"Only" 3 Years...

I haven't written anything in a while.  Since my little meltdown I have found it harder to do the kind of thinking on this subject that is necessary to produce worthwhile (for me, no idea if they are worthwhile for anyone else) posts.  This isn't the sort of thing that gets easier with time because one doesn't simply get over it.  So long as I am separated from the people I belong with and the place I belong I am going to be out of sorts, badly out of sorts apparently.  As time goes by it gets worse because it is still going on, one doesn't have a chance to recover from experiences until they are over.

People have said to me, trying to be helpful I am sure, "its only three years".  I can't really expect anyone without the experience to understand.  To someone who has always known their family, who has always had the opportunity to be with the people they belong with, three years or even longer might be an acceptable period to be separated from them when an entire lifetime is considered.  What these people are actually saying to me, though I am sure they don't have any idea, is "its only 46 years".  No one would try and tell me 46 years is a reasonable amount of time to wait, but that is really what they are telling me when they say "its only 3 years".  Sure, it is "only" three more, plus the 43 we have already spent apart.  If one was trying to argue with my point one could say that I didn't know about them for better than 42 of those 43 years.  That is technically true, but I did know I had people out there somewhere and I also knew I didn't fit where I was. Not knowing peoples' names or faces does not take away the pain of missing a life with them once they are discovered.

It isn't "only" three years.  It is three more years added to the whole of my life thus far.  That is a large part of what is literally keeping me up at night.  I'd say that is all I'm going to be able to write about this for now...

A Minor Meltdown

Minor.  You could call it that.  Chernobyl was a minor meltdown right?  I've been building to this for a while now.  Probably my whole life actually, though I didn't become aware of it until recently it has pretty clearly always been there working on me behind the scenes. 

There have been two times in the last seven plus months where I have felt completely at ease.  Those two times where the visits I made to my "tribe" as my wife calls them.  There were two other times when I felt mostly at ease.  Those where the two times my mom visited here.  The rest of the last seven months I have been totally out of sorts.  I've never felt this way for anything like this long before.  The months of not sleeping, constantly having that feeling in the pit of my stomach like something terribly wrong was just around the corner, and tense muscles and grinding teeth finally pushed me over the edge.  I had what my wife identified as a panic attack.  I've never experienced one before, but I'll take her word for it on what it was.  I don't think the name is right though.  Panic is the lack of rational thought or the lack of the ability to listen to it and act accordingly.  This was more like being overwhelmed by too much rational thought. 

My wife did a great job of getting me back to a more even keel.  Once she did she told me there was no way I am going to make it out here three years.  I've been telling people for a while I don't know how I'm going to make it out here for three years, but primarily that is because saying I can't make it out here three years sounds overly dramatic.  It is, however, completely true.  I can't.  I'm in the wrong place and every fiber of my being is crying out to be in the right place.  All it knows is that it missed 43 years and can't miss anymore. 

There is a job I would really like open out there right now.  My wife told me to apply.  Our oldest has three years left of high school.  She promised him he wouldn't have to move again.  I didn't actually promise him that, but I don't want him to have to move again and I believe in backing her play.  As it stands now he doesn't want to move.  She told me to apply anyway.  If they offer me the job then we will figure something out.  Perhaps he will change his mind.  If he doesn't it might come down to me taking the little ones with me and her staying here with him until he finishes.  I hope it doesn't come to that, I don't want the family separated even temporarily, but I also cannot make it three years here.    So, I applied.  I don't know what to hope for.

It is hard to believe a little over seven months ago I would have said being adopted didn't affect me at all.

Leaving Home Again

I’m back in the state of misery, ah I mean Missouri.  The lack of content here has been due to my family’s trip to lovely (no sarcasm) northern Virginia and lovely (some sarcasm included) Washington DC over the last ten days.  The primary purpose of the trip was so that my wife and kids could meet my brothers and sisters and their children (and of course so I could see them again), but we did a fair amount of seeing the sights as well.  I hadn’t actually been into DC since sometime during the 1980s, so that I was a fun thing to do with the family.  The 1000+ mile drive was somewhat painful, especially with the two little ones in tow on the way out.  We left them there for a couple of additional days with the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins so they didn’t have to ride back in the car.  They are flying back later in the week.

