Could you be my mother?

Part II
Subject: Looking for information

Hello,

I am looking for someone who I believe graduated from [the Westchester city] area around 1978. I was hoping that you could help me by providing any information you may have.

My name is Bill and I am looking for my birth mother. I have tried searching through State of New York agencies and through Internet registries, but I have only been able to determine that I was born to a 17 year old woman in July 1977 in [the city where I had lived]. I am assuming that she graduated the following year. Unfortunately, the non-ID information provided by the state also mentioned that my adoption records were destroyed in a fire.

I also wanted to provide a little information about myself. First off, I'm not searching to establish a new family or because I am in any kind of trouble. My adoptive parents raised me well and I have an excellent relationship with them. I am also a college graduate with a professional job and a comfortable life. I became interested in searching because I want to know where I came from. It is the knowledge that I am most after.

Because I have been requested for this in the past, I am of Caucasian descent, have brown hair and eyes and I am 6'2".

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for any and all help.

-Bill

This query is unique in my experience. I expect I will receive none like it.

As I have never been pregnant, the answer is, I'm not anyone's biological mother.

I spent most of my elementary and junior high school years in public school in a town in Westchester. When I came across classmates.com, I added my name to my then-town's high school class, not the prep school from which I graduated. Private schools always know where to find you. (They share this trait with bill collectors.) Public schools are less interested. But Bill wanted to know: could I be, was I, his mother?

I wanted to make myself available via the classmates Web site if the public school had any reunions scheduled. I want to see what happened to the children I knew when I was small, the ones who saw me from learning to read through learning to drink Boones Farm Strawberry Hill Country Fresh wine in the deserted football field of my junior high school. I never anticipated this missive from Bill.

By the time I got to prep school, I had already learned useful life lessons: how to lie, cheat, steal, act sober -- even to tell the truth, although I could not do so, at least not to my parents, without giggling.

I was more polished at 15 than at 5. I am not fascinated by my prep school classmates. I remain curious about the children with whom I was a child. They are a diverse lot; my prep school group is homogenous. I don't profess to condemn one and condone the other. I am, however, well aware of the differences.

I attended sixth grade with a boy who grew up to be a gas station attendant and/or owner. I suspect my prep school acquaintances might know how to self-serve, but their careers -- heaven forbid they had "jobs" -- would have them analyzing or owning stock in the gas company or heading up one of its subsidiaries.

The mothers of my acquaintance from prep school would never find the term "housewife" in their personal lexicons, while the many of the girls who became mothers from the town in which I lived probably would not take the description amiss.

As it happens, I am not Bill's mother. I was in France that summer, a virgin of 16. I e-mailed a brief reply, that I was not his mother, and I wished him the best of luck in his search.

If you are Bill's birth mother, he's searching for you.