February 2023, Part 2

Picking up where I left off so lets just dive in…

February 5, 2023 - I was still looking at what he was posting on facebook at the time and trying to determine what type of law enforcement he was talking about. Was he a police officer? A warden in a jail? He talked about being in basic training, which got me wondering if he was in the military at some point. He mentioned “snitching” (his words) on two officers having a relationship and how he suspected that “being a known snitch” was the “setup for [his] assault”

He also wrote on this day about wearing a cardiac monitor to have a cardiac stress test the following day. He mentioned having an MRI that showed he’d had a recent stroke as well. 

With these health issues I was hesitant to reach out and possibly cause him more stress. 

I sent a second letter to my step-father, this time to his PO Box, which I had found online. I think I figured out that the first letter had been returned, not by him, but by the post office because they didn’t have anywhere to deliver it. 

I responded to the private investigator to answer their questions and decide where to go based on the information we’d gathered so far. I was leaning toward waiting on the DNA results before doing anything else. 

February 7, 2023 - My Ancestry DNA test arrived the previous day and I returned it on February 7. 

I got an email from the PI saying it was a good idea to wait on the results of the DNA test and that we could run background checks on anyone who came up in my results. She also mentioned that it was possible that the 1978 baby (from the baby book I’d found) was born in a military hospital, so that was a lead we might follow up on. She offered to find my mother’s divorce records from her first husband as well as track down her first husband’s son. Another avenue was searching for birth records tied to my mother.

February 8, 2023 - I responded to the PI’s email to say let us wait and see what happens with the DNA test. 

I requested my childhood medical records from the hospital here from 1978 to 1988. I figured that 10 year span was enough to cover my assumed birth date, two years prior, and a few years into my childhood when I was able to see a pediatrician. 

It occurred to me on this date that if what my biological father was claiming about my mother and grandmother threatening him with arrest that this met the legal definition of parental kidnapping. 

February 9, 2023 - Checking in on his facebook posts, I saw my father write about his time working at the nuclear power plant in 1980 and how he had a death wish. Then he wrote another post about growing up with his grandparents and being “dirt poor”. He said “you need to defend family because in the end, it’s all you’ve got”. 

My step-father called me back! I was in the middle of knitting, having a snack, and listening to a podcast about an abducted child case. I watched my phone ring and let it go to voicemail because I didn’t know how he was going to respond. He said he was glad to get my letter and couldn’t wait to hear from me. I wrote in my notes that his voice sounded just like I remembered, even after all the years. He wanted to catch up so we texted back and forth and settled on a call the following afternoon at 2:00. 

The podcast I was listening to was Let’s Taco ‘Bout True Crime’s episode about the Kamiyah Mobley kidnapping. I was annoyed at the hosts for criticizing her response to learning that she had been kidnapped as a baby. What did they expect her to do? Life goes on. She probably went to school, hung out with friends, etc. because what else was she going to do? The hosts were also curious how her kidnapper got her enrolled into school, etc. with fake documents. 

It’s really not that difficult. My grandmother lied all the time and people want to avoid conflict and uncomfortable conversations so even if people did ask, they didn’t push back on my grandmother’s excuses or stories. 

February 9, 2023 - I wrote that I was obsessively checking to see if Ancestry had received my sample. I wondered what my stepfather and I might talk about since it had been 16 years and that I would need to tread carefully, not knowing what kind of relationship he might still have with my mother and grandmother. 

Another thing I wrote in my notes for that day - “Despite my attempts to avoid it, I still check XXXXX’s facebook page. I think I don’t like him. Sometimes he posts things I agree with or shared interests we have, like gardening, but I don’t think I’ll contact him again. Sometimes his posts are hard to follow, several are hurtful where he talks about his family. He seems content with 3 out of 4 of his kids. Kinda hoping we don’t DNA match. I don’t feel “enough” for him. He’s very know-it-all in his posts.”

