Origin Story
The Unassisted First Steps of an Adopted Girl
According to Genesis: In the Beginning, Someone Created…
The first words in the common translations of the Bible are something along the lines of, In the beginning, G-d created the Heavens and the Earth.” That’s the very start of things. Everyone is curious about the starts of things, including their own start.
Everyone has an origin story. Or most of you do, anyway.
Kids who are adopted have a ‘sort-of’ origin story, an adaptation of their coming into a family, but not of coming into the world.
I arrived at the Kelley house in the winter of 1972. According to the scant paperwork I have, and the few details I’ve been told, it was January 28, 1972.
Jim and Bettie Kelley already had a biological son, Brian, who was born in July of 1967 while they lived in Rochester, NY. Jim was working to start his own business and Bettie was teaching as an adjunct at RIT. They had little financially then and couldn’t picture raising kids in a tough city neighborhood where racial tensions ran hot in the long shadow of the Civil Rights Act. They moved back home, to Port Allegany, Pennsylvania, when Brian was just two years old.