The trip/visit went very well.  It wasn’t long enough, but for me no matter how long it is it will never be long enough.  My little ones got along well with their cousins, and the ratio of boys to girls was nicely evened out by their presence.  Previously the breakdown had been four girls and one boy, leaving my one nephew feeling very outnumbered (and often stuck playing Barbie).  My oldest son has seized power as the oldest of the group, at fifteen he is about four and a half years older than the next oldest and seems to play the roles of spiritual leader and odd man out in equal measure.  My little guys, at 6, are solidly in the middle as the others run the ages of 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10. 

My wife, unsurprisingly to me at least, fit in very well.  She fits in with me, so I wasn’t expecting a problem.  She especially appreciated my youngest brother and his dry wit.  He is funnier than I am, but the sense of humor is the same, so I wasn’t surprised with that.  I don’t think I’ll have a problem persuading her to go back. 

I of course had a great time.  That was not unexpected, nor was it unexpected that the time would fly by and I would feel like I was leaving almost as soon as I arrived.  The feeling of being home had not changed since my last visit.  The feeling of leaving home when we left hadn’t changed either.  I’ve spent a lot of my adult life moving from place to place and job to job trying to find somewhere to belong.  I didn’t know that was what I was doing for all that time; I just knew that nothing ever seemed quite right.  Some places and some jobs were better than others, but nothing made me feel even remotely like I feel when I am at home with all of them.  I suppose that is how one is supposed to feel around family, but other than with my wife and children nothing has ever even come close to this before.  Even with my wife and children something has always felt like it was incomplete.  Now I know what that something was.

There were a lot of good moments over the visit, way too many to list out or try and describe.  I got to know my siblings a bit better.  I hope they can say the same about me.  My favorite little piece was the hour I spent in Starbucks with my oldest sister. That may seem strange to pick out as a favorite thing during a week plus long vacation, but I really felt like we got some time to learn things about each other and bond a little bit.  It was just the two of us, none of our children, no other distractions.  In a house with so many people, and especially so many children, it is very easy to have conversations interrupted or run off course never to get back on.  That wasn’t a concern on this little outing and at least for me that made it really special.  I feel like I learned some important things about her.  First, despite all the struggles she has faced in the last eighteen months she really is incredibly kind, empathetic, and an eternal optimist.  She is able to see the best in people and find potential positive motivations for words or actions that may not seem positive to the average observer.  This ability doesn’t come off as being naïve at all, just a manifestation of her optimism.  It also seems vaguely familiar as I was, many years ago, able to do the same thing before I was ruined by two decades of direct involvement in the criminal justice system.  I call myself a “realist”, but there is something kind of sad about realism that I sometimes wish I could move away from.  She is also still hurting quite a bit.  Not as much as a year ago perhaps (I wasn’t there so I have no frame of reference), but still quite a lot.  The prehistoric lizard brain that we all have just wants to hurt whoever is responsible for hurting her, but of course there is no one to hurt.  There is no one to be angry at or to blame.  My more logical brain understands that of course and just wants to comfort her in any way that I can. 

I’ve never been anyone’s big brother before, but as I understand it one of my roles is being there to provide comfort, understanding, advice, etc. to my younger siblings if they need or want it.  Until I came wondering into her life a little bewildered my sister was the oldest and therefore didn’t have an older sibling to fill the role for her that she was filling (in theory at least, I’ve not been around long enough to know the actual dynamics) for her younger siblings.  When the oldest is the one that needs the “services” that he or she usually provides the dynamic doesn’t always run as smoothly in reverse.  That seems to be especially true when the crisis, whatever it may be, affects everyone in the family to one extent or another and especially when children are affected.  I don’t know whether she knows it or not, but I feel like she really needs someone to be concerned about her and how she is doing.  Not someone who is concerned about how her children are doing (although I obviously am), or concerned about if and/or when she is going back to work, or concerned about her relationships with other people, or concerned about her finances, or concerned  about any number of other issues related to her life.  I think a lot of people mean very well and show concern about things that make her feel like most people have forgotten her and how her life has not gone back to normal. 

I hope that despite the distance between us at present I can make my physical presence in her life a semi-regular event.  I hope that each time I manage a visit we can squeeze out an hour or so to spend “alone together” and get to know each other, provide the support we both need, and I can make sure she knows there is someone she can count on to be concerned primarily with her and how she is doing and he doesn’t want anything in return other than in time to see her smiling more and more often. 

