Reunion; Take Two

I haven't heard from my biological mother, Camille, in about five and a half years. I sent her flowers a few weeks ago. A bouquet of gerber daisies, if you're curious. I remember when I visited her home, on our very first meeting, she had gerber daisies out on her dining room table. They are one of my favourite flowers, so naturally I commented on them. Camille told me they were her favourite. Funny how I vividly remember those flowers, and yet everything else from that night is a blur.

Why on earth would I subject myself to further rejection? I'm not sure. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for punishment. Or hopelessly optimistic...

Dear Camille,

I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately and felt compelled to write to you. I’m so sorry that our first reunion didn’t work out. It was very difficult for everyone involved, but I can’t help think it was hardest on you.

You’re the one with the painful memories of a teenage mother, who seemingly had no choices. You’re the one with hurts as an adult of probably the worst timing for a reunion, when you were trying to start your own family. It makes me cry just to think of this sorrow that I brought back up to the surface for you. I know sorry isn’t a big enough word, but it’s all I can give.

I’m not writing to bring back bad memories, though I’m sure I have even by having my name on the outside of this envelope...instead I just want you to know that I’m still here. I’ve grown up a bit more, have a few more years behind me, a few more grey hairs, and a bit more life experience to know that I should have been a lot kinder and more gracious in our first reunion.

I hope you are doing well. I think of you often, and wonder how life has been to you these last few years. I’ll be turning 28 in a couple of months. Wow time flies. Life’s too short for me not to give this relationship another try.

Lesson learned for next time: slower is better. I still can’t believe we met on the very first night! So much for my impulsive teenager-like tendencies! I promise I’ve grown up past that, well, mostly!

Let me just close with, I’m still here. Still interested in knowing you. 

Haley

-----

It's been a few weeks now. Still haven't heard anything from her. If I'm very honest with you, I'm not surprised. Disappointed? Hmmmm, mildly. But I have many people in my life that love me, care about me, actually want to invest time in me. I can't get hung up on the one that doesn't. Well, I could, but I'll try not to...

Happy Belated Father's Day

Due to our postal strike in Canada, I have had to delay this post until my Dad received his card! Only a few weeks late...I believe he got it in the mail on Thursday. This will be a rare fast-forward glimpse into our reunion. I've had the pressure turned up on me to get to the present story, so here's me caving to pressure, yet again :)
-----

Today I stood in front of a wall of Father's Day cards.

I don't even send cards every year to my parents for Mother's Day or Father's Day. Our family believes in the conspiracy theories about the corporate card companies scheming to steal pennies from innocent card-giving victims on pseudo-made-up-holidays. But sometimes I do send them, and I thought it was especially important this year of all years.

I chose my Dad's card first. That one was easy,

     From your Daughter on Father's Day
     If I had asked God to give me
     the best Dad in the world...
     His answer still would have been you! (...)

Now for Kevin's card. The first ever Father's Day card he's going to receive from me. I wept.

So many cards with sappy poems...
So many with fond memories of childhood...
So many with the cute little girl standing on her Daddy's feet...
So many tears.

I couldn't see through the tears, so I'm not certain that there were many strange looks shot my way, but I suppose it's likely there were.

I'm torn in half standing in front of this wall. I have a Dad, and now I have a new Dad, and I don't want to hurt my Dad, and I want to include my new Dad, and am I even allowed to call him Dad?

I choose this, the only one that seems right,

     I'm thanking God for you, Dad...
     and praying your Father's Day is happy and blessed.

I think that's a pretty good gift. He gets to share the title now, Dad. Hope all of my Dads are ok with that.

