For many years now, I have believed that Michaela is most likely no longer alive.  There have been a couple of reasons for that.  First of all, I find it really hard to believe that in eighteen years Michaela would not have found some way to contact her family.  I know kidnappers brainwash their victims, but I had talked about all that with Michaela.  She'd recently been through the Child Assault Prevention program at school, and then we had sat together and watched the news coverage about other kidnappings that had occurred in our area in the months before Michaela was kidnapped.  And she knew … others had told her, and I had told her … don't believe anything a kidnapper might tell you.  Don't believe that we gave you away, because we would never, ever do that.  Don't believe that they will hurt your family.  They are liars.  When we watched the coverage of Candy Talarico (who blessedly came home alive) and Amber Swartz the summer before Michaela was kidnapped, we were both horrified, and we agreed that that would be the worst thing … to not know where your child is, to not be able to help them.  I just felt sure that all we had talked about would not have fallen by the wayside. 

The second thing was that I didn't really want to have to think about my little girl was spending all this time suffering.  I didn't want to have to think about her dying, either.  But at least if that had happened, she would have spent the last eighteen years in a better place.  At least she would be at this time, in this very moment, happy. 

But in this last year things keep coming up that have changed my mind.  Now I believe that there is a good possibility that she is still alive.

First, consider the poem she wrote.  Just a couple of weeks before she was kidnapped she woke in the wee hours of the morning and wrote a poem.  When I got up in the morning with Robbie (who was a baby at that time), it was still dark outside.  Michaela was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table in the living room, a pencil in her hand and a piece of paper in front of her.  She said she had written a poem and asked if I wanted to read it.  I am a lifetime writer, so of course I wanted to read what she'd written.  But I was astounded by what I read.  This was no little nine-year old whimsy rhyme.  This was the poem:

The people knock on doors of steel
The people knock, the people kneel
They think of things that aren't real
Outside the doors of steel
The people walk, the people know
That outside those doors
The people know
The people think that you may say
The people think that they too may
They lack the confidence you have
They think it's real, the dreams you have
The dreams they feel

She said that it was about people who had been kidnapped and were being held captive.  "You know, like in the movie The Peanut Butter Conspiracy," she said. That movie was based on a book by Raould Dahl, and it was about a crazy artist who kidnapped people in order to use their hair to make magical paintbrushes that painted pictures that came alive so you could actually walk into them.  I questioned Michaela a lot about this poem in the coming days.  I didn't think it was a premonition then, but I was concerned about what might be going on in her head.  "Are you behind the doors of steel?" I asked.  She was always so calm, even cheerful, when talking about her poem.  "No, mom, I am not behind the doors of steel," she'd answer with a smile.

But two weeks later became one of the people who had been kidnapped.  And for all the years since then I have considered this poem to be a premonition of sorts.  More than that, I considered it to be a clue that Michaela left us, a key if only we could find the lock it fits.  But I was never able to find the lock, never able to understand it.

When I look at it now, though, there is one thing that is clear.  If it really is a clue, it sounds to me as though she is still alive.

In the last week I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a very nice lady who has actually been running a myspace page for Michaela for awhile now.  She is one of those people who feels compelled to reach out and help missing children.  I know there are those of you out there who think that is weird, but I have met a number of people like that over the years, and I thank God for them.  She has a blog on her personal website, that is a message to missing children.  In this blog, she is reaching out to children who may still be with their captors, and even to children who are no longer with their captors, but who are afraid to come home because they feel dirty and ashamed and think that nobody will want them.  Because they no longer see their faces on the news or on flyers on telephone poles, they think nobody is looking for them anymore, nobody is waiting for them to come home.

You know, in eighteen years, this scenario had never even occurred to me.  It would never cross my mind that Michaela would ever think that we would not love her anymore, that we could not want her anymore, that whatever she had been through would make her bad in our eyes.  Those things are so far from the truth, so impossible in my eyes and my heart, I could never imagine Michaela entertaining them.

But she could.  I could see how that could happen.  And more to the point, this suddenly made Michaela's poem come alive and make sense!  Without going into a line by line dissertation, just take the last three lines:  "They lack the confidence you have / They think it's real, the dreams you have / The dreams they feel."  What dreams do I have?  What dreams does the public at large have?  The waking dream that Michaela is forever lost to us, will never come home?

