Resemblance

The polite, type-written biographical introduction cast its light into the fog, creating sufficient vision for at least the next step between us, this “brother” and myself…Dale and I.   I tried to envision what a Dale might look like, knowing I could simply turn the pages of the binder and catch an actual image of him.  I waited to see if he, like the others in the biological family who had imaginarily visited my office, would choose to follow suit.  He was either reluctant or I was too impatient.  My eyes were riveted to the narrative and they pressed forward over the ensuing sentences, seemingly incapable of providing time and space to ponder my initial impression.  “My twin sister and I were adopted…,”  I paused again, this time allowing a new fact to settle into my growing picture of this biological family tree.  Dale and “Gail” had indeed been adopted and raised together, now confirming that I was not a twin who “appeared” to be older than this “brother,” as eluded by Patricia at the Adoption Registry.  I was indeed older, four years to be exact, than this “brother” AND “sister!”  I could now trace the birth order of Sarah’s children as revealed through Dale’s biography and the private investigator’s records.  I had been born to Sarah when she was 16 years old, followed by a son born two and a half years later, the twins, Gail and Dale within the next two years, with Sarah then 20 years of age, followed by another daughter born three years after the twins, and then a son some nine years later.  It was a good sized litter that had been delivered over two decades of time!  I wondered if Dale was aware of this information or if, perhaps, he had been hanging out with all of these siblings for a number of years by now?  They may be intimately involved in each other’s lives and his biography might reveal those relationships.  I pressed forward into the sparse wording, ready to read between the lines for any hidden clues.

I read and then re-read the two and a half pages of narrative text, longing for more detail and cringing at the thought of Dale pushing through the over twenty-one page expose I had provided.  Somehow the contrast seemed a bit presumptive and over-done with my voluminous disclosure, but if the reality was truly known, he was holding the condensed version!  Embarassingly, it had taken hours to pare the story down to those mere pages!  !  Ah, well, better to let him see my true colors and style from the very beginning rather than overwhelming him at a later date! 

My much more concise “brother” relayed the important facts; of adoring his adopted parents, of his love of all things of a sporting nature, of his previous marriage and the two wonderful  grown sons and  a spunky little second grade daughter, of his deep and abiding connection with his twin sister, and his busy professional life in the electricity industry.  It was stunning to learn that he and Gail had grown up only two hours away from my own hometown!  Our high schools had, in fact, been rivals in various competitive events and had my own trajectory followed the norm for that day and time, our paths might have crossed in our own version of Friday Night Lights!  Dale referenced high school as “the glory days,”  anxiously awaiting the time when we could swap stories of our quests.  I wondered how he would take to my tales of changing diapers and managing a small apartment house in exchange for a place to live while I finished the “glory days” of my senior year!  Somehow I suspected that his stories would be more lively and entertaining!  Perhaps I could just do the listening.

I studied each picture that traced my “brother’s” life. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble creating art to frame each photo, resulting in a scrapbook looking album, naming names, identifying places, and tracking the passage of the years in scrolling handwritten script.  Despite my self-proclaimed freedom from gender biases, I wondered if he had constructed this biography himself or if his girlfriend had crafted the hand cut tags and decorative layout.  Someone definitely had an artistic flair!  Tucked in the numerous photo pages were original prints from infancy through adulthood, allowing me to trace the passage of time in his physical changes as well as personal interests.   Often the photos were of the twins together, allowing me to watch Gail as well grow from a child into a woman. 

I studied the faces of the twins, searching for resemblance between us.  Although Patricia from the Adoption Registry had indicated similarity between my “brother” and me, I could find nothing to physically relate us to one another.   My olive skin and dark eyes seemed a strange contrast to the striking Scandinavian appearance of this pair.  The brilliant blue of their eyes, the light blonde hair against their fair skin seemed a world apart from any conjured images of a biological sibling.  Their high school photos appeared to be from a modeling portfolio, while my own looked like every other uncomfortable teenager staring into a camera!  No one would scan a room of bodies and faces and match the three of us with one another.  I would predict that not even Sarah herself, would be able to pick us out of a crowd as her biological offspring. 

