for a while, but I was getting pretty big and needed some assistance because my pregnancy was really taking its toll on my body. I know I looked like a typical street kid and got the dirty looks and bad names. But I was desperate.
I decided to call my family. My Stepmother answered the phone, I explained what was going on in my life and her exact words were, “so what do you want us to do, you made your bed, now you lye in it, you will not see one red dime from us” and hung up the phone. Someone suggested I speak with the unwed mothers home. This was a place that was run by the Catholic Nuns; I did not know what else to do, so I contacted them. After several hours of interrogation I was handed a piece of paper to sign, it was blank with no words in the blanks, I did ask why I must sign a blank paper and they gave me all legitimate answers, like we don’t know if the child will be a boy or a girl, we don’t know if the child will be born alive or a still birth, we don’t know the weight of the child, etc, etc, all seemed to be legit, so in order to get the help I so desperately needed, I signed the paper. Well, let me tell you, this was the biggest mistake of my life.
When I was going into labor, they took me into the delivery room, would not give me any pain medication and told me I must keep the noise down, that there were others in the room too and I must be considerate of them. After several hours of excruciating pain, it was time for the baby to be born. Here there was a problem as the baby was breach. The nurse was trying to help turn the baby on the outside while the Dr. was trying to turn the baby from the inside. Still nothing for pain, so let me tell you this hurt so bad, I thought I was going to die. The baby was determined to be born breach, because each time they got it turned the right way, it would flip back in breach position. Nothing else could be done, but to let the baby have its way and come out butt first, so indeed she did. I only got to have a brief glimpse of my daughter, then she was gone.
Later in my room, one of the nurses actually brought my daughter to me and I held her in my arms. The head nurse was walking down the hall past my room, when she looked in and boy did she hit the ceiling. She started screaming to get this child away from me, I was not the mother and I had no right to see this child, and I was literally going crazy, crying and screaming. She looked at me and said, you remember that piece of paper you signed when you can in here, and I said yes I do, she said well you gave this baby up for adoption, you have no rights. I held the baby so tight that they had to give me a shot of some kind of muscle relaxer to be able to get her away from me. I was still crying and really confused, but all of a sudden things went blank and the next thing I remember I was waking up asking for my daughter. I started to haemorrhage really bad and had to go to emergency surgery. I was told that the baby had died of complications while I was in surgery. I was devastated. How could this happen? I asked to see her body and was told sorry they did not want to upset me any more than I am so the body had already been disposed of. I cannot even express the feelings I had at this time. I just wanted to curl up and die myself. I would not speak to anyone, I hardly ate anything, and I felt a sense of emptiness and loneliness.
Well time went on and I got better and left the home. I really can’t remember all that happened, but for many years, I kept trying to have another baby, with or without a husband made no difference to me. I wanted somebody to love and to love me. What they had done at the unwed home was make sure I would never have another child. I had been fixed. This was another shock to my system. How could I have a baby one minute and with a blink of an eye it’s over forever? As time went on many years, I got my life together, started dating, never contemplating marriage, because who would want a woman that was like damaged goods, could not give a man a child, it was like I was only half a woman. I snapped out of this and continued to turn my life around, but never forgetting that I had given birth to a beautiful daughter and even named her Kimberlee Elizabeth, which was the name I always liked. I partied all the time, travelled around the US and had a pretty good life for 26 years.
On June 30, 1998 I had a phone call that would change my life once again forever. My dad called me and asked if the name McIntyre meant anything to me or my brother and sister. Well, I could not speak for them but it certainly meant nothing to me. I had never heard of anyone called McIntyre. I asked him why and he said, well I have just had the strangest of conversations and they want to speak to you. I could not for the life of me ever wonder why. My dad gave me the phone number and said I should call. After I hung up from him I called the number he had given to me and I got a recording on the other end that said, If you are calling about the dental plan, please press 1. I thought this was a joke and just hung up. My friend who was with me at the time, said to call the number again, that maybe I had gotten the wrong number. So again I dial the number and I get the same message, again I hang up the phone. Now this time I know it’s a scam for insurance. My friend says, what happens if you press 1 and I said forget it I am not wasting another long distance call on a scam. She said, go on call back, press 1 and then if you get the same message, I will shut up and agree that it’s a scam. So reluctantly, I called back the third time and just before pressing 1 I heard a voice on the other end say Hello. I flew into a rage of verbal obscenities, asking what kind of scam are you running and how do you know me and what is it you want? That is when the voice on the other end of the phone said, “I am your Biological Daughter”. I started to cry and said, excuse me, my daughter died shortly after her birth in California. She said to me, “No Mama I am very much alive”.
Wow after a 7.5 hour phone conversation I knew this was in fact my daughter. We spent the next several days and nights getting to know one another by phone. Neither of us had the money to get to one another and to meet face to face. In September 98, we finally did meet. Wow, it was like looking at myself in the mirror. We were the same height, same weight, same build, same clothes styles, right down to the shoes and the kind of music we liked and the same voice. We hugged and cried and hugged and cried, it was wonderful.
We talked about everything. It was like we were joined at the hip and could not get enough of one another. There is a lot more to this story, but some things are best kept as my secrets.
I speak with my daughter everyday via the internet and there are times when I call her on the phone and she will call me, we share everything even to this day and I am now a grandmother. What more could a mother want. My daughter was raped and out of the rape she has a beautiful son. I am truly a proud mother and grandmother and I have to be the luckiest person in this world.
To answer probably your one question, no I have no idea who the father was, still don’t. It really doesn’t matter either, because I have my daughter and we have one another. We are the ones with the last laugh. Everyone that tried to keep us apart failed. Before my daughter’s rape, she was a model and a fire-fighter. I have a daughter who loves me and a beautiful grandson, a granddaughter who was born on the 2nd of July, who is now 2 & a wonderful life now, so I ask you again, what more could a mother want?
murphypagan 