Homing Signal, the Birth

When 22 years old, I returned to the agency that had handled my adoption.
At the Jewish Children’s Bureau, I was given a page and a half of “non-identifying” information about my birth parents, and the circumstance around my birth. I was eligible for this information in Ohio because I was over 21. It had taken a year for me to get to it, due to poor health.
My father had been a college student in New York. He traveled to Cleveland in 1965 with a friend from Cleveland on their holiday vacation. Clevelanders reading this might puzzle at the juxtaposition of their hometown with the word “vacation”. Nevertheless, this is where he met my mother, a high school girl.
They dated for a short while, but they did not remain together. When I was conceived, the decision was made for my mother to carry me to term, and then put me up for adoption. She stayed in an unwed mother’s home until my birth, on September 9th, 1966. I imagine her experience must have been awful, having to go through the pain of child-carrying and childbirth, and then, having no means to support her baby, relinquishing him. I also imagine I was awash in the chemicals and the energy of depression and anxiety during my entire gestation.