It is now the morning of the day I leave. I have all my luggage packed and we all head out of the house. Upon arriving at the airport, it looks so much bigger than I thought. I go check in my bigger luggage and head off to scanners to get to my plane. My parents and I talk a while before we say our goodbyes. I can tell my mom is really sad so I give her an extra long hug and I head off. I make it through the scanners and now I just have to find where my plane is. I am able to find my terminal and now I have about an hour until the plane comes. I play on my phone a little, read, and do a crossword puzzle to waste time. Finally the plane comes and they are starting to board people. I am one of the last on because I just chose the cheapest possible ticket. It's not too bad, I may be by the bathrooms but at least it won't be far to get to.
I make it through two other airports and I'm now on my last plane to Toronto. This is the nicer plane, it has the seats that fold into beds. I guess it makes sense, considering that this is a eight hour plane ride. Luckily they have wall outlets because I have been on snapchat and instagram a lot lately. I do some more crosswords and read a little more also. I get tired so I sleep for three of the hours and wake up to find that we have a couple hours left. The plane is very quiet and dark because most people are sleeping so I am extra careful going to the bathroom.
My parents had decided when I was eight that I was mature enough to handle what they were going to tell me, I was adopted from the city of Toronto, Canada. I'm nineteen now but I remember that moment as if it was yesterday. My mom, dad, and I were sitting at the table when they handed me something. An envelope. I opened it to find some adoption papers. I asked if we were adopting someone and that's when they told me that I was the one they had adopted when I was a baby. I thought it was cool but didn't care for much of it at the time. As I've gotten older, they've told me more and more that I can understand. I don't really have a specific birthday, it's just the day my parents adopted me, but doctors estimated that I was around one.
I live in Orson Indiana, where I have been raised since my adoption. I just graduated high school and it's now the beginning of summer. I am now taking a trip by myself to Canada in order to somehow try to find my biological parents. I really want to know about my real family, and more importantly, why they gave me up for adoption. My parents will pay most of the fees but I have been saving up for this since freshman year and have almost seven thousand dollars.
We finally land it Canada, it's beautiful and the air smells very clean. It's not hot like Orson, it's cooler, I'd say it's probably 60 degrees. I find a taxi outside of the airport and flag it down. The driver is a super nice guy that helps me get all my luggage in the trunk. I tell him my destination and he says it would be about an hours drive. I picked up a "Canada for Dummies" book in the airport so I'm reading that. I know a lot about Canadian people and culture already because I've been studying it for about a year. Most of them speak English, but I've learned some French just in case.
Finally I get to the boys orphanage. I thank the guy while he helps get my luggage out of the trunk. The orphanage looks kinda creepy. I feel like it's one of those moments like in movies where it looks creepy on the outside but it's happy and bright in the inside. I am wrong...the inside is eerie and dull. Dust everywhere with flickering lights, and the outside looks like a prison. I walk up to the front counter where an older lady had been expecting me. When I left, my parents said her name was Anita. She knows right away who I am and greets me, asks about my flight, then takes me to a back room. I put all my stuff down and I sit on one couch while she sits across from me on another couch. She brings in tea and Canadian ham and I devour the entire thing!
We talk for a while and eventually get into the actual topic. I tell her to tell me everything she knows. She starts by saying that it was a really rainy night and a man ran in with a black face mask. The soaking wet man yelled "take care of him for me" and then ran off. She says that they searched forever to find out who it was but never could. Law officials even took my DNA and tried to match it to other men but never found one close to it. She then moves on to say that they tried to match my DNA to some kids around the Toronto area and found a match. It was a girl who was in a different orphanage.
