The little girl stands squarely on the porch in her small leather shoes. A toddler nearing 2, she is leaning against the wood slats of a house somewhere in North Carolina. The year is 1963. The light brown bangs march across her forehead, a prominent feature of the pageboy haircut that frames her face. She gazes down so that only her dark eyelashes are visible to us.

Her dark corduroy overalls are buttoned up over a light turtleneck underneath with ruffles at the sleeves and collar. It is her hands I notice—broad palms connected to the wrists of a small child which remind me of my children at that age, and now my grandchildren, too. We are made of sturdy stock.

I recognize her as me, but the photo is strange and unfamiliar just the same. It represents a time and a story I did not know fully until I was 35. What I knew until then was that I was the only child to my mother, who was a sort of vagabond. We moved often and she married often, but somehow in that journey we settled in the Midwest, far away from this sunny porch in the south.

THE STORY OUTSIDE THE PHOTO

For decades, as far as I understood, my genetic father was dead. There were variations on this story over the years, but generally, until I was a woman, I accepted the notion that my paternity would remain unanswered.

The one constant was the friction between me and my mother. Her moods were erratic, her stories always shifted, and she seemed to put most of her resentments of her life on me. Our combat would ebb and flow until eventually we closed off communication completely.

Years later, when I was a young mother, I went digging for answers. And for reasons I didn’t understand, my genetic mother was forthright and told details which helped in the search. Perhaps it was her way of setting things straight before our relationship went completely dark, but I was able to find my genetic father and his family.

For several weeks it was a thrill, a mystery solved which answered questions and filled in pieces of the childhood I didn’t fully understand. Finally, I placed a call, which probably played out like so many from adopted children who make a paternal discovery, “Hello. Do you know of a girl named…and a man named…we may be related.”

Once I explained who I was, there was silence from the woman on the other end which confirmed an answer. She turned out to be my aunt and told stories of people, places and a time that were all new to me.

My mother and genetic father tried to join together after I was born but they were too volatile a pair, and at some point, shortly after this photo was taken, my mother disappeared with me in the middle of the night. My aunt confirms that my genetic father and family searched and eventually gave up. And for reasons I do not know, my mother kept me in her care until I was a teenager.

I look on the face of this child and wish I could let her know she would grow into a life that would be different than her mother’s. There would be many difficult years before that, and a struggle with her mother that would last for decades, but she would become a woman that survived and thrived.

I wish I could hold this little girl the way I held and loved my children and now my grandchildren. I would like to assure her that whatever she felt lacked in her youth would be resolved when she became a mother years later.

Certainly, her childhood could have been a different one if any of several decisions were made differently, but the life she has now is so good that she cannot regret. People and events came to her that she would not want to have any other way. And, most importantly, she broke the cycle of a disjointed mother-child bond by becoming the mother she had always wanted.

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to turn some of the stories of your photos into a visual and audio collage to share with others, or give the service to someone you treasure, check out our Talking Picture Video Service here.

Sherry is the founder of Storied Gifts a personal publishing service of family and company histories. She and her team help clients curate and craft their stories into books. When not writing or interviewing, Sherry spends loads of time with her grandchildren and lives in Des Moines, Iowa.

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