Physically, there was no recognition between us.   I combed over the written descriptive of the twins lives, searching for a sense of similarity in our lifestyles and interests.  It was impossible to tell with any  certainty from a few written words, but on the surface, we again seemed unlikely to resemble one another.  Gail had been a part of the rodeo scene and had been a cowgirl most of her life, her young adult daughter now seriously pursuing competitive roping.   Dale continued his earlier love of sports by participating on a baseball team and a bowling league and devoted his weekends traveling to watch motorcycle or boat racing.  I loved the outdoors as well, but more for hiking in its quietude, not the loud roar of racing motors filling the air!  And my horsewoman skills were most noted for the effect I seemed to evoke on even the calmest of trail horses, who would head at breakneck speed for the barn and the trough of hay, despite my efforts to convince them otherwise!  My enjoyment of classical music, reading, art, and nature seemed to pale against the seriously competitive nature of these two.  I could only imagine the size of their yawns as they heard about my life!  How little I could bring to their worlds, at least what portions of their lives I had glimpsed.  Strike two for seeing ourselves in one another!

A series of emails were exchanged between Dale and myself over the next weeks, trading information and humorous quips.  It seemed strange that neither of us made an effort to pick up a telephone and call one another even though we had exchanged contact information.  In time, I determined that I did not want to hear his voice until I met him in person and I guess he must have decided the same, or he was simply allowing me to lead this dance.    Seeming in no hurry to press for a meeting, Dale wrote  frequently about the busyness of our lives.    He trusted that the time would present itself, seemingly further along on that path of “no expectations” than I was.   It was my emails that encouraged (notice I said encouraged, not pushed!) our consideration of arranging a meeting in the Austin area, a location convenient to his present hometown and a short drive from my daughter’s home as well.    It was the logical next step to take with one another and at fifteen months into this process, movement forward seemed to be warranted!   Only later would I learn, accompanied with a powerful dose of humility, that my fifteen months of patience would seem miniscule when compared to Dale’s 25 YEARS of patient pursuit of a biological family he knew existed somewhere out there but who continued to elude him.

 In short order, we would meet at a predetermined dining spot where, I predicted, no one would cast a glance in the direction of the tall, Scandinavian, blonde and the short, dark-skinned, high-lighted brunette and assume any sort of a sibling connection between us.  But, more importantly, as that day would unfold, would we?   

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Entering The Fog

The resumption of “normal” life occurred rather seamlessly.  In relatively short order, the rhythm of the days reclaimed their pace.  There was no need to pull out the trench coat, no long distant phone calls to private investigators or adoption registry coordinators, no touching base with Arkansas mother bears, and no consultations with medical personnel.  All was quiet on the home front as well as was the interior of my soul. 

No matter what the state of life one presently is living, one thing is certain…change will come.  Sometimes we welcome the change, often we do not.  We work so determinately to place all of our “ducks in a row” thinking that we now have a method in place for managing life well.   The little ducks maintain their synchronized paddling for a while, but in short order they are breaking out into numerous directions bringing the illusion of a newly choreographed swim plan to a quick and frothy finale.  My own quiet waters were to stir again.

The call came early in the morning of a work day.  It was Patricia from the Adoption Registry telling me that she was holding in her hands a completed biography compiled by my “brother.”  Old habits die hard and I found myself trying to extract any information from her that I could.  Forget the realities that I was not even certain that I wanted to pursue this sibling connection.  In that moment, I was strategically matching wits with the system and delusional that I might win.  Over a series of maneuverings I did learn that he had actually hand-delivered the biography to Patricia and that she had visited with him in person!  That piece of information led to several questions that were adeptly skirted by this highly professional woman, however not without a few tidbits thrown in my direction.  It seemed that the “brother” lived within a day’s driving distance of me, that he had a great sense of humor, and that, according to Patricia’s trained eyes, we physically resembled each other.  No additional information would leave her lips and I sensed that my inquiries were quickly changing categories from charming curiosity to annoying interrogation.  A good spy can read these interpersonal cues and after a few more attempts (ok, so I am a slow learner!) I silenced my inner-detective.  Our conversation concluded with Patricia’s reminder that my own completed biography would be the next step in learning more about my “brother.”  The sucker-punch line continued ringing in my ears long after the call ended:  “He is hopeful and anxiously awaiting your biography.”   Now who had the ball lying in her court?  For one who likes to be in control, I was somehow not relishing this turn of events.

