Friday, September 24, 2010

Jane's folks

Jane stood in her bedroom, looking at the framed photographs on the wall. Her mom and dad at her high school graduation. Jane as a child surrounded by kittens, a look of horror on her face. Her parents at the altar saying their wedding vows. Jane's adoption certificate was framed along with the photos.

Jane and her adoptive parents had no idea who her biological parents were. All three of them had done research for years, but the paperwork was nowhere to be found. Private investigators and former Department of Records employees had been unable to find one scrap of evidence about Jane's genetic donors.

Not that she needed the information, it was just something she'd felt she needed to do at the time. Now, she was very happy to have her parents. They were living in a cabin outside Nashville. They regularly went into the city to the Grand Old Opry. Old time country music was something they both loved. Being so close to so much of it made them giddy. They'd collected autographs of just about every performer they'd ever seen.

They emailed her pictures of themselves standing with musicians and singers or standing in front of historic honky-tonks. They hung the paintings she sent them in their cabin and proudly told their friends their daughter was a painter.

Her father, Carson, had been a professor of music at the university for decades before retiring to Tennessee. Her mother, Diane, ran a small business doing alterations and custom sewing out of their spare bedroom.

Jane loved to sew. She'd helped her mom every chance she got. She could whip up anything she liked on a sewing machine. She had an old pedal operated machine. She'd never gotten the hang of an electric machine. She didn't like not being in control of the needle. Embroidery, knitting, crocheting, needlepoint and even weaving were all things she'd mastered. Her fingers simply knew what to do when they held a needle.

Jane and her mother had spent hours together making Halloween costumes, graduation dress, suits, shirts and anything else they fancied. Jane had made prom dresses for five of her friends. Copied them right out of magazines and took great pride in watching her girlfriends twirl in front of the full length mirror in the sewing room.

Jane never went to any formals. But she loved making the dresses for her friends. She never once felt that she was missing out on anything. She much preferred to stay at home. Listening to her dad play piano and her mom's sewing machine hum.

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