An Unexpected Gift

I was meandering through my days (hear contented whistling), minding my own business and content enough with life. We were preparing to glide into the next phase of our lives, the phase where our kids are done college and working in their chosen fields. Our youngest moved back home and commutes every day to Philly, where he works in a radio station. Our eldest lives out at the beach near the school where he teaches. Life was quiet and a bit boring. But not for long. Then on November 2, 2006, everything shifted.

Imagine being almost 50 years old and finding out you have two half-sisters and a half-brother. Imagine finding out that your birth mother passed away ten years ago, while you were busy raising a fifteen year old and an eleven year old and spending most of your time on a soccer field. Imagine the shock and disbelief and yes, curiosity, that you would feel upon receiving this knowledge.

It happened to me. I went home for lunch on Thursday, November 2, and began sifting through the mail, groaning at bills and sorting out the “Resident” letters. A white envelope bearing my name and a return address in Somerset, NJ was in the stack. Curious, I slit it open and read it. The words “…..your birth mother, who was my mother, too” hit me squarely in the solar plexus. Looking around, I half-expected Ashton Kutcher to pop out of my living room yelling, “You’ve been punk’d!”

Allow me to digress. At the age of two weeks, I was adopted by my mom and dad, two wonderful people. Being wonderful, they were honest with me and my two adoptive brothers, telling us that we were adopted and that we were special because they “picked us out.” The fact of my adoption was never an issue with me or my brothers. We were happy and normal kids growing up in a happy, normal house. We never had a burning urge to explore our birth situations. We were (and are) a happy and relatively normal family and that was that. We used to joke about hoping that our birth mothers showed up at our door one day with truckloads of money for us.

Then this letter arrived. In it, my birth sister invited me to call her if I wanted to. I did, several hours later after I digested all this information and we spoke for quite a while. I learned about my birth mother, that she liked to write, read and do crossword puzzles. She was a Jeopardy (one of my favorite shows) champ in the 60s. She had a good sense of humor and she liked Billy Joel. I heard about my other birth sister and birth brother. I learned that I have three birth nieces and a birth nephew. I also learned the circumstances of my birth and subsequent adoption. I sent both sisters a picture of me and my family at a Phillies game and they sent me a picture of my birth mother, to whom I bear little resemblance.

Many odd coincidences emerged through conversations. My birth niece was a junior at the College of NJ at the time, where my husband works. My birth mother lived in the township where George and I lived a year after we got married. My best friends for over thirty years are named Kim and Pam. Guess what my birth sisters’ names are? Kim and Pam. Now, when referring to the Kims and Pams, I have to distinguish between Sister Kim and Friend Kim and Sister Pam and Friend Pam. It sounds like I alternate residences between a convent and a Quaker meeting house.

It felt like I was living an episode of Oprah. After all these years, I had a birth family living less than an hour from me, people who actually shared my blood. As I said to my sister that day on the phone, “I have genes and they don’t have Calvin Klein on the pockets!”

We arranged a meeting. On Friday, November 17, George and I met Sisters Kim and Pam at H.I. Rib in Pennington. On the drive up to the restaurant, I second-guessed the meeting. “Am I doing the wrong thing?” I asked George. “What if we don’t get along,” I worried. It was a very cold night, yet I was sweating profusely. “Hyperventilating,” I informed George as we walked to the front door of the restaurant.

I had no idea what these women like. At least they knew what I looked like. Shaking like a leaf, I walked into the bar with George following me. I scanned the patrons and I immediately spotted them seated at the end of the bar at the same time they spotted me. I would have known them anywhere. All nervousness vanished and I ran around the bar towards them. They met me halfway and we threw ourselves at each other, hugging and crying. Very emotional and probably a bit alarming to the poor patrons at the bar.

After getting ourselves under control, we were seated at a table where we proceeded to show pictures and interrupt each other, talking and laughing. We told our server the whole story, just in case she was worried we were overly intoxicated. We ended up sitting at that booth for three hours. After the initial nervousness I experienced on the drive to the restaurant, I felt calm and totally at ease with Kim and Pam. It was like I had known them forever.

Since then, I have talked to them via phone, email and text-messages almost every day. We are planning another meeting after the New Year, hopefully including more family members. My husband walks around proclaiming, “Just what I need – more in-laws!” My kids are not used to the idea of these new family members yet, but they are anxious to meet the new aunts and cousins. My mom and dad, supportive as always, are anxious to meet the sisters as well.
As “Friend” Pam says, “It’s always an adventure!”

As I get older, I realize more and more that the most important thing is family. After all the years of running the kids around to their soccer practices, games, and tournaments, I finally have the time to reconnect with cousins and other family members that we “neglected” during the soccer gypsy years. And now, to gain a “new” family is an unexpected gift. I have always been grateful to my birth mother for putting me up for adoption and giving me a great life by doing so. I am also grateful for the internet, which allowed “Sister” Kim to find me using my birth name. So my cup overflows. With lots and lots of family, and lots and lots of love.