Just Celebration

Byrd Baylor wrote a lovely children’s book in 1995 called I’m in Charge of Celebrations. In it, many oft overlooked reasons to celebrate are memorialized with a special day such as Dust Devil Day or The Time of The Falling Stars and more. Ms Baylor would be proud of the proclamation that my new sister sent me this morning- New Family Day!

Exactly one year ago today, I mustered the courage to send a message to my biological mom’s children. In June of 2018, I learned her identity and that she’d passed away 10 weeks prior. (See my first blog post for this full story.) One of the most agonizing aspects of the days following my new knowledge of Jan’s identity was the dilemma about if/how to reach out to her family and if/how they’d receive my introduction.

On the morning of July 14, 2018, I copied and pasted the letter that I’d crafted, revised, and rerevised into a Facebook message for Katie, Betsy, and Joe – my three maternal half-siblings. (I’d meant to send it also to Jan’s husband, but his contact info proved harder to find.)

To say I was terrified would be an understatement. There would be no going back after hitting send. I had to prepare myself for rejection, life-disruption, and any number of other possibilities that my imagination conjured. There aren’t enough Brené Brown books in the world to describe the amount of vulnerability I felt as my finger hovered over the return key that morning. Perhaps sadly, the only way I mustered the courage to press it was to zero out my expectations. While I had great, unspoken hopes for what could happen, my expectations had to go through a thorough purging. Only if I expected nothing, could I risk hearing or gaining nothing from my introduction.

I sent it. They received it.

Fast forward one year. Many hours on phone and FaceTime calls, several flights back and forth to visit, new memories being made, and even an introduction of one of Jan’s daughters to my adoptive parents (surreal is the only word for that day). We are adjusting to new normal. Nothing can take away the pain of never getting to meet my birth parents, but God’s timing is perfect. The gift of new family to share life with (including my new paternal half-brother… that one deserves a blog post of its own – coming soon) in my second half is more than precious and a perfectly good reason to proclaim New Family Day as a reason to celebrate.

A Little Not-So-Light Summer Reading

You know how sometimes when you finish a hard workout you know you’re going to hurt really badly the next day (and even more the day after that and the day after that)? Well, I finished a book yesterday, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt for a while. This one has been sitting on my night stand for more than two years. I can’t remember where I first learned of it, but I remember hearing it would be a hard one. It was.

Bryan Stevenson’s haunting, often depressing, occasional-ray-of-hope-giving book, Just Mercy, has already started changing the way I see things. One hundred pages in, I found myself wishing it was fiction. After all, the similarities between the accounts he shares and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are striking. I didn’t want to believe that the world depicted on the pages was real. But it is real- not in a, “Wow, I can’t believe things worked that way a long time ago.” kind of real. It is real in 2019, and it promises to be real into the foreseeable future.

As founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending the poor, wrongly condemned, and others needing advocacy in the tangled web of our country’s legal system, Stevenson and his organization have become the voice of the voiceless. Working to remedy the effects of mental illness, poverty, childhood trauma, racist politics, and the wrongs done by negligent court appointed council, EJI has been responsible for exonerating many innocent death row convicts, fighting for humane treatment of the mentally disabled in the US prison system, and successfully arguing cases in the US Supreme Court to change the statutes governing sentencing and rehabilitation related to juveniles.

Every year, I give family members a copy of my “book of the year” at Christmas. Titles such as Small Great Things (Jodi Picoult), Braving the Wilderness (Brene’ Brown), and Wonder (R. J. Palacio) have made the cut. I make my selection based on the book’s tendency to linger after I’ve read it and whether I think it will help us to become better humans. As I read this one, I kept thinking that this would be the 2019 winner, but it has so depressed me after closing the back flap, I question whether anyone would ever again open my small, rectangular package under the tree.

