by Joseph Aaron Friedman

Created on: July 28, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Genesis

As long as I can remember, I've been searching for something. I never had an idea what it might be, or why I so desperately sought it, but deep inside I knew that I would know it if I found it; whatever it was.

I came to realize that the time my "searching" started, when I was five years old, and the time that I was told that I had been adopted coincided with each other. While it's quite natural for a five-year-old to be of a curious nature, and every child does go through an exploratory period, here I sit 45 years later with the same inquisitiveness.

These curiosities I hold have been augmented lately by my own recent discovery of the computer, and the internet and the world of information it puts at my fingertips, still, while the answers remain clear, and boldly scrawled onto the screen before my eyes, the fact remains that it's the question which still remains unknown. What is it I am constantly seeking?

Who ever invented the internet must have had me in mind, or at least people like me, as I can spend hours a day searching for irrelevant information, pertaining to useless issues, to find inconsequential answers to questions of a nonsensical nature which have no logical bearing on my existence one way or another. But it is a continuation of my search, In other words; I need this.

My earliest recollections of these searches go back to my childhood; I was always fascinated with the basement of the house where I grew up in Chicago. The back basement was forbidden. The back basement was where the furnace, meat freezer, water tank, laundry and electrical service were. There were no toys, or any need or reason for a child to be there. The shelves along the wall were piled high with boxes upon boxes filled with mysteries and secrets, and where the shelving space ran out, the boxes then were placed upon the floor sometimes stacked five or six box high, and forming aisles strategically formed for easy access. It was a treasure trove for a young and curious mind.

Thinking about the basement, it was there I was to find the stored belongings of my adoptive mother's father. I had never met him, although I knew he was on the police force, as my mother would so often tell me. One of the boxes contained pictures of the man I had never met, as well as his old badge, nightstick, and handcuffs. I can vaguely remember the excitement I felt at that time, but I remember clearly that it was short lived, as I spent what seemed like hours waiting for my father to come

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