To fake or not to fake

Email to Linda, from Haley; March 22, 2011

Hi Linda,

I often wear my heart on my sleeve, so if I express emotions I hope that doesn't scare you! I just try and be really honest about what my reality is. I never want to be the kind of Christian that pastes on a happy face and gives the impression that following Christ is a cakewalk. That's my reasoning behind the 'heart on my sleeve' mentality :)

I appreciate very much the fact that you are all trying to be very sensitive to me. I'm probably a handful to keep up with! I know that one email I sent to Kevin was probably not as sensitive as it could have been, but he was so gracious about it. I know I don't always have the censor that I probably need to have, so I hope you're ok with telling me when things are too much as well. (...)

I don't really know too much about Catholicism, so feel free to educate me! I'm very interested in learning more about what you believe. We would love to attend a service with you when we're out in April; I really want to see your church! Do you dress up when you go? Our church is pretty casual, so we often wear jeans.

Linda, I'd be delighted to chat with you on the phone. I'm sure Kevin probably told you about our phone call, but it was soooo much better than skype, and much less awkward. There's just something about one-on-one that's better for me too. I can definitely be shy and I especially don't like large groups, so I think a phone call would be great. (...)

Hope you have a great day! I look forward to our chat!

Blessings, Haley

-----

I can't decide what's harder. Living life pretending to be happy, or actually letting people see inside my heart. I've done both, and most of the time I think being authentic is the way to go. But sometimes, especially when I feel really vulnerable, I wish I could go back to pasting on a happy face. As much energy as putting on a facade takes, it feels like that might be easier than letting someone in to see the real me.

Though I would like to hide behind a smile, eventually it will come out that I'm just a broken girl. Desperate for healing, craving acceptance, thrilled that anyone would want to phone me even if it's just to find out what my favourite foods are. 

Better to be the real me; I don't think I have the energy to fake it if I wanted to. 

Great Expectations

Email to Haley, from Linda; March 22, 2011

Dear Haley,

To begin, I want to tell you how relieved I am that you are feeling better. On Sunday, I spent an hour and a half writing you an e-mail only to have Kevin tell me not to send it! E-mails are really tough for me since we interpret them through our own lenses. So what I thought would be a warm and comforting letter for you, Kevin thought differently and said it may be too much! Oh well, soon we’ll have a face-to-face visit which I am really looking forward to! (...)

Kevin keeps telling me to keep the e-mails simple so I will follow his advice. I thought it would be nice to phone you and ask about the kinds of foods you and Nick like to eat. It would give us a chance to talk and to feel more comfortable with each other! (...) I love heart to heart, one-on-one talks! I certainly look forward to these talks with you (if you are willing) I can’t wait to hear all about you...every little detail!

In Christ,
Linda

PS In regards to one of your e-mails to Kev...Kevin is right...you can’t screw anything up! Haley we don’t have any expectations! It’s hard to disappoint people when they don’t expect anything...really :) We are grateful that we can get to know you and we will take things one step at a time!

-----

She's so sweet. I am completely impressed by this woman. I still can't get over how she could welcome me into her family, without even knowing who I am. "I can't wait to hear all about you...every little detail!" Am I ready for that? I guess I'm going to have to be!

Can you believe this thing about no expectations? No expectations? As much as I have tried to keep my expectations low, to protect myself from disappointment, I still have expectations. I don't think I could define what they are, but there are definitely hopes and they are growing rapidly. 

It's sort of impossible not to have expectations, don't you think? 

Planning a Visit

I feel like I haven't written in so long that I forgot where I was in the story!

Quick re-set; had our first Skype call, I had a little meltdown, then Kevin and I talked on the phone and I calmed down a bit, Nick and I discussed and decided to do a visit.

Email to Haley, from Kevin; March 21, 2011 

Hi Haley,

I enjoyed the call as well, it isn't often I don't have something to say, and at times I was at a loss for words!

Great to hear you're going to jump in and come visit, in my calendar the 16-17 is better, and Linda is going to check her outlook and let me know this morning, and I'll ph you this afternoon. (...)

I'm glad to hear you're doing better, e-mail is a double edged sword for sure, more time to think writing, more time to misinterpret reading! (...)

