This story started in 1971 in California, I was underage pregnant and
pretty much homeless. I had been traveling 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 lie 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 will
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 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,
as 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
came in here", and I said "Yes I do", she said, "Well you gave this
baby up for adoption."
I held the baby so tight that they had to give me a shot of some kind
of muscle relaxant 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 hemorrhage
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,
traveled 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 wonderful life now, so I ask you again, "What more could a
mother want?"
