Coming through

Today I received a card with a note and some snapshots from our last visit with my birthfather's family, sent to me by my uncle's wife (which I suppose makes her my aunt!). These are the neatest people, and it's an honor to know them and a thrill to be related to them, although our relationship is so very new.

They have embraced me and my family so fully that it makes me even sadder that I will never know my birthfather. Would he have been as warm and welcoming? Would it have been different, since I would have been his own child, not the child of a sibling?

My birthfather died on June 1, 1967. I would have been just over eight months old at the time. What was I doing that day? Could I tell that he was gone? Do children have that sort of connection to their biological parents? I do believe that permanently removing a child from his/her mother's arms and placing him/her in another's does lasting damage to his/her ability to trust and to feel safe again, but how deep is the biological connection? I can't imagine that I didn't feel anything when my birthfather's helicopter crashed, but maybe I didn't. All through my life I've fantasized about finding him, finding the father I dreamed of, the father that would somehow make up for the adoptive father I was given, so there was no instinct that told me he wasn't around anymore, even though he was dead before I spoke my first word.

But his death isn't negotiable, and I have to go from this place and connect with those who are left. And how wonderful that connection has been. I didn't get the outcome I dreamed of, but perhaps I got more than I ever expected. My grandmother told me recently that I've been a real blessing in their lives, since I contacted them last fall. And that makes me feel so good, but it's also true that they have blessed my life. Even as I was braced for the worst (suspicion, rejection), I have been overwhelmed with the best possible reception.

And perhaps that is how the fear and the mistrust that has shadowed me my whole life will finally find another home.