holliday

Good Morning SG...here I am again.

There has been MUCH going on around here, and as usual, it's kept me from updating.
I'm not even sure where to begin. So let me just blurt this out...

My husband found my birth mother.

That's right. What I couldn't manage to do in 35 years, he did in one single month, of 24/7 research, fueled by massive amounts of ADD/ADHD medication. Admittedly, I was hating on him while he went through this period of "hyper focus." I was, at the time, about a million years pregnant and did not have the emotional energy to spare on getting my hopes up about something that had always been out of reach. I'll have to forgive him now, even for being so distant that I nearly had to take a taxi to the hospital to have our son Oliver, because, like I said, he did it.

He'd sent an email to this woman the day he picked me up from the hospital. I was furious at the time that HE'D be the one to write this once in a lifetime email, complete with poor spelling, no grammar, and a keyboard with no working "H." I sort of pushed it off though, especially when we didn't hear from her. I assumed it either wasn't her so she didn't respond, or it WAS her, and she didn't want to be found. As an adopted kid who has searched on and off through out the years from my birth mother, I have perfected this kind of moderate hopefulness balanced with emotional distance. The search, as any adopted kid will tell you, is emotionally exhausting and heartbreaking at every turn.

So when four months later we came home to find a message on our answering machine from this woman, who said, "We've been looking at family pictures all day and you look just like us," we were caught entirely off guard.

I maintained my moderate hope/emotional distance as I dialed the phone number she'd left...still expecting to be let down. We went on to talk for over 3 hours and it was clear, she'd finally, been found. It was a bizarre and surreal experience, to pick up the phone like that and after 35 years of heartache, simply say, "Hey, how are you?"

We immediately began "friending" each other on myspace and facebook so that we could check out each others' pictures at the same time fielding questions from my two sisters about all kinds of random things like, "Do you like to cook?" "Are you book smart?"

As it turns out, she had told the two daughters she'd gone on to have after me, about me when they were very little...so not only had my birth mother been waiting for me, they had been as well.

We have been in contact every day since then, mostly over the computer and text because, luckily enough, I'm not the only one in my family who hates to use the phone...because as I came to find out, my hearing loss is fucking genetic!!! Which was just one piece of the puzzle that was put into place by this event.

And finally...two weeks ago my husband, two sons, and myself boarded a plane to Texas to meet them.

I'd like to think that if I'd had more time to myself to actually THINK about everything that was going on, I'd been more emotional about the whole thing. But it's hard to meditate on stuff when I've got the two babies hanging on me at every moment. And when they're not, my husband is... The only time I think I really FELT something, was when I was IMing with my aunt who said, "I remember the night you were born." Which, up until this point, nobody had.

It may be hard for non-adopted people to understand the significance of that sentence. How it was powerful enough to finally, after 35 years, ground me to this earth as a real person, who came from somewhere, who came from someone, and despite my physical absence from their lives, had, in fact, been unconditionally loved. Needless to say, I burst into deep sobs at that point. Good thing we were on IM and not the phone!

Anyway, my family and I spent a really amazing week hanging out with my birth mother and two sisters, mostly just telling stories about ourselves, and asking questions. We sifted through about a million family photos of people who looked...just...like...me...

It was an amazing feeling, after so many years of struggling to fit in with my adoptive family, and always feeling like an outsider...to in just a matter of a few days, mesh so easily with my birth family. It was casual and fun, and they accepted all of us, warts and all...which is more than I can say for my adoptive mother. Who, for the record, until yesterday had not known we'd met.

When I informed my adoptive mother about being found, she pretended to be happy, although if you want my REAL opinion she was scared to death. I think deep in her heart this has always been her worst fear...that I'd find my birth mother and run away with her forever. Which y'know...she might have considered when she was beating me up so much as a kid. With this in mind, I'm sure she literally shit herself yesterday when I emailed her and informed her that indeed, not only had we gone to Texas to meet, but that we are planning on moving there as soon as possible. Honestly though, this isn't nearly as dramatic as it may sound. There are a lot of reasons we decided on this move, and only one part of it is so that we can catch up on a lifetime of missed hugs. And while it is true I did burst forth from her loins many years ago...the mother/daughter relationship is not the dynamic we share at the moment. In fact, thankfully enough, both of us referred to each other as more like, "best friends" and/or "soul mates." I mean, I have drinking buddies older than she is...so to look up to her as "mother" would be a little weird.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen...the breaking news of a mother fucking lifetime. I'm sure there will be more on this as time goes...I have pics to share as soon as I can get a minute to post them...but here's a quick one to hold you over.