LITTLE ROCK — Before Janet Owens-Heath took her first breath of the Colorado air, years before she would understand that she needed the touch of a family, she already was without one.
Janet arrived prematurely in August 1961 at Colorado General in Denver. Her mother, who had separated from Janet's father, surrendered the newborn to Catholic Charities.
For her first 15 months, Janet was homeless, sickly, in and out of the hospital. Her guardians at the orphanage saw that, without a family, Janet wasn't thriving. They feared she wouldn't survive.
They placed her with an Air Force family from Little Rock that was stationed in Colorado. Her adoptive father retired when she was 3, and the family returned to Arkansas.
So Janet had a family. Her health improved. For much of her life, that was enough.
But her adoptive father died in 1989, her mother in 1998, and, at the age of 37, Janet was back where she had started.
Janet was 43 when she started her search in earnest, her only clue her mother's name, providentially left on her adoption papers. By June, she had an address for her mother in Panama City Beach, Fla.
Two years later, with the help of her two half-brothers, who broke down their mother's resistance, Janet met her mother for what really was the first time.
Her mother didn't stand, didn't offer a hug or a kiss.
They visited for an hour and a half, and then her mother, who was 68, announced she was ready for a nap. Janet stood to leave, and when her mother didn't offer an embrace, Janet kissed the top of her head and left.
She had found her family, but not the touch.
Two years passed before Janet's mother finally hugged her. In the meantime, though, Janet had traveled to Colorado to meet her mother's three brothers and her cousins.
And there she found what she had missed - her place in the world. People who looked like her, who shared her mannerisms.
In October, Janet and her husband moved from Little Rock to Longmont, Colo., where one of her uncles lives.
For the first time in her memory, Janet is living in the same town with blood kin. She has been there for Thanksgiving, Christmas and now for a birthday, her 48th.
"These are very loving people," Janet said by telephone the other night.
"I'm accepted for me. Nobody puts on airs. Nobody tells me how I should be or how I should act."
Janet spent a week in June caring for her mother in Florida. Next month, Janetand her two surviving uncles will visit her mother, the first time the brothers have seen their sister in more than a decade, and Janet right there in the middle of them all, touching family, fitting in.
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 08/23/2009