My new friend Mary is from India where, she says, children are rarely told they're adopted. "Children are considered priceless treasures," she told me "and adopted children are protected very closely," even from knowledge of their own genesis. Well meaning, but how effective? I always felt different as a child and was glad my parents had told me at an early age all they knew. Or almost all. Read or listen to the first three chapters of my forthcoming adoption memoir, Swimming Up the Sun available in early 2008.