Proof of Heaven

trying desperately to come up with a plan that would succeed in keeping
me with her. Once she came with her mother and another time with
Richard (although the nurses made him view me through the window—
they would not let him in the same room, and certainly not let him hold
me).
But by late March 1954, it was clear that things weren’t going to go
her way. She would have to give me up. She and her mother took the bus
to Greensboro one last time.
“I had to hold you and look in your eyes and try to explain it all to
you,” Ann told me. “I knew you would just giggle and coo, blow baby
bubbles, and make pleasing sounds no matter what I said, but I felt I
owed you an explanation. I held you closely one last time, kissed your
ears, chest, and face, and caressed you gently. I remember inhaling
deeply, loving that wonderful aroma of freshly bathed baby, as if it were
yesterday.
“I called you by your birth name and said, ‘I love you so much, so
much you’ll never know. And I’ll love you forever, until the day I die.’
“I said, ‘God, please let him know how much he is loved. That I love
him, and always will.’ But I had no way of knowing if my prayer would
be answered. Adoption arrangements in the 1950s were final and very
secret. No turning back, no explanations. Sometimes birth dates were
changed in the records just to hamper anyone’s efforts to uncover the
truth about a baby’s origins. Leave nothing to trace. Agreements were
protected by harsh state laws. The rule was to forget it ever happened and
go on with the rest of your life. And, hopefully, learn from it.
“I kissed you one last time, then laid you gently in your crib. I
wrapped you in your little blue blanket, took one last look into your blue
eyes, then kissed my finger and touched it to your forehead.
“‘Goodbye, Richard Michael. I love you,’ were my last words to you,
at least for half a century or so.”
Ann went on to tell me that after she and Richard were married and the
rest of their children came along, she became more and more taken up
with finding out what had become of me. In addition to being a naval
aviator and an airline pilot, Richard was an attorney, and Ann figured that