Like so many others, Sharon circumvented sealed birth documents and court records to find that most basic piece of information: a name. After all, one can't find someone - even a birthparent - without knowing a name.

Sharon had been luckier than most. Her adoptive father, a widower in West Texas, had saved much information and willingly placed it all in her hands. "I wondered when you would ask," he said when she first confessed that she needed to know her biological roots.

Sharon's husband initially was less enthusiastic. "What if your birthmother is clingy and dependent and wants to move in with us?" he asked. Sharon was unswayed, and armed with the name Peggy, she located the stranger who was her mother.

Peggy was living on the West Coast. After awhile, Sharon wrote her birthmother a letter and explained she had enjoyed a loving family, had grown up to go to medical school, was now a practicing physician, had married and had two young sons. She wrote that she wanted to meet Peggy, if Peggy was interested.

No answering letter came. After several weeks, Sharon took a deep breath and called Peggy. Her birthmother sounded tentative. "That was a long time ago," Peggy said when Sharon explained who she was. "I can't think about that right now."

Peggy repeated these phrases again during the phone call. Disappointed but not devastated, Sharon said goodbye. Friends advised patience. "After keeping her secret for 33 years, she needs time to catch up emotionally," said one. "It sounds as if she hasn't told her husband and children about you."

Three years later Sharon's infrequent letters and phone calls had not been reciprocated by Peggy. Sharon had accepted the irony of her husband's early fears about Peggy possibly wanting to live with them. She learned that her dark hair and dark eyes came from her Armenian ancestors, but her primal need to see the woman who brought her into this life remained. Because her adoptive mother had died a few years earlier, she was too painfully aware of Peggy's advancing age and mortality. "I kept thinking, 'What if she dies and I never see her?'" Sharon explained.

When a conference on the West Coast came up, Sharon decided to make a side trip, and that's how she came to stand, flowers in hand, at Peggy's doorstep. She hadn't been invited, hadn't told Peggy she was coming.

The door opened. An older woman appeared and Sharon instantly thought, "She has dark eyes exactly like mine." The two women stared at each other for a long moment. Sharon sensed the recognition even though the woman asked, "What is it?" Sharon replied, "I have flowers for Peggy." The older woman released the lock on the gate and Sharon stepped onto the tiny front porch. She repeated: "I have flowers for Peggy. Are you Peggy?" Wordlessly, the woman nodded her head.

"I'm Sharon, and I wonder if you have time to talk." She handed the flowers to the woman with dark eyes so like her own. The woman furtively looked inside her door and replied, "No, I'm involved in something right now." Peggy accepted the bouquet and murmured, "Thank you."

The two women stood only a foot apart on the front porch. They exchanged another sentence or two. Peggy again expressed her thanks. The older woman repeated, "I'm involved in something right now," and went inside. Sharon walked off the tiny porch to her rental car.

Afterward, this adopted woman in a strange city drove to an oceanside park where she quietly reflected on what it all meant - on what it meant to have finally seen the woman with dark eyes so like her own. Weeks later Sharon was able to articulate the jumble of feelings, "I feel finally connected to something. She's no longer a fantasy birthmother. This is who Peggy really is."

Alicia Lanier is a Texas birthmother personally committed to helping change the law in her state in order to give adult adoptees unrestricted access to their orginal birth certificates.