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Reunion: Hearts on the Line, Page 4

Adjusting

When David signed the relinquishment papers, he was shown a small photo of his daughter. The image was etched in his memory. On the occasions when he'd want to talk about her, he'd tell me that, in that photograph, she looked like the daughter we had together, so I had an image as well. Of course, the image of an infant was frozen in our memories and, although we'd imagined her life over and over again, we were not prepared for the young adult who now confronted us.

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We both told her how happy we were that she had searched for and found us, that we'd wondered and worried about her all these years. She told us, quite emotionally, that she did not intend to disrupt our lives. She simply wanted to know where she came from, who she was, and wanted to have access to her medical history. She emphasized that she'd had a wonderful life and that she loved her adoptive family very much. We responded that we hoped she'd become part of our lives in time. Her adoptive mother said that she wanted us to know that Kerri had been well-cared for and that they had provided a good life for her, that she'd played baseball and been to Disney World. She cautioned us: "Kerri is very emotional about this. It may be some time before she contacts you again."

We both said that we understood. The time would give us an opportunity to adjust our own lives. We were already agonizing over how we'd tell our three teenagers that they had another sibling.

The next morning, I used the drug store's photograph copying computer to make collages of old and recent pictures, pictures of my husband and me from our wedding (he was just a little younger than her age now when we were married), pictures of David by himself, and pictures of our children. I handwrote little phrase bubbles for the photos on yellow sticky notes in perfect Palmer method and placed them carefully into the mailbox in a neatly addressed brown envelope, along with a handwritten note from David. I was surprised when David asked to see what photographs I had chosen for the collages before I had an opportunity to show them to him. He seemed to want to impress her, as a man will do with any new woman in his life. Everything had to be perfect. And that's what had come into our lives -- a new woman -- not the child emblazoned in memory. I felt challenged.

I sat at my desk and wrote several disconnected e-mail notes to Kerri, sharing information about her birth family and her ancestors. I had known several generations and felt I could be the most objective in relaying family traits, characteristics, and personalities. I wrote a chronologically complete family medical history, as much as I knew. I wrote little vignettes about each of my children, her half-siblings. I penned a couple of long notes, carefully describing the man with whom I had spent my life, the same man she had never known but to whom she was genetically connected. Suddenly, as though I'd had the wind knocked out of me, I gasped for air -- I realized that I was the only one about whom she didn't care. I was the only one without the common denominator. I felt cold and isolated. The more I tried to participate, the more disappointed and lonely I felt. I didn't belong to the secret society. Yet, at the same time, my arms ached to hold the child, a physical manifestation of the man with whom I'd built my life.

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