I've been silent here since then, so some updates are in order. A lot happened very quickly once my information arrived. Armed with my birth mother's maiden surname, I found the first clue about her family with the first Google search I attempted. Within a few days I knew the basic outlines of the story.
I wrote that I had felt "three decades of joy and heartbreak" in one evening, and if anything I feel both emotions even more strongly, now that know more. The first thundering revelation which that September evening brought was that my birth mother had died several years ago, of natural causes. After all these years of searching for myself and others, of second-guessing and double-checking every fact and conclusion and feeling the exultation when a fact was verified, I will never forget feeling as trapped by truth as I did that night. Every detail fit, every single one. There was no escaping it: she was gone and we would never meet.
The second discovery, which took some work to verify, was that my birth parents had married a few years after my birth and had other children. No father was named on my original birth certificate (I've since learned this is near-universal for Ontario adoptees because of legal restrictions on unmarried fathers putting down their names) but the details of the husband named in her obituary matched the profile I had. I had half-expected this since they both told the social workers they would likely marry eventually, but it was a shock to find it really did happen and that I had full siblings.
In a few weeks I had my father's mailing address and then I fell into a deep well of paralyzing self-doubt and uncertainty. Googling names was one thing: if you fail, try different keywords! This was a living man and I would only get one shot at an intro: what the hell do I say? The words of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock came to mind:
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
"Decisions and revisions": plans formulated then abandoned, letters half-composed then deleted and forgotten. As I sniffed the faint online traces of the lives of my "new" relatives, I felt indeed like I was hearing muffled voices "from a farther room", and as the weeks wore on and I maintained my silence I felt increasingly like a creep, a stalker even, and had to forcibly remind myself that I had justifiable reasons for both my interest and my delay.
Finally, at work in the middle of one autumn afternoon I decided to force the issue. I had a letter in the mailbox for that afternoon's mail pickup. It was polite, friendly, a bit cool. I started by giving my adoptive name and birthday and said I was adopted. I then gave my birth name and my natural mother's name, said that I knew she had died and that she had been his wife, and finally said that I believed he was my natural father; I didn't make reference to any other recent information I had about them including the existence of children. I gave a short bio and wrote that I was interested in corresponding and eventually meeting, and gave him my mailing address, email, and phone number. Of course, for the next few weeks I obsessively checked all of them. (If I had it to do again, I would've left off the cell number as the thought that he might try calling me anytime there was the cause for a lot of unnecessary panic.)
Three weeks later, I got a reply letter. I had steeled myself so completely for any sort of negativity or rejection that I'm told I was completely emotionless while reading it. If so I was bracing for a blow that never came, as the letter was all I could ever have hoped for: friendly, inviting, warm. He proposed a meeting soon, and one week and two brief phone conversations later, we all met (him, his children, and I). We talked for many hours and shared photos. There are people who take after only one parent or neither, but I am not one: I'm very much a blend of both. Mostly of my mother, but in the right light and with the right expression I am a spitting image of him.
The first meeting was a few months ago and the road since has been a long one, with many new faces along the way. The number of in-person meetings is still quite small but we've been in touch over email, phone, and Facebook. It's early days still but I can already feel things transitioning from the short to the medium-term, where the issue is finding a comfortable position for the future. How can you be someone's brother when you've only just met? Do I treat them as something like cousins, i.e. relatives who you get together with at holidays and for the odd dinner, or as something more?
There are many things I regret about the course of events and while I have no wish to be burdened by them or allow them to obstruct the reunion, I think of them all the same. The regret I own is not having done all this earlier. I first contacted the provincial disclosure registry in 1996, but on learning of their colossal wait times I abandoned any hope they would help me and didn't sign up until seven years later, after she was gone. I also could have looked earlier and harder. To my fellow searchers I say, don't rush but please don't think you have all the time in the world either.
A year ago, empty of knowledge and full of anticipation, I could never have believed I would have come so far in such a short time. If I was afraid of something then, it was of learning nothing at all, i.e. getting a disclosure veto. (Now I know I was guaranteed never to get a veto for the grim reason that only my mother was entitled to file one.) I would not have been surprised at how much this has obsessed me and frankly I don't regret that obsession; thinking hard about things has led to being careful and attentive, and that was a help when events picked up their pace.
A year ago, I was prepared to be shocked and amazed, joyful and heartbroken, fearful and exuberant, and I was all of those things. Above all the welcome and all the pain, though, is the gift of Truth, of knowledge I never had before. That apple was always mine even if once it was too high for me to reach, and no matter the outcome I will never regret taking it.