I realize the last couple of paragraphs make it sound like I’m some sort of altruistic saint thinking only of others.  I'm not, I should point out that she is doing a lot for me as well, perhaps more than I could ever do for her.  She has made me feel very welcome in the family and the conversations we have had about my issues with adoption and where and how I fit in general have really helped me.  It is definitely a two way street.  I suppose that is how family relationships are supposed to work, but again, I lack a frame of reference.  I can only offer her my thanks.

So, nine days and I spent quite a bit of time talking about an hour at a Starbucks, plus (though I didn’t mention it) an additional half an hour we spent in the driveway later in the evening talking.  Why so much time spent on such a short period of time?  I feel like it was the most important hour and a half of the visit.  I will end the writing here, but I’ll add some pictures from some of the other trip highlights.  No doubt I will be back again soon, though not soon enough for my tastes.

 

Enola Gay

Holocaust Museum

The Monument

Lincoln's Hat

Fork Tailed Devil

Discovery

MIG 15

Blackbird

QBert Anyone?

                                                   

Cousins

                                                   

Most interesting DC resident we saw

Somewhere I belong

So, I've been here four days now and I am already starting to get stressed out about leaving.  It is another four days before that happens, five if one counts the day we are actually leaving, and it still seems much too soon.  I suppose that is to be expected, I've finally found somewhere I feel like I belong.  It is hard to think about leaving it and to know it is close at hand. 

My little ones told me today they wanted to live here so they could play with their cousins all the time.  I hope they get their wish, and soon.  I want to live here so I can "play" with my siblings.  I have no idea how much or how little we would have gotten along when we were children, but as adults we seem to do pretty well.  I don't want to feel like I am missing out anymore.  I have no idea how much I actually miss out on, they all have very busy lives and probably don't get nearly as much time together as it appears from the outside.  However I have a lot of missed time to try and make up for and I won't be able to do that from 1000 miles away. 

It is amazing how comfortable this has all been for me.  I rarely feel that way anywhere or with anyone.  I still have my issues, but they are much less when I am here.  That is a start at least.  Perhaps it will all work out.  I hope so, three years will be a long time to wait if it doesn't.

The kids are alright

My sister took some great pictures of the kids today.  She sent several of them to me this evening.  They look just as happy in the pictures as they sounded all day and looked every time I took a look at the playing they were doing together.  It is amazing how kids can just accept new situations and go on.  When we explained to the little ones about my mom and her family they just accepted it without a lot of questions or comments.  The questions they did ask made it clear they understood what we had told them, but they were fine with the whole thing.  They were just as accepting of all these brand new cousins.  All the cousins on this side of the family seemed to take them in just as easily.  I'm very glad my kids are able to have this sort of family connection in their lives.

Thinking about this has, of course, brought of my usual feelings of having missed out on the same experience.  I don't want to dwell on that now as this is supposed to be both short and perhaps a little more up beat.  With that in mind:

Trying to be a Brother

After a drive that seemed much too long we arrived in the middle of the night. It was a great feeling to be back, despite not knowing the area well I still felt like I was home.  Maybe there really is something to that saying about home being where the heart is.

As thrilled as I was to see my family again, and especially my brothers and sisters, I find myself at a little bit of a loss.  I don't know how to be anyone's brother.  I can pull off being a son, perhaps not very well given my past experience, but I have the general idea.  I can pull off being an uncle.  I feel like I am a pretty decent father, and being an uncle is like being a father without the same level of responsibility.   I have no experience being a brother and therefore no idea if I am doing it "right".

I didn't wish for siblings all the time when I was a child.  When I did I wanted a sister, but that was primarily when I was older.  I have a horrible track record of maintaining relationships with women.  I tend to push too hard because I believe they are going to leave.  I have often created what I was afraid of by pushing.  It took me a long time to figure it out, but I now believe that this problem goes back to my adoption related abandonment issues.

So, when I was wishing I had a sister what I was really wishing for was a surrogate mother.  Now that I find myself with not one but two sisters I also have an actual mother to fill that role that was empty for me for so long.  I've also finally managed to identify why I've had so many problems maintaining relationships with women over the years.  I'm speaking here of both romantic relationships and friendships.

So, given my terrible track record combined with the fact that I have no idea how to be anyone's brother, I'm worried I'll push too hard trying to build a relationship with my sisters and end up pushing them away instead.   This is another one of those issues where I have no frame of reference, I don't know how much is too much or too little from a brother.  This is the kind of thing one is supposed to learn over a lifetime,  not try and figure out as an adult.