Damn. Looking back at that now, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I’d paid attention to the red flags I was seeing. 

I added the distant cousin (the one whose grandfather was my grandfather’s brother) on facebook. She shared some photos with me and I sent her some photos of my grandfather, along with his obituary from the newspaper here. She was working on her family tree and I hoped that information helped. 

I wrote a list of questions I hoped to eventually find out from my stepfather:

1. Where was I born? Which hospital?

2. Was my mother married to my father? (He said no, that XXXXX wanted to get married, but my mother didn’t. I suppose that explains why I found a wedding announcement and certificate, but nothing beyond that.)

3. Why isn’t my grandmother’s name in my grandfather’s obituary in the list of survived by? What my stepfather had to say about this blew my mind. He said that my grandmother, while married to her husband, was meeting up with Bob (now deceased so I’ll use his name). Bob was a truck driver and he assumed they met on the CB radio that she was always on and that her husband just wanted her to be happy.. My grandfather was working at night and while he was gone, my grandmother had Bob over to watch movies at their house. Bob lived in a trailer park off of Wilkinson Boulevard and after her husband died, she went over, got his stuff, and moved him into the house. (I later learn more about this, but this is what I had in my notes from this first conversation with my stepfather.)

4. Why did my mother and stepfather split up? He said they met in October of 1980 (I was born in March 1980) and they had a whirlwind relationship. They went on a day trip to the Virginia mountains and my mother brought up getting married. He said at first he thought she was joking, but they got married in January of 1981. 

5. Did I ever live with them? He said I never did because my grandmother wouldn’t let me be with my mother unless he was there. She told him that she was afraid my mother would fall asleep and I’d wander off. Not sure how far I could wander at 9 months old, but okay. They rented a house together and then bought a trailer. He said he wanted to buy something and my mother wanted to rent that house. She got what she wanted but in June of 1981 she decided she wanted to buy something and it was okay then because now it was her idea. My stepfather mentioned something about my mother’s brother and his wife living in the trailer park at the time and so they bought a trailer in the same park. They had a room for me but I only spent a couple of nights with them because my grandmother didn’t want me to be alone with my mother. 

6. Was there another baby? He said he didn’t really know but recalled how he learned of her abortions shortly after they were married. He said that my grandparents shared that information with him. 

7. What happened with my mother and father? He said they didn’t get married. They got the marriage license but my mother wouldn’t go through with it. (And by got the marriage license, it was dated right around the time she was due to have me.)

8. Did my mother/father/grandfather threaten to have my father arrested? He didn’t know.

   
   

From the rest of our conversation that afternoon I learned a lot. He told me that he recalled that my father had mental health issues and had possibly been admitted to a mental health facility. He thought my mother was bipolar because “she could be happy one minute and shooting daggers from her eyes the next”. He said that some friend had told him about bipolar disorder and he thought it fit my mother’s behavior. He remembered the incident with the Christmas tree in 1994 where she had gotten angry with us for not decorating the tree the right way. I didn’t remember this, but he told me she said she had a migraine and he told her to go lay down while we finished the tree. 

He told me that my uncle isn’t talking to anyone and hasn’t since around the same time I cut contact in 2007. He said my aunt texts him sometimes. He saw my mother at the grocery store back when they were wearing masks for covid and he talked to her for a good 5 minutes before realizing who it was he was talking to. He saw my grandmother at Harris Teeter and said she was doing alright but was forgetful sometimes. He saw my mother and grandmother together at a sports bar and my mother was wearing an enormous red hat since she has lupus and isn’t supposed to be in the sun, but they were eating inside which made her hat stick out to him. My mother, at the time, was working part-time in a diner. That was something I couldn’t wrap my mind around for several reasons. I had only known her to work at the post office and second, from at least 2005 on, my grandmother always talked about my mother like she was knocking on death’s door and I just couldn’t see someone that frail (supposedly) working in a restaurant. 

