When My Daddy Found Me

J Hardy Carroll

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She dreamed of this all her life and now, she’d found it. A burned out brick building next to a concrete bridge. Emily had searched photographic archives from all over the world before discovering the object of her nightmares in rural Ohio. She had to push the overgrown foliage aside just to get a look at it. She didn’t know how she remembered, but she put her foot on the edge of one of the lower windows. Then she heard a newborn baby cry. Her mother had abandoned her there. Her “Daddy” was the firefighter who found and adopted her.

This is for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields January 28th writing prompt The idea is to use the accompanying image as the inspiration for writing a tale of 100 words or less. My story is exactly 100 words. The photo is by J. Hardy Carroll. I can’t tell you why I wrote my story the way it did. It came into my imagination moment by moment as I pressed the keys on the keyboard. I keep thinking about my granddaughters and how much I love them. If they weren’t born, I would still “find” them.

To read other stories inspired by the prompt, go to Inlinkz.

My latest short story “Fall of the Tower” is featured in the Starry Eyed Press anthology One-Way Ticket. Give it a look.

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28 thoughts on “When My Daddy Found Me”

    • There were no flames. Like so many girls who became pregnant, she gave birth and in terror, left her baby to die. The EMT who found Emily took care of her and eventually adopted her. Like so many adopted kids, she never found out who her Mom was. More’s the pity.

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    • Decades ago, a good friend of mine shared her adoption story She finally found her birth mom. I was never sure she found what she was really looking for, though.

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  6. That is so well done! So many who’d been adopted very young – especially if before the law protected their right to know their own histories – did not know where or what or who they came from. It leaves a hole. I’m glad your character found her history and met her memories in validation. And … yeah to your granddaughters being HOME with you and yours!

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      • I can only imagine how much it will help. To know one’s origin. To belong, even if in some way, to where one came from. I know that for many whose ancestors have been sold into slavery, and who had all ties, roots, language, culture, and identity denied, deliberately and cruelly, over generations … the search to find out who one is, not who one was MADE TO BE, has much meaning, and carries deep generational trauma that we, as a society, must work better to heal.

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  11. I would consider that obsession a form of haunting. Maybe she can begin to live now that the mystery has been revealed. With your comment about how the story was written, what are your thoughts on stories floating in the cosmoplasm that need to be told before they can dissipate and being receptive to them allows it to happen?

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    • I don’t know. I only know about the story of a friend of mine decades ago who was adopted. I only know about my brother-in-law and his wife who adopted four little girls who are all grown up now. I can see nothing and everything. There is something about being adopted that never leaves you. When your birth parent gives you up, even decades later, you’re never sure if you are loved.

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