When I looked at the calendar today , I realized my father's birthday is in less than a month. Considering that we are estranged, this truly was an odd occurence for me except for one thing. His birthday always brings to my mind not himself but another person who in a roundabout way was and is a key player in my existence. I have never met her, but every time I pick up a paintbrush or wonder through an art museum, I almost automatically think of her. My father was adopted from Germany, and the person I am thinking of is his birth mother. Everything I know about her fits very nicely on a square piece of paper otherwise known as a birth certificate. Her name was Ingred Kirmis, and she was sixteen years old when she had my father. An open and shut story, just a teenager who got knocked up. This is what I had thought for most of my life and honestly never gave it much thought. When I was thirteen, I went to Germany with some of my family. We visited Erlangen, my father's birthplace, and I got to visit the hospital where he was born. Another stop included the orphange where my father was placed immediately after his birth. His birth was at a Catholic hospital, and he was placed in a Catholic orphanage afterword. As more pieces began to fit into the puzzle, I began to realize how niave I truly was. I have been told that forty years ago in Germany, to be a pregnant teen meant you were almost always never allowed to keep your baby. That at that age, you were considered an unfit parent. As an educated guess, I am also estimating that she may have been sent to an unwed mother's home due to the high Catholic influence surrounding his birth. And this is always where the questions begin..... Was she Catholic? Did she have a family or was she an orphan? At thirteen, I gazed around that cold hospital hallway, and tried to imagine what it must have been like giving birth at sixteen. Was she afraid? Was her mother with her? Was someone there to hold her hand during labor or was she alone? I have often wondered if she ever got to see my father or hold him. If he was taken away immediately after birth before she ever saw him? When I was younger, I used to think that she probably forgot and got on with her life. But now that I am a little wiser, I realize that you can't carry a child around in your body for nine months and just forget. As I walked around the sidewalk of the orphanage staring at a stature of a nun holding a child, I pondered if she had ever walked down this same sidewalk hoping to catch a glimpse of my father playing. Somehow, as I'm typing these words, I think I already know the answer. Around his birthday, I often wonder if she still thinks about him just like I think about her. So many people have told me I don't want to know.That this situation is a can of worms that should never be opened. My father was mean as Hell ( yes folks, for all of you wondering this is apparently hereditary. I come by my meaness honestly.) , and there is no telling how she is. But then I remember how many people have judged me over the years by his actions, and I just know there is more to her story than that. The one thread bonding my father and I is our love for art. He is an artist, and I like to think that I am as well most of the time. He can draw figures that I can only dream about. I love to create acrylic paintings. This is one ability that I just know beyond a shadow of a doubt I got from him and his genetics. I am thankful that I have this one positive thing to be able to tell my kids about their grandfather. And so, I continue to ponder. This is why when I am strolling through the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, or when I step back to critique a painting I am working on, my thoughts always turn to her. Is she an artist as well? Does she like to browse museums on a lazy, fall day like I do? There are so questions that I know may never be answered. I am sure that she has a whole new life and a family that may or may not know about her first child so long ago. This thought makes me happy, and I hope that somewhere, it really is true. I like to think sometimes that though she will likely never know I exist, I was probably her first grandchild, or at the very least close to it. I know this will sound strange coming from someone so pro choice. Wherever she is, I pray every year around my dad's birthday that God will bless her with much health,joy, and happiness. And somehow I hope she knows how brave she really is. Without her choice, I would not exist or if I did, it would likely not be in this country with so many opportunites. And so again, I pray that somehow she will know how thankful I am for her choice of life and well, for everything.