I wouldn't trade this experience for the world, but every time I turn around there is another issue banging me on the head and demanding my attention.   They are often unexpected and may seem strange to an outsider.  It may well be easy to ask "what do you mean you do know how to be someone's brother?" If you are one and have been since childhood.  It is very different to have it thrust upon you in adulthood with only a single chance to get it right.

Lesson of the week, nothing is ever as easy or straight forward as it seems from the outside.

The First Visit

Well, it has been a couple of days since I posted anything.  We are leaving on Friday to visit the “new” family and I have been getting stuff together for that trip.  I also have a new nephew arriving sometime today (hopefully) via my wife’s sister who is at the hospital and may even be in labor as I write this (though by the time I manage to post it I expect he will have made his entrance). So, it has been a busy week and I haven’t found the time to rant, uh I mean write.

As this second visit approaches I think it is probably time to talk about the first one.  It was pretty short, not nearly enough for something I had been waiting a lifetime for (even if I didn’t know I was waiting for it for most of that lifetime, I still was).  I left for the airport from work, underestimating the amount of time I’d need by a little bit because I didn’t take into account the fact that I would have to park in the “nose bleed” parking and take a shuttle to the terminal.  I’ve traveled a lot, fairly regularly by plane, but I don’t think I’ve ever flown anywhere alone before.  Every trip I can remember doing alone in the past I drove. Anyway, the wait for the shuttle and then a long line to check my bag conspired to make me later than I planned.  Luckily my flight was slightly delayed (yes, that is some unusual luck, but in this case the delay was lucky) and I ended up with about the same amount of time to spare as I originally planned. 

The flight was uneventful, and it was non-stop so no layover to drag out the anticipation.  My sister picked me up at the airport.  I was very excited to finally meet her after months of exchanging emails and text messages.  I spent a couple of minutes wondering around in front of the airport trying not to be creepy looking in peoples’ cars trying to find her.  It is amazing how many cars there are of the same make and model when you are looking for a specific one.  I did find the right one eventually. 

I can’t adequately describe what it was like to hug my sister for the first time so I won’t try.  Needless to say it was great.  I dropped my bag in the trunk and off we went.  I was rather amused when I got in the car and it was a manual.  I thought I was one of the last souls on earth committed to the manual transmission (most of the vehicles I have owned over the course of my life have been “row your own”), but apparently there are a few others out there.  I was staying with mom and dad, but we made a detour to my sister’s house so I could meet her husband and the one of her three children that was still awake when I arrived. 

At this point I have to break the story for an amusing anecdote: Apparently my mom, not knowing who or where I was, was worried for some years that one of my sisters might bring me home as a boyfriend.  This sort of thing is not outside the realm of possibility, it is actually not unusual for siblings who don’t grow up together and are unaware they are related to be attracted to each other.  Given the fact that for about ten years we lived in relatively close proximity it was at least in theory possible.  What makes this amusing is that the younger of my two sisters (the one who got me at the airport) married a man who is my age; I’m only four months older than he is.  The older of my two sisters is the same age as my wife; my wife is only four months older than my sister.  So, the ages in both directions match.  Thankfully the people did not.

So after meeting my brother in law and niece it was off to see my mom (dad being already in bed).  Mom and I are both kind of night owls; it is nice to know where I get it.  I’m really bad at going to bed, even when I have to be up early.  When I have to be up early I tend to miss out on sleep rather than miss out on staying up.  So, we sat up and talked.  My sister begged off, something about having to work in the morning.  One would almost think she had a family to support or something.

The next day I met everyone else, starting in the morning with my other sister.  She is also fantastic.  She is very different from our younger sister, yet I seem to have a fair amount in common with both of them.  It was surreal.  This is the morning when the “shag carpet incident” I have described before took place.  She originally turned up without her children since they were in school, but she eventually left to get them and brought them over, so I got to meet my niece and nephew also.  As expected, they are great kids.  I was expecting to like her, I wasn’t expecting to feel the connection I did to her right away, but it was there.  Having no frame of reference I probably shouldn’t have gone into the weekend with any expectations at all, but I’m not sure that would have been possible. 

Next up was my youngest brother.  We are eighteen years apart, he was born a week after I turned 18, just a few months before I graduated from high school.  So, I didn’t really know what to expect.  I shouldn’t have worried.  He reminds me a little bit of me at that age, more driven than I was, but I see the resemblance.  He has a great sense of humor, or at least what I consider a great sense of humor, which probably means the poor guy has to explain it to a large percentage of the population much as I have been doing all of my life.