For years after Michaela's kidnapping, I did have reoccurring dream.  I had it literally dozens of time, at least once a week.  In it I was walking through a primitive city set on a hillside.  The details are foggy now, but the roads could have been dirt, or stone. The houses were like adobe.  When I have seen pictures from the middle east or even Greece it has looked much like my dream village.  I'd come to a house and enter into it, knowing that this was where I was supposed to live.  I'd go into a room, which was my room.  It was empty of furniture and belongings, and the walls were unfinished, meaning there was a hole at the top of the wall and into the ceiling.  I'd feel terribly lonely.  Then someone would call me to come to dinner and I'd think perhaps now I would make friends with the other people in the house, but when I went to the table all the people there were disconnected, perpetual strangers to one another, and it seemed my feeling of sorrow and isolation would never end.

I always thought this dream was reflective of my own inner psyche.  But perhaps not.

Earlier this year I broke my ankle, and while I was laid up I finished reading the Bible all the way through.  One day I sat down, and I prayed, "God please speak to me through your word today."  Now I know you are supposed to pray that always when you read the Bible, and often I do, but it's generally kind of a rote sort of thing.  On this occasion, it was strong and heartfelt, unusually so.  I had actually finished my reading before it suddenly dawned on me what I'd read.  It was the story of Jacob finding out that his son Joseph, who he thought had been kidnapped and murdered, was actually alive and living in Egypt.  "God," I said, "are you trying to tell me something about Michaela?"

If Michaela had been taken to a foreign country, that could well explain why she never got in touch with anybody.  Every time I go to call my aunt in England, I have to refresh my memory about international calling, and I'm an adult and have done it before.  For a child, particularly in a place where she might not speak the language, that could be an insurmountable barrier.  Some years ago, another one of those kooky people who gets themselves involved in looking for missing children (Hi Aann, if you are out there!) did an awful lot of investigating into customs.  There is actually almost no control over what goes out of the country.  It would be very easy to smuggle a child out.  It probably wouldn't be in a cramped coach class airliner seat, but it could be done very easily.  This would fit in with Michaela's poem being written about people who had been kidnapped, "like in the Peanut Butter Conspiracy."  Those people had been kidnapped because of their hair.  If Michaela had been kidnapped and taken to another country, she could well be prized because of her beautiful blonde hair.

And a confirmation came a few months later.  I know you may not believe this, but after I finished reading through the Bible in the spring, I started reading back through it again.  And on another morning, I sat down and prayed the same prayer, with the same unusual degree of earnestness, and honestly I had not given any thought to what was coming up in that day's reading, but guess what … it was that SAME passage in Genesis, about Jacob finding Joseph alive.

So what does this mean?  A long time ago, I moved into a private space.  You cannot imagine … well, maybe you can … how taxing it is to be recognized all over the place as the mother of a missing child.  You are in the grocery store, your mind for the moment on nothing more than whether to buy ripe bananas or some that are still a bit green, when someone walks up to you and tries to drag you into that black hole you have learned to maneuver around.  So often, you end up having to console them.  It is not that I don't appreciate the well wishers and the sympathy, or that I don't understand their feelings, but when this happens on a regular basis it really wears on you.  (If you ever do run into the parent of a missing child, it's fine to say that you remember and you care ... it's just better if you don't cry, or act like you are thinking about it.)  So when I moved out of Hayward almost nine years ago, I left no forwarding address, no phone number.  The police know where I am, but the media couldn't reach me if they wanted to, not that they may especially want to all these years later.

But if Michaela could still be alive, perhaps I need to reach out to her more.  Maybe she is in another country where I could never reach her, but there are other "foreign countries" that are right here in our own backyard … as my friend mentioned in her blog, perhaps she has dulled the pain with drugs … perhaps even become addicted through her captors forcing it on her in those early days, months, years.  Perhaps her foreign country is no further than the depths of drug addiction and hopelessness. 

I have written a book, as many of you know, and I pray that perhaps that book might be able to get out there, perhaps reach Michaela, perhaps draw attention that she might see, and know that I will never stop loving her, and never stop wanting her.

Michaela, if you are out there, come home!  I am living in Nana's house now, and I still have her phone number.  I will be waiting for you always, until I can hold you in my arms again.