It’s petty of me to act like my experience reading this book was hard. In comparison to the situations that Stevenson describes in the book, I don’t know hard. As Americans, we should be ashamed that the reality he describes still exists in the country we call great. From my perspective as a public educator, I have seen the early stages of life for kids like the ones he describes. Ask any teacher with a few years of experience, and they’ll tell you that the number of students arriving at school with trauma-related issues and/or tragic home lives has skyrocketed in the past few years. As a curriculum leader, my focus has had to expand beyond the content taught in classrooms to provide learning and support for teachers who often struggle to manage classrooms filled with students who need far more than reading and math instruction. Schools contend with increasing student needs, insufficient structures and funding for properly addressing these needs, a myopic focus on standardized test scores by lawmakers, and a savvy political machine set on discrediting public schools which are often the sole antidote for preventing the pipeline of future juvenile offenders. Maybe it’s just my leftover weariness from an especially hard school year, but all this has me feeling a little short on hope.

But Stevenson talks about that. Toward the end of the book he recounts the day he nearly quit. In one of his exhausted moments, he recalled the words of Thomas Merton.

We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.

He didn’t quit. He couldn’t. And we can’t either. In whatever way we were created to make the world better, we must. And at least in my case, this book challenged me to do more. A leadership adage I often remember is, “You are perfectly organized to get the results you are getting.” The results we are getting – children in trauma, prison pipelines being predicted based on poverty and reading levels, disparate experiences with the legal system based on the color of a person’s skin – can’t be the results we want. From a practical standpoint, I’m now reflecting on how I can do more. A few ideas come to mind: learn more about the legal system and how it is impacting vulnerable populations (the EJI website is a good place to start), read more texts from people of color to learn more about how my white privledge has limited my perspective about the struggles others face, speak boldly to bring awareness and light to places where we see disproportionality and injustice, volunteer – just start somewhere, show compassion and support to teachers who are working every day to ensure that students’ lives don’t end up on this path, or donate to EJI or other organizations dedicated to righting such wrongs. Basically, my goal is to have more empathy and let that empathy manifest in action, not just feeling.

This year, I’ve experienced a fair amount of the personal brokenness of which Thomas Merton speaks. I find comfort in thinking that there is beauty in that brokenness and that one outgrowth may be the deep compassion Just Mercy awakened in me. My prayer now is that I don’t go back to sleep.

An Abundance of Fathers

When I was a little girl, I loved getting to celebrate my wonderful dad each June when his special day rolled around. I know lots of people say this, but he really was and is the best dad in the world. He was a sucker for me, was always just a little too easy on me when I probably deserved him to be madder and meaner, and he faithfully provided for my mom and me every day without fail. He didn’t adopt me until he was 40 years old, so he had the benefit of age to soften around the edges and become a bit more mature than the average new dad. He turned 90 this year, and I think we’re all in a bit of disbelief about that fact. His sense of humor is still on point, the memories he can recall of his younger years are still detailed and more plentiful than my ability to recall things I did just last week, and his love for my mom and me is as strong as ever. He taught me what a dad is supposed to be, and I am better as a result of the selfless, humble model for living that he showed and continues to show me.

In 1992, I married Miles. In joining his family, I inherited a new father-in-law, Bill. What a character! Miles’ dad is as busy and personable today as he was the day I met him. His work ethic, desire to help others, and love of all things flying define him. His life as a pilot kept him away from home for stretches, but the love he has for his wife, 3 kids, and their families was a constant regardless of where an airplane took him. From him, my husband learned loyalty, the value of being productive, and the ability to have a soft interior even when the exterior might look tough. Over our 27 years, he has treated me like a child of his own, and I cherish having him nearby.

In 1998, Miles became a father for the first time. His previous determination to keep life calm and well organized were swept out the door as quickly as our first empty box of diapers. He has learned to beautifully balance relationship building with our daughters, work to provide for our family, and whatever hobby he happens to be focusing on at the moment. He seems to know just when to take the baton from me and run the next leg of the race in our parenting journey. During graduate school, this meant locking me in the guest room for the weekend so I could write papers while he did all of the grocery shopping, entertaining of kids, and making sure they were ready for school on Monday. These days, it means having weekly Friday afternoon phone chats with Mallory to talk through the events of life in college and making sure Avery is applying all of the driving rules he has taught her. Living with 3 women and 2 female cats can’t be easy for him, but we are better because he persists.

I thought 3 father figures in my life was all I’d have or need.

Sometimes life isn’t what you expect.