Finally I met the older of my brothers, who is still 15 years younger than me but doesn’t seem that way.   I suspect, though I have no personal experience, that going to war will do that to you.  He is definitely the hardest to read.  Even so, I see some things we have in common, not the least of which is being terrible at keeping up communications with people.  I was a little shocked when I saw him because every picture I saw of him he was clean shaven and when I met him he had a pretty full beard.  The beard does work for him though, I approve and so did my oldest son when he saw the picture.  Some guys can do beards, like my brother.  Others, like me, cannot.  Well, to be fair I have never had a beard, but I don’t think I can pull it off.  I tried to grow one once, but after five days it was annoying me so much I shaved.  I have to hand it to my brother though, he makes the beard work and he is no hipster.  I’m looking forward to getting to know him better.  I get the impression there is a lot to know.

That Friday night was the first time in my life I was in the presence of so many people I was related to.  Really related to, not “related to” because a court somewhere said we were related or because the state falsified my birth certificate. There was a moment, not too long after my younger sister arrived with all her children and husband, when I looked around and realized I was in the presence of three generations of real, authentic family for the first time in my life.  People I not only shared DNA with, but physical features, personality traits, a common sense of humor (everyone has it to one extent or another, I never had to explain a joke the whole weekend), and a bond.  In that moment I finally knew what had always been missing from my life, a sense of belonging.  I always felt uncomfortable at “family” gatherings in the past.  I felt like a third wheel, a square peg, whatever cliché one wants to use.  I never knew what was missing because I had never before had this experience.  I had no frame of reference upon which to evaluate my feelings of discomfort. It took me 43 years to find out why it always felt wrong before.  It felt that way because I never felt like I belonged with the people I was with.  I had to meet the people I did belong with before I could understand that was the problem.

Much of the rest of the weekend really is a blur.  I was on a natural high of belonging for the first time in my life.  I had a great time and really enjoyed everyone’s company.  I feel like I made a reasonably good impression, but being the person I am there are always lingering doubts.  Too many years feeling disconnected, out of place, and unimportant to ever really believe people would want to spend time with me. 

When I left on Monday afternoon I felt like I was leaving home rather than returning to it.  For at least the rest of the week, and it may well have been longer, I was extremely down and difficult to be around.  The crash from the natural high was not easy.  Three and a half days was not enough time after 43 years in the wilderness.  To be fair I’m not sure there will ever be enough time, but every day I miss with them now seems wasted after so many missed already. 

This is where it becomes difficult to explain and to understand.  Anyone who is the product of a closed adoption doesn’t need to have it explained to them, they understand already if they have considered their circumstances seriously. At best, an adopted person has their children to see themselves in.  If they have no children then they have no one.  Even if they have children, until those children are born, they have no one in which they can see themselves, see traits they share, see where they came from or (in the case of children) are headed.  That may not seem important, but it is when it isn’t there. 

I have no doubt that my appearance in my siblings’ lives is a big deal to them.  They have certainly made me feel welcome and as if I had always been part of the family.  They cannot share my experience as a whole simply because their circumstances were different.  I don’t fault them for that, I don’t fault anyone; it simply is.  Some things did change for them, they are now 5 instead of 4, my oldest sister is no longer the oldest child, they all have a terribly long winded brother to get to know, and the list goes on.  I don’t mean to minimize their experience.  It is just a different experience than mine.  I went from having only two people one the planet so far as I knew who shared my DNA, and they were my children, to having 12 in the blink of an eye.  I went from being an only child with no experience of being anyone’s brother to being the oldest of five.  I went from having no nieces or nephews on my side of the family to having four and one respectively.  Most importantly I went from feeling as if I had nowhere I belong to knowing exactly where I belong.  This experience has completely changed my life.  That change has been almost universally for the better, what little bit has not be is caused primarily by the distance I am away and it would mostly be solved by being closer.  My other issues were not caused by this discovery; they were simply brought to my attention by it.  At least knowing about them I can work on dealing with them.

So, it is time to bring this to an end. There is more packing to do, and as I suspected my newest nephew has arrived before I even finished writing this, let alone gotten around to posting it.  One more work day, then one long drive, and I’ll be back home where I belong, for a little while at least.