The wrestling match was not new, but one I had previously climbed out of the ring from.  This call led me back inside its stretched parameters and I danced around its four sides for over a full week.  I had begun this quest with my emphasis on meeting my birth parents and had not really considered the possibility of siblings.  It now appeared that I would not meet either biological parent and in many ways my journey into adoption territory had felt completed.  However, here was this “brother” who had many years earlier signed the Adoption Registry, had completed his counseling requirement,  written his own biographical story, and was awaiting word from Patricia that the official exchange of information between us could now take place.  Patricia had earlier shared that this “brother” was a twin and that it “appeared” that I was older than him.  Was I his twin who had “appeared” only minutes earlier, and if not, who was that twin and did he have any awareness that he had a fraternal or identical pairing out there somewhere?   The mystery of this family tree was again captivating my attention!  After a month of trying to motivate myself to write my life story to this unknown man, could the pieces of this puzzle that would remain forever unknown, provide sufficient impetus for me to complete that task? 

The dizzying circling around the ring began to somehow clear my head and in time I knew that I needed to pursue every avenue that was open to me in honoring my own roots.  This unknown “brother” shared some part of that same root system and I wanted to be open to wherever this path might lead me.  Presently it was taking me to a sibling I had never envisioned nor wondered about but who, by his own persistence to honor his personal quest, had shown up unexpectedly in my life.  Previously, I had extended myself toward Sarah, and now this “brother” was extending himself toward me and it was now my turn to choose a response.   It was time to make myself push through my writer’s block and compose that damn biography!  I could not just keep this “brother” hanging endlessly.   How hard could it really be to tell my life story in twenty pages or less?

Suffice it to say, it was hard enough to evoke some of the same anxieties of writing a dissertation…wrestling with what is crucial in the developmental processes of life and what is merely extraneous?  At times I found myself journeying off into philosophical and theological musings evoked by sifting through my life experiences.  No wonder it takes me so long to get things done…I am forever falling into interesting rabbit holes that take more than a bit of time to extract oneself from!    After three weekends, four bottles of wine, and five rounds of editing by my layout and photo editor husband, (if truth be told, there is a possibility that each is a numerical underestimation!) the completed document was thankfully dropped into the mail.  I glanced at the calendar, noting that it was now exactly fourteen months to the date since my initial pursuit in this quest had occurred… months that had paradoxically passed both quickly and painstakingly slow.      

I knew the drill.  It would now be another season of waiting and in my writing fatigue, I was actually looking forward to a period of reprieve.   I settled into the welcomed relief from the emotional energy this process required.  A few short days later, I was stunned to receive a phone call from Patricia notifying me that she was placing both biographies in the mail.  The official exchange was occurring and my “brother” and I were about to be formally introduced to each other!  I wondered what he was thinking when he received her call to expect my biography in the mail?  What kind of person did he hope that I would be?  I imagined that he might find me very boring and disappointing, way too cerebral and serious.   I wondered what he would be like?  What his interests would be?  What his experiences had been that had made him the man he was today?  I wondered if we would have personality traits that we might share?  Somehow I predicted that we would be vastly different from one another and I imagined the challenge that might pose to the formation of a relationship between us.  This was certainly an untraveled road we were both walking, with no road signs to guide us.  We would have to trust that we could feel our way through the heavy fog to discover our path together or to determine to take the nearest exit either of us could find.  We were not obligated to take this trip together, we would be deciding over time just how far and in what direction we were willing to travel.     

