August 30 : Finding My Sister

I am almost 37 years old, and I have an older sister that was given up for adoption. This is something I have known about my whole life. Honestly, I can't recall the first time I learned about it.  I sort of remember the first time I told someone, but it's a very vague memory.  Suffice it to say, I knew about T my whole life.

I have 5 older brothers, all of whom are older than T.  My oldest brother was 11 when this happened, and the next 4 brothers are about a year apart each, with a 3 year gap between brother 4 and brother 5.  T was 5 years younger than the youngest brother, and born 4 years before I was born.

Over the past 13 years I have periodically searched for her to no avail. I had a fairly thorough profile on an adoption reunion site, and I partly thought maybe when she was ready to start looking she would find me.  I knew her original birth certificate was not open, and I knew there was a form that had to be filled out by my dad in order to release it.  Maybe I'll get into it on a later blog as to why I never really pushed this.

Well, I got inspired randomly to search for her again late Thursday night on August 29.  It could be because I knew I was going to see my brothers the next day.  It could be because it was a few days away from being 8 years since my mother had passed away.  For whatever reason, it popped into my head.  That's usually how it would happen when I did the searches.

Right away I found a description that sounded very plausible: The same exact birth date, the same exact county, a somewhat accurate description of the circumstances, and a year off of the age of the birthmother. I considered whether I should send this person a message.  Honestly, I didn't mull it over that long.  I decided I should contact her as I had never had a hit before, and there was just too much overlap to dismiss it.

I sort of expected it would be a while until I heard back. The posting was over a year old, and I wasn't sure how often she logged in or if she had messages sent to her email or not. About 5 minutes or so later, or at least what felt like a very short amount of time, S responded and asked if I could IM on Skype with her. So I did, and we compared notes, and we agreed the overlaps were good and the probability was high that we were sisters. The only piece of information left to corroborate was her surrender date which I told her I would call my aunt, who had raised her for her first year of life, and ask.

The next morning I got a cheery hello on Skype from S.  We chatted a little more, shared that we were both up until 4 am.  She kept expressing how much she had always wanted a sister and how she really hoped it was me.  I was trying very hard to stay cool.  I'm a very logical person, and I don't jump into things lightly, but my gut was telling me, "This is your sister."  Then S told me one more piece of information-that she knew she was German and Russian heritage.  This was spot on.  At that moment, I felt very confident it was her, and I knew that if somehow the surrender date didn't corroborate, that someone would have had their info wrong.  I just couldn't see how it couldn't be her.

It took a few hours of calling until I reached Aunt R, but when I did, at first I told her I was updating my profile to find T and needed more info.  I asked her what the surrender date was, and she told me how she has had that date forever burned into her mind.  It was the right date.  After she confirmed this, I asked her if she could keep a secret and told her.  She was ecstatic as she and her husband had raised T for the first year of her life.  

But this next place was where it really felt real.  When I had been chatting with S, I had asked her if she had any photographs that were given to her family when she was adopted.  She told me there was a photo of her holding a toy giraffe she thought.  I asked Aunt R about the photo, and she emphatically exclaimed, "Oh no!  That was a horse!  That was my daughter M's and T would carry it around with her all the time!"  I suppose there was just something about a special detail like that-not a fact or figure, but a personal detail.  This was really happening.

I got off the phone with Aunt R and im'd S again.  "Are you sitting down?" I typed.  "I just talked to Aunt R, and your surrender date is the same.  And it's not a giraffe you're holding, it's a horse."  S was very excited, we agreed to talk on the phone a while later, and she said she needed to call her mom.

Coincidentally at this time, I was at my brother's house spending time with my sister-in-law and great nephews, but I couldn't tell her, and I just came off as acting sort of weird.  I told her I had to leave to make an important phone call, and she thought it was weird, but I wanted to tell my brothers first.

After a while I finally talked to S for about an hour a little while later, and we realized that we sounded similar and laughed almost exactly alike, and there was A LOT of laughing, much of it nervous, going on.  S has since told me that she also chortles, something she picked up from her mom. 

Not too long after we got off the phone, I drove over to another brother's house where we were getting together. 

 I was bursting at the seams to tell them. I got there a little early and basically just blurted it out. It was a very joyous and emotional time, and S had asked if we could call her on speaker phone which we did. We talked to her for over 2 1/2 hours.

Today is September 4, so it's the 6th day after confirming S is our sister.  I've been reading some stuff about how to deal with adoption reunions. They all call this the honeymoon period, and I can understand why. S is excited and overwhelmed as are we.  She has talked to all of the siblings now, but not our father.  I told her if/when she's ready, we can do that on a 3 way call if it will help her.  My dad knows, and he's waiting for her to make the call.  We have plans to meet with just me, her, and my eldest brother. 

I'm trying to make this about her as much as I can, trying to consistently check in with what her needs are in this situation and unchartered territory. But wow, I've been on a roller coaster of emotions, and I'm pretty exhausted.

But, hey . . . I have a sister now.