If you read my first blog, you know that during the past year, I’ve been living a version of what could be a TV documentary on adoption reunions. Last June, through the magic of Ancestry.com, I learned the identity of my birth mom. This revelation was immediately followed by the discovery that she’d passed away only weeks before her name appeared on my computer screen. Her husband, their three grown children, and their families have now become a very important part of my life. Her husband, Dave, whether he likes it or not, has now been adopted by a 4th child. During a year of immeasurable grief, he opened his life to me – a part of his late wife’s legacy that he was now able to love and come to know. From the moment we met, the care I felt from him can only be described as open hearted. He wasn’t my dad, and his wife didn’t know me, but we were undeniably family.

A few months after learning the identify of my birth mom, DNA magic happened again, and I was given the name of my birth father. Within hours, I learned that he, too, had recently passed away. Described as beloved, wise, funny, peaceful, and deeply caring, I am now getting to know his only child, Tom. If what I’m learning about my new half-brother is any indication of the kind of man my birth father was, I know I would have loved him too.

I didn’t post any pictures on Facebook or Instagram about my dad this year. I love my dad. In fact, I love all the dads with whom I’m blessed. It’s just that posting pictures of all of them feels like a bit much right now. Frankly, living in my skin feels like a bit much right now. There is lots to assimilate. Lots to consider. Lots to appreciate. Father’s Day was unique this year. And for the 5 men who are fathers in my life, I could not be more thankful.

Finding the sidewalk and my blog’s purpose

An odd hobby I have is going on college tours. Conveniently, I have daughters the right age for this hobby to be useful. I’m not exactly sure if I’d still tour as often without current/pre-college age children, but thankfully, this inconvenient question doesn’t need to be explored. One thing I’ve learned about touring colleges with my daughters is that the adults enjoy the experience far more than the teenagers. Adults often sappily reminisce and compare what they see to their glory days 20ish years ago. Teenagers, on the other hand, are a picture of awkwardness. They’re insecure around the older college kids they walk past, about the giant mountain of admissions information and the daunting process that lies before them, and about their annoying/embarrassing/old parents attached to them throughout the entire miserable experience.

Recently, on a lovely day in Austin, I toured the University of Texas with my youngest. All of the insecurities listed above were fully present. Add to that the fact that the tour guide had given me a large button signifying that I was an alumni of the school and made a fuss about it in front of the large group. The rolling eyes and forced smile on my teenager’s face spoke to who was having a better day.

Fast forward from the whole group slide show room to the walking tour of campus during what appeared to be a main passing period of the day. Hundreds of students bustled around campus, skillfully navigating each other and the vast campus that seemed to have doubled in size since I attended. Our posse of self-conscious high schoolers and reminiscent, curious parents ambled down a sidewalk in the midst of the tour. Seemingly in slow motion, I suddenly found myself with half a shoe on the sidewalk and the other half awkwardly grasping for ground that wasn’t to be found. Tilting forward, purse contents flying, tour guide jumping into action to try to soften my landing, en route to a serious face plant on the sidewalk. Luckily, I found my hands in time to break my fall, but the spectacle was no less dramatic. The small group of teenagers and parents hovered around me to assess the damage. The tour guide was realizing that they hadn’t trained him on what to do in moments such as this, and my sweet teenager was completely mortified.

As quickly as was humanly possible, I refilled my purse and jumped to my feet, eager to recover from the moment and assure everyone that all was perfectly fine. Heart pounding, looking straight ahead, getting back in step with the group walking (albeit more carefully) down the sidewalk, pretending that my palms weren’t aching and that my poor daughter’s chances at looking cool weren’t now totally ruined.

We survived that day. She even liked UT and asked for a t-shirt (our family’s unofficial ritual when a college becomes a contender). But the most memorable part of the day won’t be the admissions criteria, the tour guide’s words, or the photo in front of the iconic tower. The one thing I’m sure she and I will both remember were the seconds before, during, and after the great sidewalk disaster.

