Today on Facebook, I came face to face with a face I didn't know I knew. Some month ago, I was contacted by email with the inquiry: "Are you the granddaughter of Jim Burns from Louisville, Ky?" I am, I responded, although I do not know him, but thanks to my search for my mother, Ruth Lavida Burns, I knew her father's name. Then today, the emailer posted a photo up on her site. When I saw it, I started to shake. I know this man, I thought, but I didn't know him as a grandfather. I knew him from my childhood as a friend of my father. I remember seeing him from time to time at this or that relative's house. Why in the name of my shrieking insane brain didn't they tell me he was my grandfather? Just another mystery to the dark, cloaked burden of silence around my mother. I will never know because anybody with answers to my eternal questioning is no longer alive. It is an undiscoverable mystery. Who was the mysterious Ruth who drove away from her little baby and never looked back at Ruth Adkins Robinson?
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