Cats Out of the Bag- By Mary Muñoz -© August 3, 2008

After I had received the letter my life would become a virtual prison or I should say more than it had already been. Prior to receiving the letter I was already going through some serious issues of freedom with my mom and it all could be traced back to one phone call.
I don’t remember the exact date when this call happened, but I remember it was in 1978 and what the outcome of it would be. My grandmother called my mom frantic and upset. Upon answering the other line my mom quickly rushed to the living room to retrieve the second phone unplugging it from the wall and carrying it into the bedroom with her. Interested in this I crept up to her bedroom door and listened in. I heard her saying things like, “How did he find you?” Where is he at?” “What do you mean he wants to see her?” “He doesn’t know where we are does he?” “Well when you get down here we will see about this?” It was these words that would lock me in a fortress for the rest of my high school years, which of course just happened to be three more.
I was no longer allowed to leave the premises without my mom next to me, to have friends that were not handpicked by her, and I could not go on overnight stays even when I was invited by those she trusted. And now that the letter had shown up out of the blue my mom was more vigilant to what I was doing. Initially when this was happening I thought that her clenches on me were due to my own teenage actions the fall prior, but I soon found out more than I could have ever imagined.
For the first week after the letter I began to question what was so wrong about this man. Why someone who worked for the government would jeopardize his career by seeing his child before she turned 18 due to the divorce papers?
In the letter there was a number that was left for me to call collect, if I liked. He didn’t seem like a person who would be someone you couldn’t trust. He sounded sincere in all he stated and to this day I believe that he meant it.
So I called him one evening, within a week or two, when my mom was not at home, and I told him that I was going against her wishes, but I had to know…know who he was, so I could understand who I am. After a few months of writing letters between one another we decided to meet. It was now the summer of 1980.
Just a note to the reader: How did my mom not find out we were writing to one another? Simple…my dad opened a P.O. Box in the town we lived in his name and gave me the combination to it. I would go and get the letters out when my mom was not around. I would hide them in my room. Within the letters he would always add a self addressed stamped envelope, so that I could write back. Intrigued in his abilities to be sneaky along with a little cloak and dagger made it mysterious and fun, which hooked me in.
But that is only the beginning of the things I would find out…it was at our first meeting that my eyes would be opened to our connection and the extraterrestrial phenomena, which I will share next week.
Mary.