Okay.
More about what I briefly mentioned in my blog post yesterday, regarding the May family and the writer, Louisa May Alcott.
WOW! But first!!
Remember that I said I was back on social media platforms, to promote the new novel??
I just got a friend request on Facebook, from one of my former writing students!! How cool!!
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Okay. Back to our regularly scheduled program!
So, back in 1971, I started to get completely obsessed (and I mean, obsessed) with wanting to know who my birth dad was. (And that topic is basically the core idea of my upcoming memoir about my life in the 1970s, Joy: The Shortest Season.)
I stayed obsessed for 16 years. It was impossible to find out who my birth dad was, because no one knew.
And when I finally obtained a copy of my original birth certificate — in 1985, I petitioned the State of Ohio to have my adoption files opened — on the birth certificate, it had 2 really, really sad things: that my birth mom had only been 13 when I was born, and that my father was “Unknown.”
I won’t go into all the details of everything, because you can read the memoir (after I write it)!
But I will say, that I immediately found my birth mom, who was glad to have me back but who refused to say who my dad was.
And also that the man who I was eventually told was my dad — a cousin who had gone to school with my mom told me what the rumors had been back then — was not in fact my dad.
However, that guy’s mother — a lovely woman named Mary who lived in a small town in Ohio, whom I went to visit in 1987 — knew exactly who my birth dad was. She didn’t tell me — although she showed me an old photo of her son’s best friend and asked me if I thought I looked like him. I did!! But she didn’t say more than that.
And then, one night a couple months later, alone in my paradise apartment on E. 12th Street in NYC, I was watching a rerun of the Andy Griffith Show and got a phone call. A long distance phone call; a man calling from Reno, Nevada.
ME: “Hello?”
HE (a thick hillbilly accent): “Is this Marilyn?”
ME: “Yes.”
HE: “Well, Marilyn. My name’s Don May. And I think I’m your father.”
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That is the short version. But my life changed overnight. Finally.
And that was the beginning of finding out what it meant to be descended from the pioneering May family.
And somewhere in there, I learned that I was cousins with Louisa May Alcott — there were Mays all over Kentucky, but also all over New England. And they were all related.
Eventually I realized that back when I was still a young girl, and still obsessing about who my “real” father was, there were hidden clues to his identity all over my world.
For instance, I loved Donny Osmond. And Donald was my birth dad’s name.
I also loved David Cassidy, and he and my birth dad had the same birthday: April 12th.
I loved the Rod Stewart song, “Maggie May,” from 1971.
I grew up in Cleveland, where the most popular department store was the May Company.
And at my adoptive grandparents’ home, there were 2 old books on the upstairs bookshelf that really appealed to me a lot; books that had belonged to my adoptive mother, Marcia, when she was growing up: Little Women and Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag, both by Louisa May Alcott, who I already knew was a famous writer.
But for some reason, Aunt Jo’s Scrap Bag really stuck out and I ended up taking that book home with me and keeping that book, and I still have it.
It’s an edition published in 1929:
Here’s the inside cover — my adoptive mom’s Aunt Molly had given her the book (and oddly enough, I was almost named after that Aunt Molly, until my adoptive dad got his way and named me after Marilyn Monroe instead):
And here’s the beautiful title page, from a book that is now almost 100 years old:
So, it was thrilling to eventually discover, years later, that I was related to Louisa May Alcott, the writer (and by then, I had just become a published writer, myself).
But what thrilled me even more–
After my birth dad passed away in 1999, I began getting letters from his older sister, who lived in North Carolina, whom I had never met.
She sent me beautiful letters, along with old photos of my dad from various eras of his life– from little boy on a farm, to sailor in Vietnam. Really lovely letters. I still have all of them.
Here’s a sample — Yes, a letter from my Aunt Jo:
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There are a couple more things I discovered just yesterday , between Louisa May Alcott and the surname “Peabody”, in my new novel The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, but I won’t go into all that right now.
Just wanted to share some of all this today.
Okay.
Oh my goodness! My previous writing student just texted from Facebook: “Hi! How’ve you been?” (I haven’t seen him in about 10 years… where to begin???)
All righty!!
Thanks for stopping by again! Have a great Monday.
I love you guys. See ya!
Marilyn's Room 