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​​I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls - A Quest for the ) I m hybrid memoir of vignettes, letters, fragments, and photos in which Mary Ellen tells stories of her relinquishment at birth in post-WWII South Carolina and her closed adoption a year later by an Air Force couple. We travel with the author In her lyrical prose from her 1950s childhood, family transience, and separations. The subconscious grief of severance from her natural mother and family heightens her anxiety through the turbulent '60s, as she struggles with her intelligence-officer adoptive dad's frequent absences, his duty of secrecy, and his strict discipline. She awakens, at age forty, to the harm of identity bewilderment. Chipping at the barrier of State sealed birth records with the help of adoptee advocates she embarks on a successful quest for her natural mother. Decades later, she reaps the rewards of the internet, and with DNA testing, finds a wealth of family, her heritage, and her true identity. Knowing her origin, she may reconcile with the loss and privilege of the past. (This is an abridged 2nd edition, bibliography and resources of the 1st ed. are excluded.)

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"My earliest memories were formed from words and music. My first five months are mostly unaccounted for, but the couple who would adopt me sang and smiled, talked, and read to me. I studied Webster's Dictionary at bedtime from age eight and wrote personal poems. Reading, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling sustained my interest in school when Air Force transfers disrupted my elementary education. I let go of word-stringing: jottings, notes, lists, letters, essays, and poetry when at age fifty-eight I was stricken with a brain hemorrhage; fifteen years ago. While recovering at home, after months of hospital rehab, I was eager to return to writing. I summed up my tenure as president of our private community's garden club and retired my desktop newsletter, ""Gardener's Quarterly""--I'd been a horticulturist and pro gardener. I decided to take online writing courses, aspiring to tell the story of my stroke. I found the craft of memoir and couldn't get enough of Natalie Goldberg, Annie Dillard, Brenda Miller, and many more, captured by the beautiful words and meaning pouring from their souls. I attempted to record my experiences on my new laptop, typing only with my left, unaffected hand, as I do to this day. Writing permits me to take stock of what has happened to me, as well as what I have made happen. Thus, writing memoirs is therapeutic. Life-affirming. I hope my words resonate with you."

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