I'll talk to you later Haley, I know once the arrangements are made, the kids will be excited, and Sarah can begin prepping her long golden hair! (ha ha)

Kevin
-----

Kevin called me in the afternoon, and we tried to pick a weekend. Who knew it would be so complicated? There was Easter weekend in there, Nick and I already had plans to go to Invermere, another weekend we had volunteer commitments, I think Daniel had a scout camp one weekend, and Amy had a birthday date with her Mom another weekend. It looked like June would be the earliest date. *sigh* How on earth could I wait three more months?

Later that day, and after 3 or 4 calls we finally picked a date that was nearly perfect. Can you believe that my dear sister Amy willingly gave up a birthday night out with her Mom, just to meet me? What a treasure that girl is. She had already emailed me that she was going to a concert in Seattle by one of her favourite artists, and that it was going to be a special evening out, topped off with a night spent in a hotel! I knew she was really looking forward to it, and I didn't want to be associated with taking away a treat like that. But Amy was so gracious, and seemed to be more excited about meeting me than a night out. They still planned to attend the concert, but would only miss a few hours with Nick and I, not a whole day.

Just over 5 weeks from today, Nick and I will meet them all face-to-face! I don't want to sell him out here, but Kevin sounded so excited on the phone, it was kind of like talking to an eager child a few days before Christmas. I was also looking forward to a visit, but had enough anxiety to temper the excitement down to a more palatable level. I hope that didn't come across on the phone as ambivalence...

It's all about me.

When I started to share my story through this blog, I mistakenly thought it was all about me. I needed to write to process all my feelings, to keep them from swirling around in my head. Big life change, lengthy mental processing needed.

At the beginning of the reunion, I used up all my free time with my husband talking on and on about my new family. At dinner, on date night, during hockey games. Note to self: Don't talk to your husband during a hockey game unless your sentence has the word 'wings' or 'pizza', preceded by, "do you want more ______"? He's not interested in hearing about the latest email from my little sister when the game is in overtime. Trust me, that email was way more interesting that the overtime period.

My friends, surprisingly, were not all interested in every moment of my reunion tale. One even interrupted me in the middle of my story, and said, "oh no, I didn't mean I wanted to hear all of that, I just wanted to know it was going well." Oh. So you don't want me to ramble on for hours at a time? I listen to you talk about your kids for hours, I guess it doesn't go both ways.

I needed another outlet, and a blog seemed to be a good choice. It helped me untangle weeks of pent up thoughts and emotions. Unpacking story by story was incredibly helpful to my mental health.

I haven't felt the compulsion to write every day for a while; *spoiler warning* I do have a post saved up about Father's Day, but with the mail strike in Canada, I didn't want to post it until my Dad actually got his Father's Day card, since the post is all about choosing Father's Day cards.

Since I stopped writing for a few weeks, I've been getting bombarded with advice as to how to 'cure writer's block' or 'just jump ahead to the present story'. I was told that a certain member of my new family now sleeps in again, because she used to get up early to see what I had written, and now doesn't bother. Ouch.

Ok, I can take the hint! It's important to them to meet me here at the blog every morning. They get a glimpse of me, of my heart, answers to questions they might be too shy to ask, something extra that helps them process this reunion thing too.

And here I thought the blog was all about me...

The real question is, when will they read the new post! Since they're not in the habit of checking every day... :)

Writer's Block

Last week I was explaining to someone (whose name I'll kindly neglect to include) that it was often challenging to write the blog. This person affectionately teased me saying, 'you're not even writing anything, you're just using other people's emails anyway'. Yep. That's what I'm doing, and yet I'm stuck. Now I know what it feels like to not know what to say next; what writer's block feels like.

I spent an entire day today reading through old emails and struggling with what part of our story to share next. I'm still getting nowhere. So much for just copying other people's emails to me; if that's all I was doing, then I shouldn't be stuck...

If I'm a bit more erratic with posting, now you know why. I'm going to try and muddle through, but it might be more sporadic than I'm used to.