the other part of the story

This is a story with no definitive beginning and no ending in sight. It is the story of my life as it bisects with the lives of others --- so many others. It is the story of my beginning and other endings. It is the story of the things that I know, at least at this moment, but it changes with every passing second as it should, as I know it must. (If you haven't already read this post, you might want to do it now.)


When I was a little girl I liked to close my eyes and imagine my birth mother. I hoped she had brown hair and brown eyes like me. I hoped she smiled. I hoped she was happy, where ever in the world she might be, most of all I hoped she was happy. When I pictured her, she was usually alone. I didn't like that she was alone, but somehow I was never able to conjure up other people around her. She just sat there at a cafe table in the sun. In this fictional memory, I watched her grow old. I worried that I might never get to meet her, that she would be gone before I was able to look her in the eyes.

I never once imagined my father. I don't know why that is, except that my birth mother was the one we talked about, she was the one who made my life possible, the one who made the choices and did what she had to do.

Which is why this story takes such a sudden and inexplicable turn. It was my birth father and my brother Matt that found me two years ago. Let me explain how this is possible.

My birth parents had been married and then divorced when I was born. My mother didn't feel that she was in a place to raise a child on her own, so she gave me up for adoption. It was her decision - and my father stood by her choice, regardless of his own feelings. It was a few years later that they reconciled and remarried - and had Matt, my brother. My mother died when Matt was just a little guy, and Buddy (my birth father) never remarried.

In 2007 they decided to get serious about tracking me down, and so Matt and his wife drove up through Utah to the little town where I was born to see if they could find any record of my adoption. Through a series of crazy happenstance and chance they ended up speaking to a doctor that was very good friends with the OBGYN that delivered me. This is how they found me.

It was July 2007 when I got the phone call that I had a full brother, and both he and my birth father wanted to make contact with me. Was I interested?

Let me tell you, it's a strange thing to be faced with that kind of choice: the haven of not-knowing, of continuing to allow yourself to imagine your beginnings instead of knowing the concrete structure of truth. As soon as you find out the true version of events, every single other possibility of who and what and where closes with a SMACK and a once-crowded hall of maybe's becomes a straight hallway with just one door: these are the people you came from.

You no longer imagine that you're the daughter of a bank-robber or the niece of a fortune teller. You can't wonder whether you're related to anyone who is famous or if a distant cousin invented anything really useful. With the truth of who and what and how, you're left without options or possibilities.

Once I had talked things over with my parents (that would be MOM and WINSTON, y'all - this might get confusing, but hang in there), and once I'd made sure that they were going to be okay with everything, I said YES, ABSOLUTELY, I WANT TO HAVE CONTACT WITH THESE PEOPLE, I WANT TO KNOW THEM. I was curious. I was full of wonder. I was wary. I was worried. I was hopeful. I was hesitant. I was guarded. I was overcome with joy. Because I really, really, really did want to know them.

And I'm so glad. I'm so glad to know them. I'm honored to know them.

Both Buddy and Matt have been so immensely patient with me. They have been kind, generous, curious, and very respectful of both my feelings AND my time. They have allowed me to set the pace, to express my feelings, and to say no when things were too much. In short, they have been amazing.

This is the introduction to explain how it came to be last week that I attended a gathering of one hundred people with whom I share blood. One hundred people I had never seen before, and until two years ago, didn't know existed.

Looking back now, with the understanding and the weight of the true stories that I know, it seems so weird that I never pictured my birth mother with anyone. It seems even more strange that I never even considered my birth father and what he went through as a living, breathing, human being when I was gone.

I am so grateful to both Matt and Buddy for their sweetness, and for their tenacity. They are what makes the next parts of this story possible, and in those upcoming parts I will tell you what it's like to meet a brother that you never even knew existed when you're thirty-four and pregnant (that's in 2007, kids, I am not now pregnant and I am definitely NOT thirty-four).


... continued tomorrow