Like I was saying open records is a civil right not unlike the struggles of black people fifty years ago. A Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that people are seeking justice, that they are asking for what is right. A Malcom X saying that they are demanding their due, by any means necessary. Both understandable, although one is more intimidating than the other.

There was also a third person half a century ago--Rosa Parks. Ms. Parks, you'll recall, was the lady who refused to sit in the back of the bus. She was arrested, and history points to that as the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. Now, for all I know, that bus company has been privatized and is owned by minority interests. Grandmother couldn't sit in the front of the bus, grandson could own the bus company.

But for all of this to begin, Rosa Parks had to be allowed to get on the bus in the first place. This is what we ask--to be allowed on the bus. We'll work on where we sit later.

Are mothers (and fathers) concerned about the past rising up to meet them in the present? Mine was. She wrote to me about her "misspent youth." I was 55 when I met her. That's a long time to bear that cross. I, and I would like to think most adoptees, did not want to ask her why she gave me up, but wanted only to tell her that I understood. I did not want to fill in my blanks as much as fill in hers. I remain on the internet, after finding (and five months later, losing) her, to try to help others understand. Too many (one is too many) people touched by adoption think of the triad in terms of rock, paper and scissors. I ask them to think of it in terms of faith, hope and charity.

I have four parents. At least three of them tried to do the right thing.

Now it is my turn.

Martin, Malcolm and Rosa.

Patricia, Phil Sr. and Breatice.

Faith, hope and charity.

Let's get on the bus.