On a Monday morning the large blue binder arrived.  I ceremoniously laid it out on my desk and said a prayer before opening its cover.  “Guide us” was my silent request and I turned to the first page.  It began simply and without fanfare, a direct statement of intent, perhaps foreshadowing a style of being.  A get to the point sort of “brother” coupled up with a set the mood, explore the symbolic meaning, then eventually get to the point sort of “sister.”  Only time would tell if his manner of written expression was truly reflective of who he was, yet I began to formulate my initial impression of him as I read his opening words.   No, “in the beginning” nor “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” marked his initiation of this ritual between us.  It began instead with a rather courteous and tender extension of the self:  “Let me introduce myself.  I am your brother, Dale T., and I have been looking for you for a very long time.”  We had now willingly entered the fog together.

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Visible Footsteps

The ball rested in Sarah’s court.  I had placed it squarely there, finally, and I expected no play from it at all.  I resumed the fullness of my days, no longer creating time and space to pursue this piece of my life.  I now had information that filled in some of those unknown places in my history.  More importantly, I had offered my gratitude to my birth mother for the gift of life.  It was time to simply get on with living that gift out. 

The in-depth medical information provided by Sarah and her sister was incorporated into a rather  artistic rendition (if I do say so myself!)  of a Marfans family tree that accompanied my daughter and I to the genetic consultation.  The doctor traced the symptomology through several generations of the B _ _ _ _ family with a consistent and important similarity.  The only identifiable marker of this condition presented itself in the connective tissue of the eyes.  Seemingly, there was no skeletal or cardiovascular involvement within this particular family, a highly unusual, but pronouncedly beneficial trait!  Apparently only a handful of families in the United States carry this condition known not as full blown Marfans, but as ectopic lentis, a genetic anomaly resulting only in the weakening of the connective tissue holding the ocular lenses in place.   As a precaution, certain continued testing was recommended, but the expectation was for no aortic problems to ever appear!  Thanks to the history provided by Sarah, the Houston geneticist was able to offer the best reassurances we had ever medically received! 

Genetically, my daughter and her husband had a 50/50 chance of conceiving a child who would inherit the same condition.  As the doctor continued to explain the probabilities, my mind wandered back to the earliest time when we discovered her visual challenges.  Since the age of four, she had undergone over thirteen surgeries and procedures to address the physical limitations of her eyes.  The exams required were often painful and frightening and the frequency of various doctor appointments most disruptive to a carefree childhood.  Throughout her early years she wore coke-bottle glasses, enduring the taunting comments made by classmates who were unaware of the lasting power of their words.  Emotionally, the years had extracted a price that had been taxing for her and disheartening for a mother to watch one so young have to pay.  She had been so big in her bravery while housed in a body so small.  I often thought how I longed to trade places with her so that she would be spared the intensity of the medical involvement in her life.  Yet, time after time, she faced what was necessary with the hope that the end result would be restorative.  She had been fortunate that this had been the ultimate result.  We had watched other children who had not fared as well, both physically and emotionally.  She was amazingly resilient…and still is.  And to imagine that now she is the one providing medical care to others with such empathy and understanding!  The sounds of the on-going conversation returned my awareness to the room.

The doctor was reminding my daughter that only she had an awareness of the challenges a child born with this same condition would be asked to carry.  My eyes fixate on Taylor’s face wondering if she would simply nod in her understanding of the comment or if she would elect to offer her response. For a few moments, the room seemed deafeningly quiet.  I caught my breath as I waited to see who would lead the discussion from here.  That brave little girl reappeared, but this time she was securely housed in the body of a beautiful young woman.  The coke-bottle glasses now replaced with implanted lenses, the curly dog ears with a straightened, sleek coiffure, and the fussily trimmed clothing with a tailored professional style.  “Funny,”  I thought, ”when did all these changes take place?”  She nods her head in acknowledgement of the truth of the doctor’s statement and then seemingly pauses to reflect back upon the past twenty-five years of her life.  I wondered how I would have answered that question had I known she would have a 50% chance of facing these specific health challenges prior to conceiving  her.

