The Journal Of The InnKeeper

So I'm sitting around, playing on the computer, haven't gotten out of my chair all day except for biological necessities and to change discs in the DVD player. It's 2:15 in the morning and I'm playing with this online DVD database thingy (that I will write about later). Page loads are going slow, my movie just ended, and I'm wishing I was closer to my goal ending point of data entry for the night, so I'm compulsively hitting my "check inbox" button.

The last thing I expected was for my inbox to refresh and show me an email from my long-lost biological father's girlfriend.

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I was adopted as a baby. 15 days old, to be exact. My parents (my adopted parents, who will always remain "my parents") never kept this from me or my sister, who was also adopted from another family. We were always told that we were children of the heart, not the stomach. My parents wanted so badly for children, but my mother couldn't have them, so God brought us to them from a less direct route.

I gave up on God years ago, but the sentiment is still intended to be nice. Other than some serious personality clashes with my family, I do love them and they are basically good people. Every mistake my parents ever made was at least motivated by their love for us. Anyone who has known me for any length of time should be quite familiar with my rants about my family, but one thing I have never doubted was that my parents loved me and wanted the best for me. It's just that their idea of "the best" and mine didn't always match up.

Anyway, my sister was not so content with being adopted. She had abandonment issues and they manifested, predictably, in her relationships with men. She spent a great deal of energy and money trying to track her bio-parents down. I, on the other hand, made cursory inquiries whenever something happened to catch my attention about it, but otherwise tended to forget I was adopted most of the time.

California has a closed-adoption policy and it is impossible to get to those records once they are sealed. We are allowed to fill out Contact Permission forms, which the county and/or agency then file away, giving them permission to give out our contact info if the other family member comes looking for it. I filled out my permission slip, but never got a reply. Naturally, my brief searches didn't turn up anything. But one day, my sister was contacted by a social worker from the East Coast who ran across her ads and inquiries. She offered to look for my sister's bio-parents for no charge (but she does accept donations). She works for an agency that reunites separated families and they're non-profit. My sister jumped at the chance and very quickly, her bio-mom was located.

I won't go into too many details about her search, since it's her story to tell. I'll just say that my sister learned a very important lesson about on which side the grass was actually greener.

Fast forward a few months, and the social worker, Cher, contacted my sister again. In the course of their previous conversations, it was revealed that I was also adopted, and Cher was emailing to ask if I would be interested in locating my bio-parents. My sister asked my permission, I said sure, why not? I had mild curiosity, and a desire to have medical questions answered. Mostly I wanted to know where I got certain traits of mine that were so vastly different from my adopted family.

So Cher emailed me, asked a few questions that I had to forward onto my mom to answer (who was really great about all this, being very careful to let her concern for us minimize any jealousy she might have about being "replaced" as our mom).

Then one day, I'm at work, lifting a rather heavy piece of truss in the rain, when my phone rings. I don't recognize the number so I don't answer. A voicemail is left. At my next opportunity, I listen to my voicemail. A woman's voice tells me that she located my bio-mom, do I want the info?

I call her back and find out that my bio-mom is named June (which apparently my mom knew but I didn't), and currently lives in Denver, CO, and here's her number. So I call her. We talk. Turns out my bio-mom, bio-granddad and bio-half-sister all read as voraciously as I do. She was a tomboy and in the military. Bio-granddad worked in computers for IBM and has a thing for photography and has been an avid user of Photoshop since the early days. Bio-mom and Bio-sis make jewelry and are very arts-and-craftsy. Hmmm, if I had any doubt these were my relatives, I'm convinced now.

I also find out my bio-dad is named Paul but Cher is unable to locate him. Apparently he is the Third. She located a phone number for a Paul, but only in the middle of a very upsetting conversation did she discover it was for the Second ... his father. Worse than that, Cher had been talking to his mother. Neither of whom knew of my existence. The conversation was unpleasant.

So were the subsequent conversations. Paul, apparently, has gone to great lengths to cut off contact with his parents and they were unable or unwilling to help. Paul's siblings also could not help. So I was left with a name, age, and a city of birth for my bio-dad. I did some people searches online, but was not compelled to pay money for those searches that supposedly have the information I'm looking for. I came up with a handful of addresses all attached to someone with his name. So I sent several copies of an introduction letter to each Paul I found.

I received only one response. It came with no return address and it said he was not the Paul I was looking for.

So, I stopped searching and developed a relationship with the half of the family tree I was able to meet. I was the photographer in my half-sister's wedding and in a cousin-by-marriage's wedding and I travelled to Texas to meet my bio-grandad on his birthday. Occasionally, those services I used to search for Paul sent me reminders and I considered trying to contact him again, but I never seem to get around to it.

And then tonight ...

As I sit here, clicking the "Check Mail" button over and over again, the status bar appears, disappears, appears, disappears. Then finally, the page refreshes and shows me an unread message. It has his name in the subject line.

I open the email. A woman introduces herself as the girlfriend of someone named Paul. She found the letter I wrote last December and was disturbed that he had not mentioned it and had not responded to me. She is concerned that she is overstepping her bounds, but she believes it is important to help us make contact. She gave me a couple of details about her boyfriend that correspond with the data I now have for my bio-dad, such as his birthday and high school. She mentions that he admits to possibly having a daughter somewhere but gave no details.

I think this may be him.

I'm a little bit stunned at the unexpectedness of it all, but that's kinda how it happened with my bio-mom too. But I don't have any other real emotional attachment to this situation. After all, I made peace with my adoption so many years ago that I don't even remember ever being at odds with it. I've always had a curiosity, but no real drive to seek them out. My adopted family made it very, very clear to me that blood does not make a family, so I don't really have any of that obligatory love that so many other people do. I don't love anyone just because of their familial connection to me. I love people for who they are. It's part of how I can go on this crusade for being "out of the closet". My "love" for family, or the fear of loss of their love for me, doesn't hinder me in anything I do because I can't really love anyone who doesn't truly love me, and part of that includes respecting who I am and *knowing* who I am.

But that's a different rant.

So here I sit, processing over whether I have any emotional reaction to this turn of events or not. And I'm wondering if I will get this last puzzle piece filled in and what the final picture will look like.

Looks like my 31st year will be just as interesting as my 30th year was.