So, the emails went back and forth for the rest of December,
all of January, and into February. I
talked to my mom on the phone on Christmas because Christmas, but I don’t
believe we actually spoke on the phone after that. I’m not really a phone talker if given
another option. We did break into the
latest and greatest form of communication to revolutionize interpersonal
communications, texting. I’m not the world’s
best texter, I refuse to use “text message speak”. I use complete sentences and punctuation when
texting and I don’t use numbers for words or abbreviations not commonly
accepted in writing. I also know the
difference between to, too, and two and I make sure to use the proper one even
in my texts. That isn’t to say that I’m
a grammar Nazi, I’m sure there are multiple examples of poor grammar, sentence
structure, what have you in this blog. I
am a master of the run on sentence if nothing else. I’m just really annoyed by text message speak
for reasons I don’t fully understand. I
know part of it is I see it as lazy. If
that was all it wouldn’t bother me so much, I can appreciate lazy under the
right circumstances. Anyway, this is
rapidly heading off on a tangent. While
I am prone to that, it isn’t important to the overall theme I am looking for
here.
I lost a lot of sleep between November 30th
2015 and February 12th 2016.
There were a lot of reasons for that, probably way too many to list, but
I’m a longwinded blowhard, so I’ll try: shock, anticipation, nerves,
excitement, sadness, joy, fear, concern, hope, and anger. I’d say the two biggest were excitement and
anticipation, the least was anger. I
really only felt anger toward my biological father (and that was only slightly,
it was a long time ago, and young men make bad decisions) and my maternal
grandmother (more there, but she died before my mom found me, and anger at the
dead is futile). I was lucky to sleep
five hours a night during that period, and often it was four hours, sometimes
less. I figured it had to catch up with
me eventually, but it never did, or at least not to the point where I was
actually able to sleep more. I was tired
a lot, but being tired did not translate into being able to go to bed at a
reasonable time or being able to sleep until 6 am when my alarm went off. I was generally up until about midnight or 1
am, then awake by 5 am. I have always
been the sort of person who is asleep within 5 minutes of lying down, often
within 2 minutes. That didn’t change, I
just couldn’t bring myself to go to bed as early as I previously had, nor could
I sleep until my alarm went off. There
was just too much going through my mind; it wouldn’t stay shut down for very
long at a stretch.
Finally February 12th arrived and with
it my mom and her husband. I can’t
describe the first meeting well enough to do it justice no matter what words I
use. Sometimes words are just not
enough. People who have been down this
road and found a happy result at the end of it will understand, people who
haven’t, won’t. It ranks in the top four
days of my life, which are 1) the day I married my wife, 2) the day my sons
were born, 3) the day were are talking about here, meeting my mom, and 4) the
first day I was in a room with all four of my siblings (we will get to that
eventually I promise). I can’t actually
assign an order to those four in terms of importance, some things are just
watershed moments in life, and those four qualify as mine. All are equally important.
After what has to qualify as the best hug I have
had in my entire life and some pictures we sat down and started to “get to know
each other”. Well, we had done that
already really, but my family hadn’t so much, and I wanted to get to know her
husband more than I had based on a few emails.
Speaking of her husband, I don’t know if a 43 year old man can have a
step-father that seems like something minors have. If adults can have step-parents then I
suppose that is technically what he is.
However, I don’t think that title does him justice. He is a fantastic person, as good, no even better,
than I was lead to believe. He and my
mom have been together for 35 years, he is the father of all four of my
siblings, and he accepted me readily. I
think he is entitled to being called “father” without the “step” if he wants
it. He certainly is family, of that
there can be no question.
They stayed for three days. We celebrated my 43rd
birthday. My mom cooked my birthday
dinner and baked me a cake. She is an
excellent cook and it was all fantastic.
We didn’t really go anywhere or “do” anything; the entire time was
basically spent sitting around talking and getting to know each other. My kids all loved both of them. We had a great time. I had the feeling the entire weekend that I
had known my mom my whole life and we discovered more and more things we had in
common, things we both liked and disliked, and even clichés and expressions we
both used. Some of it was kind of
spooky.
It was fantastic finally putting a face, a real
live person to this nebulas idea I had my whole life of “mother”. To finally have a birth story, knowledge of
where I came from, and who I came from was something I had never imagined I
would have and I was overwhelmed to finally have it. When my adoptive parents would talk about
family history, which wasn’t often, I always had to accept it as my own because
there was no other option. However, I
always knew that it didn’t really apply to me.
I could co-opt it, but it wasn’t real, it wasn’t really where I came
from. It was a lie, a legally
sanctioned, societally accepted lie, but a lie all the same. I was never, in my heart of hearts, comfortable
with that.
My mom was only the third person in my life I had
ever laid eyes on who I was related to by blood. As mentioned previously the other two were my
children. I think most people take blood
relations for granted, a fact of existence.
For me, blood relations were something that existed in theory until I
was 36 and managed, with much assistance from my wife, to create some. After that, while I had a future generation,
I still had no previous generation to look to or any of my own generation to
grow with. I never expected to. Finally meeting someone related to me who in
fact both pre-dated me and created me was extremely powerful.
All in all it was a fantastic three days. Three days isn’t nearly long enough when you
have waited 42 (and just 1 day shy of 43) years, and I’m sure my mom would
agree. It was, however, all the time we
had for the moment. It was the beginning
of something though, not simply a bump in the stream or the end of the
road. The next day I bought a plane
ticket for a trip out to her in April to meet my siblings. That is a story for another time.
I need to end this here; my mom is due here any
minute. As one may be able to guess, the
relationship continues to grow.
No comments:
Post a Comment