The words she spoke sounded like poetry to me and I caught my breath as I am prone to do when touched by the impact of art.  With all that she has endured (my words), she does not believe that her health circumstances have really been that challenging to manage (her own words)!   Should she and her husband choose to have a baby of their own, that child, she believes, would not be being asked to bear up under overwhelming difficulties.  “ Life,” she profoundly articulates, “poses challenges to all of us in one way or another.  Should this be one for a child of ours, I would at least be able to help him or her deal with it.”  “Yes, you would be the wisest of teachers,” I think, my eyes brimming with tears.   Had I known what she would have to endure, again my words, I might have determined the cost to be too great to ask her to carry.  Then, I would never have held  her, never have had the privilege to watch her grown up, and never have had this moment of hearing her say she would willingly walk beside a daughter who might follow in her same footsteps.

“Oh, little-one-to-be,  you and the world around you, should be so blessed, for there is not a better set of footsteps for your little feet to follow!”

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Do the Math!

I assumed that upon receiving the requested medical information from my birth mother, Sarah, we had marked the conclusion of our encounters with one another.  Despite repeatedly replaying Sarah’s words promising future contact with me once she had spoken with her children about this unknown chapter in her past, I was fully expectant to never hear from her again.  Sarah’s age, her present life circumstances,  and the years of unshared history with her loved ones, all seemed heavily stacked against the likelihood of any movement away from the pressure of the status quo to maintain its powerful presence.  I fully understood the battle we all have between our longings to alter our present realities and the conscious, intentional persistency required from us to press against the well honed rhythms of our familiar to truly offset its stronghold in our lives.  It is perhaps the most poignant war site we have each repeatedly visited, where our idealized self attempts to lure our more rehearsed self into a new role that simply does not come easily.  The resistance within is remarkable to experience, for despite our theoretical openness to the anticipated change, our psyches and bodies exert a most intense effort to ward off these alterations.   It would be almost comical if it weren’t so perplexing and exhausting!   Despite the amazing strength of the human spirit, we are more prone to maintain the familiar than to erect a new creation… based on the energy requirement alone.  I could only imagine what energy had already been extracted from Sarah to deal with this past year of phone calls, letters, and medical interviews, somehow finding a way in the midst of her daily life to minimize the disruption these events had cause.  There would be no continuing contact from me nor from my once retained private investigator.  Life would, in some months time, return back to its normal quiet regarding this part of history, and the present day life and its time and energy demands would fill the spaces.    I knew that since Sarah had not shared the story of her teenage pregnancy and my resultant birth with her children over the twelve months during which these contacts had been made, it would be improbable that in the following months of increasing silence regarding this chapter of life, that she would ever reference it with them at all. I was peaceful with her decision as well as with my own and simply began to move through life, closing the pages on this part of my life’s history.  My gratitude to Sarah for the opportunity to write to her, to have received the medical history of the family, and to have heard her voice and her expressions of tenderness would forever be tucked in my heart.  I hoped that my contact with her had provided reassurances that would serve her days well as she continued to age and grow in wisdom.

As the next months unfolded, the busyness of my own life claimed the bulk of my attention, with an occasional focus on the few remnants that remained untended.   If I was to have opportunity to meet this “brother,” I would need to write my biography and get it mailed in to Patricia at the Adoption Registry.  The task seemed rather daunting, collecting photographs and writing paragraphs to reflect the major events in a life that had spanned several decades of time.  I continually mulled it over, but bogged down at the magnitude of it all, resorting to editing and re-editing proposed timelines that would serve as guides, but never seemed to result in the production of any words toward that intent!  As the weeks increased, the likelihood of my completion of this project seemed to diminish.  I continually wrestled with the image of an ideal self who would competently craft a biographical story against my actual self who refused to carve out the writing time in the midst of the pressure of my own status quo of living, or to struggle to find the right words to describe myself and the events in my life that had formed me into the woman I now am,  to scan and then import the photographs documenting the passage of time, or to even exhaustedly search for enough stamps to mail the darn thing!  My theoretical desire to have this biography completed was headlocked and being held down for the count by my resistant, undisciplined will to do anything about it!   Yes, my status quo could put up quite a fight which was easy enough to do when I couldn’t even get the other part of myself to climb into the ring!