My stepfather shared a story about my aunt’s husband getting tickets to Carowinds during the time he was married to my mother. They took Bob’s son Dale (also deceased) and he didn’t meet them when it was time to leave. He said my mother was “fit to be tied” after searching the theme park looking for him. 

He said that my father was a security guard at the nuclear plant and that my father was always carrying a gun. 

My stepfather wanted to adopt me but my grandmother was being possessive about me, especially after her husband died and she was alone. 

He said once they were married, about a week after, he took her to work at the store and went back to my grandparents’ house to help my grandfather change the oil in the car. That’s when he learned about my mother’s abortions. 

He shared with me what happened the day my grandfather died. He said that my grandfather had been to the doctor and was told to go home and do nothing until his appointment for an EKG the following Monday. He said my grandmother was annoyed by my grandfather’s gardening and said “he would plow up all of Mecklenburg county if they’d let him”. He went to garden at a neighbor’s house near my stepfather and my stepfather noticed that my grandfather was breathing heavily. He said my grandfather had been “dusting potatoes” before going to the trees to use the bathroom. He fell over backwards and my stepfather ran to the nearby corner store to call 911. My uncle and aunt’s husband were there with them that day. He went back to my grandmother’s house and my uncle rode with his father to the hospital. 

He said he didn’t know anything about a baby born in 1978. He said that my aunt had always told my mother and grandmother to tell me the truth. He had a hobby of looking through obituaries and he was the one that found my birth certificate father’s obituary in 1997. He wanted to tell me, especially since we were working together at the time. He gave the obituary to my aunt, who gave it to my grandmother. He said he wondered if I hadn’t found the obituary if they would have ever told me the truth. He also said that he told them if I ever asked him that he wasn’t going to lie to me about it. 

My stepfather told me that the whole time he was married to my mother that there was constant conflict in the family. There was always someone mad, someone not speaking to something else, and just drama. 

My stepfather and mother split up in 1984 and got back together in early 1985 but it didn’t work out. They got back together for a while in 1993-1994 but again, it didn’t work out for them. 

He said that Bob got my uncle his job at a trucking company and my uncle decided to move to Atlanta in 1985 and while they were helping him move, Bob got fired from the company for drunk driving. 

He thought my mother used her first husband’s name on my birth certificate because she knew already that she wasn’t going to let my father be around me. He thought they were worried that my father might take me or that he would be violent. He mentioned a couple of times throughout our conversation about “all the stuff I had to deal with growing up”. He also told me that he remembered that as a baby I liked the song Orange Blossom Special on my grandparent’s record player. 

My stepfather was the one that took the photo of me in the snow with my grandmother and grandfather and that my grandfather was trying to show me not to be scared of the snow. 

He told me about his four dogs, their house near the coast. He retired in 2018 and still does some landscaping. His wife now has 3 kids and “enough grandkids for a baseball team”. We talked about the movies we saw together and how we’d go to Pizza Hut and different stores we went to when I was a teenager. 

He mentioned my mother dating someone in the neighborhood just before they got into a relationship. He remembered my mother’s cat, Koo. They lived in a trailer park that didn’t allow dogs. My mother wanted a pet so they went to the animal shelter and got Koo. My mother’s third husband made her get rid of Koo. 

He said my mother was just “always an unhappy person”. 

While I was talking to him, I mostly sat on the bed, but our conversation was flowing and I didn’t want it to end (and was afraid I’d never hear from him again). I got up to cut onions and gather thyme from outside to make beans and rice for dinner. He told me my aunt had covid. 

I checked my father’s facebook and he’d written a post about how he’d had 2 heart attacks, heart failure, had 2 hip replacements and a stroke but he’s “indestructable”. He planned to go to some protest and was going to openly carry a gun. 

Seeing these kinds of posts from him made me wonder his health and mental status was like. Was he stable enough for me to reach out? I kept researching and getting more information.