Tuesday night, January 16th was the next time we spoke. I asked my youngest son, Kevin if he wanted to be introduced to my birth mom? He said ‘of course!’ so we texted Sherry to see if she was ready. We spoke for a good two hours, first speaking of the tournament and then speaking with Kevin about school, friends and his thoughts on being the only ‘kid’ at home. We also introduced our labradoodle named Sage who was trying to get our attention by moving across our laps to get in the best position for constant petting. See her picture below!
As we talked about our family with Sherry – we also met Gary, her husband for the first time. He was the first person she told about me and it was he who really encouraged her to start searching. Kevin decided we should walk up our stairwell and by holding the computer, we could show them both all the pictures of our family on the wall. It was certainly just a snapshot of our lives, but another way to share more about the family. I also shared that I haven’t had a relationship with my adopted parents in almost 20 years which as one would expect would leave a significant gap in my personal life. Quite honestly I have had such incredible support from my husband, children, my brother David and his parents that I didn’t recognize there even was a gap. Sherry’s first words were ‘I am so sorry’ and that family means everything to her. Of course I responded that it was clearly not her fault emphasizing the support that I have had over the 20 years.
We started speaking every 2-3 days using FaceTime as often as possible concentrating our conversations on different aspects of our lives and inevitably for at least 2 hours. One evening Sherry spent some time discussing her medical background in more detail. We had learned earlier in the month that in 2012 both of us had hip replacements – mine was my left hip and hers was the right hip. High blood pressure runs in the family and I just learned that I needed to start a diuretic even though my weight and exercise regiment told the doctor differently. This is where family history can certainly help! Another interest of mine was this incredible vocal ability that several of my children have. Unfortunately this does not come from my mother’s side so something to investigate more from my father’s family.
Also during this month of January we decided on a date to meet face to face which was going to be President’s Day weekend. So we started planning what this would look like, where to meet, etc.
Family connections were important to both of us. For me it began with meeting my new brother Tony and for Sherry I introduced her to my husband Andy. Snippets of our conversations including everything from learning that ‘the apple is still on the tree’ since both my birth mother and I enjoy shopping 🙂 and sharing our common interest in the company Best Buy. My brother Tony has been working at Best Buy for several years, we knew one of Dick Schultz’ (founder of Best Buy) daughter whose son was a buddy of our son Kevin and we tend to buy most of our appliances there. They found Andy quite humorous and enjoyed his stories of various aspects of our lives with his version a slight twist of my truth – haha! Tony was equally fun, really open and seemed to be excited to discover he has another sister! I also had a chance to share messages with my new sister Kristen who lives in Virginia but like me does a fair amount of travel for work so it has been more challenging to connect. My older children asked that I share their phone numbers with Sherry so she could start to connect with them directly and I met Tony’s son Dylan on another FaceTime call. I scheduled another time to speak with my younger sister, Angi and her children which I was really looking forward to!
At this point, I was pretty encouraged on my birth family discovery. Questions still remained for me like; would they really like me? even love me? What does this new family means to me? How will my family respond? How does a mother-daughter catch up on 52 years? How does a sister catch up with her new brother and sisters? Will I be nervous, excited, sad, or… ??