Luckily, the “fight” (is it accurately referred to as a fight when only one opponent is showing up at all?) was momentarily put on hold when an updated address arrived for old “Put,”  James E. W _ _ _, my purported biological father.  It seems that his mailing address now showed him having moved into the Texas panhandle, a convenient location for a spy mission day trip!  Luckily, my trench coat could easily be pulled out of its storage box, slightly wrinkled, but still providing its camouflaged coverage.  Funny, while I could not seem to accomplish writing one word on a biographical expose of my character, I had no difficulty in playing a character who fancied herself as an accomplished spy! 

The detective within me sped herself down the highway to a small town known for a gigantic metal  cross that looms as witness to a family’s faith and their sense of calling to magnify The Story.  Magnify it they do, through its multi-stories-high steel presence cutting its way through the dust-filled, wind swept plains.  In this rural village, I practiced my slick inquiry skills, visiting the local Dairy Queen, convenience store, and six aisle grocery store,  posing as a long lost relative (a possible truth, after all!) who was constructing a genealogy for the family searching for a recent newcomer to the area, Mr. James W _ _ _.  Perhaps they knew him?  Now maybe it was just my own paranoia, but my sense was that a couple of residents hesitated a bit more than typical when responding, casting an air of possible constructed protection over old Put.  Their eyes seemed to scan my face to determine who I was in actuality, but their answers all resulted in a genuine unawareness of the man or a feigned ignorance of his whereabouts.  It seemed unlikely that someone could relocate into this area and the long time residents have no knowledge of their population ranks having recently increased.  The town was so small that the houses bore no notable addresses and the mail was neatly sorted into post office boxes in the brick and glass government owned building.  I found Put’s box number and loitered in the small parking area, watching a few people walk inside to claim their mail.  No one went to his particular box…either they were not him, or their recently purchased Blizzards and DQ chatter had put them onto my scheme and they were attempting to throw me off by avoiding that specified box number!  Either way, in time, I simply became a tourist spectator of the landmark cross before heading home without a parent sighting.  As elusive as Bigfoot, old Put had given me the brush off yet once again!  Clever in his movements, I was arriving just after he had left the territory.  Some could and would verify his former abode, while others would appear reluctant to speak of his mythological presence.  But at least I could console myself with the continuation of his legend, indicating that he was apparently still alive and kicking somewhere, if only to leave tracks of dust behind him!  Like a MonsterQuest episode, I would leave empty handed, my state-of-the-art equipment engaged, but ineffective to capture a  documented sighting!  I would not let that circumvent my belief that someone does indeed lurk around out there, taunting me with his illusive nature, leaving just enough of a hint of his presence to bait me!  I would be back and I could be just as determined to find as he might be to hide!    

It was on the drive home that an empowering personal epiphany began to emerge.  Clearing its way out of Put’s dust and Sarah’s drawl was an emerging genetic equation predicting a better than average chance for my own longevity, and at my numerological place in life, that was welcomed indeed!  It seemed safe to entertain the idea that based on the ages of these biological providers, I was only now entering the midpoint of my years…with a lot of living yet to be done!  With friends whose parents had followed much shorter trajectories, it appeared that, thanks to Put and Sarah, my own DNA combination should hold up for more than just a few additional rounds!   I smiled as I began entertaining fanciful pictures of the future. Sometimes there is nothing  like a good mathematical calculation to get the juices flowing…now where are those hiking boots, get me a diving tank, and when do I start those sky diving lessons?

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