Something’s Missing

I always felt that something or someone was missing in my life.  That was about the time I found my birth certificate in my mother’s dresser drawer.  I remember reading “1 of 2” live births on the official document.  That puzzled me for a long time, until I finally got up enough nerve to ask my mother if she had had twins when she was carrying me. Mom denied it and said I was her only child in that birth, even though she was not awake for the event.  Then why was I a premature baby who had to be incubated for nearly a month?

As a young girl, my favorite movie was the Parent Trap with Haley Mills.  This film convinced me that I had been separated from my twin sister, and she was somewhere — but where?   I was seven years old when the Disney film came out, but I didn’t get to see it until I was about 10 or 12 on the black and white television.

BB @ 8 y.o.

For years I examined that birth certificate, until one day, I noticed it had been changed.  My mother’s name was legally changed to Mary.  Along with the name change,  the “1 of 2” live births was removed.  As a child, I thought it was a coverup!  My parents and their attorney were hiding my twin sister’s death from me.

It took me a long time to let this go, especially when I really needed someone to confide in when I was growing up.  My younger brother was not a good substitute for my blood twin.

Then things changed when I was 18 years old and began working downtown in San Francisco and venturing out of my neighborhood.  I was being told that I looked like someone they had seen at the bank, on the street, at a cafe, even at the vet’s office.  My “twin” was popping up everywhere from San Francisco to Marin County.  It wasn’t until I went back to college 35 years later that I wrote about her and it would be another five years before I published my novella, TWO of US.

A lot of fears kept me from publishing my novella.  What will people think?  But then more and more stories of babies separated at birth began to surface on the internet.  Recently, two women found each over 50 years later.

All of a sudden, my story didn’t sound so far fetched.  I decided I just needed to get the story out.   Maybe she exists; maybe she does not.  What matters is that I am sharing my story  and that I needed to complete the process by writing and publishing my novella.  Actually, the story wrote itself, and at times, I didn’t know what was going to happen next.

I hope you enjoy reading TWO of US as much as I have had writing and publishing my novella.

Sincerely,

Barbara Bonardi