Across America, this might have been just another autumn Saturday, but in west Texas, today, a miracle took place, one that was six decades in the making.

Because it was 63 years ago that a frightened young woman made a loving adoption plan for a baby she'd carried in secret but could not parent.

Back then, of course, "single moms" were not a style but a stigma. And their children generally carried a label as well.

So she'd gone to a place that could help, and like countless other "girls in trouble," she gave birth, signed off and moved on, promised by the folks in authority that she would soon forget and never look back and live happily ever after.

The handsome infant she bore went home from the adoption agency with a thankful family who was told to raise him as their own and never worry about where he came from, because he surely wouldn't ever need to know.

But she didn't. (Forget, that is.)

And he did. (Need to know, after awhile.)

When that baby grew up, he had a family of his own. Two granddaughters came by way of open adoption, and witnessing their relationships with their first families finally inspired him to seek his out, at last. After years of thinking about it, he contacted the adoption agency. They put him in touch with his birthmother, now age 87; one of the first things she said was that she'd always wondered what happened to her little boy.

She's widowed, now. His parents are gone. She'd never had other children. He'd never known the truth of his beginnings. But today, nearly a lifetime later, she laid eyes on her only son once again, and he met the woman who'd given him birth, along with his genes and his family and his future. It was undoubtedly an emotional reunion, one long overdue. May it be only the beginning of a beautiful new beginning, for them both.