Find Me, Mum!
Ever since I can remember, everyone at the childrens home would tell me how I was found. Wrapped snug in a fleecy baby blanket, Id been left on the steps of St. Marys Hospital, right in the heart of London.
They reckoned I was just days old, perfectly clean and cared for, though swaddled in rather worn cloths.
Tucked inside my blanket was a note, scrawled in shaky handwriting:
Forgive me, my darling girl.
Even now, whenever I heard the story, tears would prickle at the corners of my eyes. I once begged them to let me see that note they kept it in my personal file. It moved me so deeply that I even sniffed the paper, hoping to catch a hint of my mothers scent.
From that moment I was found, my fate followed the usual path for foundlings: the baby ward, then the childrens home, and eventually a boarding school for orphaned children.
Every time one of my friends found a family, it ached in my chest. I envied those happy endings, especially the ones who found their real mums.
At night, Id bury my face in my pillow and weep quietly. I wasnt the only one, but it wasnt the sort of thing we showed each other. Instead, we all kept our pain neatly tucked inside.
Whenever sleep finally came restless as it was Id dream of the same woman. Shed stroke my hair ever so gently and whisper:
My precious girl, my own flesh and blood!
Those dreams were so vivid that Id wake up feeling light as air, utterly certain my mum remembered me, and that someday, surely, wed be reunited.
One evening, Mrs. Hughes, one of the older carers, sat with me. She seemed to understand how I felt. Softly, she suggested, Why dont we write to the paper, Alice? Maybe your mum will see it and find you.
My eyes lit up. Instead of replying, I flung my arms around Mrs. Hughess neck. Together, we wrote out the letter, and the next morning, she dropped it off at the editors office on her way to the shops.
The paper printed it in a prominent spot, my photograph right underneath the bold heading:
Find Me, Mum!
Not long after, visitors started coming to the home. Some simply brought gifts, others expressed interest in fostering or adopting me.
But I always refused. I was waiting for my mum.
My mum, whose real name was Margaret Blythe, lived in a quiet village in the countryside. She had no family to speak of no close friends either, not in a place where everyones working with their hands just to get by.
Although her life was modest, her cottage was spotless and homey. No one ever guessed how many sleepless nights shed spent, or how many tears shed shed in her pillow, remembering the night her own mother had urged her to leave her baby at the hospital.
You cant manage, love, her mother had pleaded. Im unwell, and your fathers drinking. If you bring the child home, hell turn us both out. But if you leave her at the hospital, maybe a kind family will take her in.
Back in those days, everyone called her Maggie. Shed tried to resist, but she couldnt see another way she was in college, living on a tiny grant, barely scraping by.
The father had disappeared long before the baby was born. Hed said he wasnt ready for the responsibility, and Maggie hadnt dared approach his parents his mother had made her feelings perfectly clear the one time they met.
The halls of residence wouldnt allow her with a baby. Two course-mates who shared a rented flat collected her from the hospital, and Maggie stayed with them for a while. Then the landlord, alerted by neighbours whod heard a baby crying, turned up and demanded Maggie move out. She nearly evicted her tenants as well, but they begged her to reconsider.
Desperate, Maggie wrote a note on a park bench in the hospital gardens, bundled up her baby girl, and, with streaming eyes, left her sleeping softly on the steps. She waited behind the gate, hidden, until she saw a nurse come out and pick up the bundle, then turned and walked away, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.
Maggie always hoped shed be able to get her daughter back finish her studies, build a life, and then find her. For some reason, she never considered that her little girl might be adopted by someone else. Her daughter haunted her dreams too, and in her sleep shed find herself stroking the little girls hair, always whispering:
My precious girl, my own flesh and blood.
Time went by. Life never seemed to stand still long enough for her to search. First, she struggled to find work. When her first post finished, she had to move further away from London, sent by her employer to some remote corner of the country.
Her parents were gone by then: her mum had died of illness, and her dad burned to death in a house fire started in one of his drunken rages.
In the end, she bought a little cottage for a pittance in a distant village and got a job as a postwoman.
One morning, as she was sorting the mail, she dropped the county paper. It fell open, and her eyes locked onto the headline:
Find Me, Mum!
A photograph of a teenage girl stared back at her and Maggie would have recognised her daughter among thousands, so alike to herself.
A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she sagged against the wall. A colleague hurried to her side.
Margaret, are you alright?
She couldnt manage to work that day. The post office manager let her take a few days off for family matters, and Margaret began to make her way to the city where the childrens home was.
Shed missed the only bus, but was lucky enough to hitch a lift from a passing driver, who, hearing her story, took her straight to the home. Her knees wobbled as she stepped through the gate. Several children pressed their faces to the windows, curious about the stranger.
Alice wasnt among them. She was brought to the head teachers office a short while later. The moment I walked in, I recognised her instantly the woman from my dreams.
Mum!
Darling! We rushed into each others arms.
My mother kept apologising, but after hearing her story, I told her:
Mum, I dont blame you. You had no choice.
Years passed. I grew up, married, and built a lovely family of my own a caring husband and a son. And Mum was always there, my guiding light.
Helping me with my little one, Margaret truly seemed to make up for what shed lost before. In the end, it didnt matter whose fault it was she was here, and thats what counted.
I often marvelled at her, at how grateful I felt even for lifes hardships, reasoning that you have to pay for happiness.
We both paid in full. What else was there to do? Of course be happy!
Now, as a grown woman, every detail stays clear in my memory. And after all these years, I never blamed my mum for anything even now shes gone. She was there for me, and that is what matters most.