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I have done some research about how to be a good blogger. One thing people tell you is to be sure you have a clear picture of your target audience and your blog’s purpose. I’m having a hard time with this advice. Maybe this is because I haven’t decided whether my blog is for myself or for others. Writing is therapy to me. Occasionally, I’m brave enough to share my words with others. Doing so feels naked, vulnerable, scary, real. But the older I get, the more I am realizing that the world needs more vulnerable, unafraid, and real people (not more naked people, though, please). The response to my last blog serves as proof of this. Friends, acquaintances, and total strangers shared with me how they connected with my vulnerability and felt empathy for the difficulty faced by my birth mom in those circumstances. Some seemed genuinely shocked that I was willing to share my story with the world. Is this unguardedness truly that unusual? Maybe it is. Maybe it really is scary. But living this way is exhausting. It might be safer, but it definitely takes a different kind of toll. If we cannot show up as our real selves with each other – sharing our struggles, embarrassing moments, and fears – how much energy must we expend curating the image we present? What is the cost of denying the real self locked behind the facade?

I think I may have found my purpose and audience for this blog. I want my audience to be the people of the world willing to read my real self and not judge. I want my purpose for writing to be showing the world examples of how I (and others) have been vulnerable and real — and lived to tell the tale. It’s refreshing. It’s terrifying. But it’s the only way I want to be now that I’m in the second half.

Happy Birthday to Me

On February 1, 1969, a single, 20 year old woman gave birth to me in a hospital in Ada, Oklahoma, a town 769 miles from her home. Presumably, after my birth, I was placed in her arms. What a moment that must have been. She stared into the eyes of a child she’d conceived in uncertain circumstances within a culture of social revolution and the shame associated with being unwed. After a brief embrace that would have to last a lifetime, I was taken from her, delivered to a foster family, and 5 weeks later adopted by a loving, childless couple from Stillwater, Oklahoma.

I have had a wonderful life. My parents spoiled me. They protected me fiercely. All of my needs were met. I have gotten an education, acquired a faith, enjoyed extended family, married a wonderful man, and am raising children of my own.

All of my life, I’ve been grateful to the woman in that Ada hospital. I didn’t know her name, but I knew she gave me life. And I knew that she endured an unexpected pregnancy and felt that her only choice was to walk out of the hospital without her child. After giving birth to my own children, my gratitude and compassion for her deepened ten fold. Unimaginable.

Throughout my life, I’ve always tried to imagine the narrative. Who was the father? Were they in love? What was their story? How did she tell him? Did they cry together? Did they fight? How did she tell her parents? How did they react? What choices did she have? What led her to the path she chose? Did she have a best friend? What was her support system? Who did she live with during her pregnancy? Were they nice to her? What did she do during those long weeks? Did she stay in touch with the father? What were his thoughts? And then there were my birthdays… Did she remember my birthdays? Did my father know the day I was born? Did they ever talk again? Did they fall in love with new people? Did their later loves know the story? Did they count me among their children (if even just in their heads and not spoken aloud)? Did their other children know about me? Did she keep track of how old I was? Did she ever think about reaching out?

All of these wonderings played and replayed throughout the years. Not because I was dissatisfied with the life I had, but because there was a locked door inside of me I wasn’t allowed to open. Adoptions through the Oklahoma Adoption Agency were closed. Upon turning 18, I was able to request basic information about my birth parents – physical characteristics – but no identifying information was allowed. I could ask to be placed on a reunion list. If the other party/ies inquired about my whereabouts and my name was on this list, they could be connected with me. I was added to the list in 1987. I updated my information with every address change, and I waited.

Beyond this reunion list, I did not search actively. It crossed my mind often, but I never acted. I was always curious, but I didn’t want to interrupt someone’s life without their consent. I was grateful for the life they’d given me. That was enough, sort of. In recent years, I’d heard about DNA registries, but going down that path felt somehow forced. After all, if they’d wanted to find me, the reunion list was available. Why be pushy?

On April 26, 2018, while scrolling through Twitter, an ad caught my eye. Ancestry.com was having a sale. For $59.99, I could learn about my biological connections – geographical and maybe familial connections. I say maybe, because I honestly didn’t know. It just sounded intriguing. I did not a stitch of research on what I’d find. I didn’t compare this DNA service with others. I just impulsively clicked the link and purchased a kit. After it arrived at my house in a small white package, it sat for several days. What had I gotten myself into? What door/s would this open? Was I ready to go down this road? In a brief, courageous, reckless-feeling moment, I spit in the little clear tube and placed the kit in a mailbox.

