\r\n\r\n\"Adrift\"\r\nBy Fran Simon\r\nSeptember 2005\r\n\r\n I am homeless now, swept out of New Orleans by a rising tide of desperation and violence in the city that was my home for more than 25 years. I ride the waves of feelings on a sea of uncertainty. Sometimes they wash over my head, the feelings of despair. At other times the sea is calmer.\r\n As I drift, thoughts turn to my Alabama family. \r\n Sixteen years ago, my husband and I adopted a baby boy. He came to us like the pizza man would deliver a much-anticipated deluxe supreme special. A ring of the doorbell, and then he was ours.\r\n When our son turned 10, we received through the adoption agency an anonymous letter from his birthmother, Sara. Her family calls her Sara Alice. You see, her mother also is Sara. \r\nA friendship tentatively developed between Sara Alice and me. At first, I didn\'t know her name. She was the woman who had given birth to a baby boy who became the most precious gift any woman could give another woman - a son to me. Every time I thought of this gift, my eyes would well up with tears. They still do.\r\n We began to write to each other, sending letters to each other through the adoption agency. The birthmother asked me to send a photo of the baby. Initially, I was scared and unsure of how close I wanted to let this unknown woman into my heart. I took my time selecting a little snapshot, one that showed an angelic face that could be anyone\'s baby. I think the photo was of a sleeping baby, with tiny eyes closed shut so this woman wouldn\'t see the soulful eyes that would reveal who this particular baby was. I was afraid she might find me one day holding that baby, if she could recognize him, and my son wouldn\'t be in my arms anymore. I didn\'t think I could bear such a loss.\r\n Sara Alice and I slowly began learning more about each other. In an interesting quirk of fate, both of us are born under the sign of Taurus - we\'re ones born to share with our generous hearts, to take care of those we love, and to never let go. \r\n Once, I visited Sara Alice in her small town in Alabama, meeting so many of her relatives in one weekend that my mind became baffled. She laughed her gentle laugh, saying I hadn\'t even begun to meet all of her people. Chatting with her cousins, I ate my first taste of fried green tomatoes. They told me a little bit about Sara Alice\'s life - about her stern father, her adopted niece and nephew, and the man she loved, my baby\'s birthfather who fell in love with another woman and abandoned her. \r\n I met Sara Alice\'s mother, the other Sara who stands only as tall as my breasts, possessing a backbone of steel and a heart full of gold.\r\n Now that I am a refugee from New Orleans, adrift since Hurricane Katrina, Sara and Sara Alice have become my Alabama family. My son\'s birthmother gives my husband and me her comfortable bed to sleep on, while our baby (who is now a teenager) sleeps on the daybed in her home office and Sara Alice sleeps on her sofa. \r\nSara the Elder fixes us a big country dinner of pork roast, chicken and dumplings, and homemade blueberry pie. After enduring a heat index of close to 110 degrees the past few days in New Orleans, I\'m so grateful just for the glass of iced tea she places in my shaking hands. \r\nSara\'s brother quietly presents to my husband a check from their church, a love offering from this missionary who has traveled to Cambodia twice. We receive a call from my son\'s cousin, a young woman with two babies, whose husband and brother are serving in Iraq. She and other young military mothers in her community want to help hurricane survivors. These women who endure the daily uncertainty of life with spouses overseas have decided to send us a Wal-Mart card.\r\nAs we prepare to leave our Alabama family, Sara, the tiny grandmother, gives us a huge surprise by lending us her car for a month. When we protest, Sara says that her brother and sisters live just up the hill, so she can get to church. \r\n\"It\'s all I have to give, and I want to do it,\" she insists. Then, with a twinkle in her eyes, she adds, \"I\'ve trusted you with my grandson.\"\r\n Before we drive away in the Buick, I bend down to give Sara a hug and she holds me tight in an embrace of caring that flows from the gigantic heart in her diminutive body.\r\nThese are my son\'s people, my Alabama family. A life raft of love and support as I drift on a sea of uncertainty.