As my adoption and reunion story continues, I’ve changed some names, places, and dates.
“Have you talked to Jack?” my birth mother Linda asked in early October of 2015. I told her I hadn’t emailed my birth father since the week he had given me the bad news that we needed to stop communicating for a while. Linda digested the information for a moment.
In the months I had gotten to know her, Linda had become a good friend. We were very comfortable talking to one another. An hour or 90 minutes of conversation would always fly by. She had even given me good advice about my mother, since her own mom had been an alcoholic.
“Why don’t you just send him an email to say hello?” she asked.
“Oh Linda, I just don’t know,” I said. “I really want to keep laying low.”
“I think a brief email isn’t going to hurt anything. Why don’t you think it over?” And I did for 24 hours. It had been two months since Jack and I had communicated, so I certainly would not be reaching out to him too soon.
Finally, in the words of Linda from earlier that year, I said “screw it” and sent him a two-sentence email. Imagine my shock at getting a reply just three hours later asking if we could have a phone call the following Thursday! I could hardly contain my joy.
Jack was his cheerful self that Thursday evening. It was such a relief to hear his voice. I told him about my earlier fear that he and I may never speak again.
“Amy, that is never going to happen,” he said. “In fact, I wondered if that’s what you were thinking a couple months ago. I’m sorry that you went through that.” I burst into tears of joy upon hearing the news, then apologized for being emotional. As the father of two other daughters, he said he understood.
Jack then told me that he had offered to share my letter with his wife Dawn, but she still wasn’t ready to see it. He once again felt confident, however, that in time she would realize I didn’t mean any harm and would finally accept things. I wasn’t as confident, but then again, he knew her better than I did.
We caught up with one another and as we finished our conversation that night, he mentioned something interesting.
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you this,” he said, “I think you look a lot like my youngest sister. Although I am a man, and sometimes we’re way off about these things.”
“Oh really?” I replied. “Is she on Facebook? I’d love to see her picture.”
“I’m certain she is. She’s very tech savvy that way.” He gave me her name and her husband’s name and mentioned that she was a friend of his on the site. I wrote everything down, and we said our goodbyes.
Of course, I couldn’t wait to see his sister, and I looked her up right away. I literally gasped and my hands flew up to my mouth. We looked nearly identical!