A few weeks later, an email arrived notifying me that my results were available for viewing. I was busy at work. School was winding down, summer trainings were starting, I was about to leave for a college-visit road trip with my daughter, and I didn’t have time for an emotional interruption.

On the evening of June 1st, as my youngest daughter and I were settling into a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia in preparation for a fun, summer road trip to visit southeast colleges, I opened the email from Ancestry.com. The homepage seemed casual enough. I could click further to see an “ethnicity estimate”, “DNA circles”, or “DNA matches.” I hesitantly clicked on the DNA matches link. At the top of the page was a wide bar that said Parent/Child. Beneath that I read:

Jan (her last name was visible, but I’ll conceal it here)

Possible range: parent/child, immediate family member

Confidence: extremely high

Relationship: Jan (last name) is your mother

Deep breathing, feeling the heat rising in my chest, tears welling in my eyes, glancing to see if my daughter is noticing what is happening in the bed next to her. Heart pounding, I scrolled on. Many links to other DNA family members – “close relationship” “1st cousins” “2nd cousins” and on and on down a long, scrolling list of unfamiliar names. Beside some names were photos. Beside some were links to family trees. Various levels of “confidence” and various numerical values seeming to indicate parts of DNA code that until this evening I’d never known existed.

As any 21st century suburban mom would do next, I entered her name into my Facebook search bar. Three names appeared. After reviewing them and comparing them to the basic information I’d been given in 1987, I narrowed the field to the one logical match and began digging through her page. Small children, grandkids? Pictures of flowers! Kittens, cats! Bitmojis (this lady is hip!)! Young adult photos – children?! A man in a judge’s robe – a swearing in ceremony? Smiling proudly. An evident sense of humor in her posts and comments! Lots of resemblance to me, my children… And then…

an obituary. Dated March 22, 2018. Clicked the link. Not breathing. Head spinning. This is not real. Jan, wife of Dave, mother of Katie, Betsy, and Joe, grandmother of Hudson, Finn, Emma, Maggie, Annie, and Joseph, passed away ten…. weeks… ago.

Tears. A grief that I began to feel in my arms, legs, fingertips, stomach, neck. This could not be. For 49 years I’ve hoped to be able to open this locked door. Moments after I find the key, I find that the person standing behind the door was no longer a person I could touch, hold, thank, see.

Fast forward.

In the months following the long, long night of June 1st, much has happened. The results of that Ancestry email have opened doors to Jan’s family, the knowledge of my birth father (which is a story for another day, but it has led me to a new half-brother as well), new relationships, and so many answers that I never thought I’d have. I’m learning about Jan through her children and her sweet husband of 43 years. I am making much more sense to myself now. I know where I get certain traits. I have seen people who look like me. I have a health history for the first time in my life. I have new relatives in Indiana and New Jersey and Texas and Colorado and Georgia and Wyoming and Florida. I’m piecing it all together.

February 1, 2019 is my 50th birthday. Even without the events of the past 8 months, the day would be significant. But today it’s different. I have answers. With those answers come a confidence and clarity I’ve never known. Some days, the answers hurt; some days, the answers fill me with joy. The answers fill me with even greater empathy for Jan and the weeks she spent prior to my birth. They fill me with greater gratitude for my amazing adoptive parents who raised me with a confidence and the knowledge of my special story. And more than anything, they affirm to me that there are no accidents in this life. The winding path that is my life from a difficult beginning to a widening circle of love and the strange gift of timing, have only given me a deeper gratitude, awe of the divine, and appreciation for the rich array of people in my life.

None of us know the number of days we will have. In the 18,250 I’ve had so far, I’ve seen much, learned much, failed much, grown much, and loved much. As I look toward 18,251 and what may be the second half of this life on earth, I’m excited. I’ve heard that the physical aspects of this next half may be harder, but I enter it with a stronger sense of who I am, what I’m put here to do, and love for those in my current circle and those who my circle will grow to include. Happy Birthday to me.