One Week!

This is the last week of my life as it is.  This time next week I'll be sitting at a coffee shop (probably Starbucks or something) at some yet unknown town across from my first parents.  Both of them.  Gulp.

I have some unwelcome distractions in my life right now.  Perhaps the silver lining is that it's keeping me from seriously freaking out about next week.  I feel like I've been waiting for this moment for forever.  Having to wait a month to meet her after she agreed didn't exactly help the situation.  It's frustrating at times because she's only an hour away.  Just one hour.  I could drive there tomorrow and see her.  Heck I could go right now.  I would never do that, but still.  It adds another layer.

I'm working on being a more patient person.  I am.  I haven't emailed my first father and demanded that he email me back and figure all this stuff out right now.  I didn't push to get the date moved up even though I wanted to.  I'm stressing quietly on my own.

It may not even happen.  She could still back out.  It's happened before.  I'm going to email her a pre-visit email this week.  I'm going to ask her if there's anything she would like me to bring with me.  I'm going to keep it super friendly and upbeat.  And I'm going to thank her again for agreeing to meet with me.  If that scares her off, then she wouldn't have showed up anyway.  My worst fear is that I'm going to get there and he'll be the only person there.  I know my first father wouldn't stand me up for anything.  He knows that if neither one of them showed up, I'd go find them and we all know they don't want that.  But I'm prepared to show up and hear him tell me excuses.  It could happen.  I'm only writing about it because I want to get it out there.  I want to purge my worries and set them aside.  And so that when I read back someday, I'll remember where my head was at.  You'd be amazed at how much I got wrong the last time.  I know I am anyway when I look back at the posts right before I met my first father (though to be fair, I had just started blogging and I've learned a lot since then).

What's more likely to happen is that I'll get there and she'll be there.  We'll smile, hug each other, and have a nice conversation.  I don't know what we'll talk about.  It doesn't even matter.  I'll hear more about how they don't want to tell my siblings.  I'll smile and nod, and Rudy will take over the conversation for a while while I regain my footing.  Then we'll hug each other goodbye and I won't want to leave.  Rudy and I will drive away with me not saying anything.  I'll either cry or not be able to stop smiling.  I'll get an email from my first father shortly thereafter and probably nothing from her.  And then I'll start to readjust.

Maybe there's a chance that things will change in the future.  Perhaps.  Life is a river, and I can't see up around this next bend.  We'll have to wait and see.  I have the highest hopes.

As for now, I'm going to enjoy this week.  Right now my first mother isn't a real person.  I can hold on to what's left of the fantasy (most of it's been destroyed already but some parts remain).  I'm going to say goodbye to who I am today and prepare to meet the new me in a week.  I know it's coming and I'll be prepared for that.  Thanks for reading!

Luck o' the Irish

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  If you're Irish, have a wonderful day celebrating your pride!  If you're not Irish but adopted into an Irish family (like me), have a great day celebrating your family's pride!  If you're not Irish, then have a fantastic day wishing you were Irish ;-)

I'm hoping that my proximity to real live Irish decedents will cause me to have good luck.  My mom is over 50% Irish and my dad is exactly 50% Irish.  If I was their biological kid, I'd be over 50% Irish.  And lets not forget that my sister is part Irish as well.  I'm surrounded by them.  And I might be English... Hehe!

Some luck might be nice.  I do have some major life events coming up and it's going to take a little bit of luck for them to go swimmingly.  So I need some of the luck of the Irish...  There are plenty of things that could go wrong when I meet my first mother in a little over a week, but so much that could go right too.  I'm going to focus on those things today!

Meeting my first mother could be the best thing that's ever happened.  I might see her and just know she's my mother.  I might feel connected to her in a way I've never felt before, something that non-adopted people take for granted.  Or I might not.  But with some luck, I'll at least feel something towards her.  I could see her and see all these  similarities between us.  Or maybe not.  I am a lot like my first father.  But still, he said there are some decent similarities between us, strong ones even, so perhaps that will be clear to me.  It might be really cool to see my two parents together.  I'm going to ask for a picture.  It might be the only chance I'll get.  Something could go wrong (like that time I forgot to ask for a picture when I was with my first father).  But with some luck Rudy will be able to take a nice picture.  So that could go really really well.  But most of all, I'm really hoping that my first mother and I get to connect as people.  There's something missing from the emails we shared over the past two years, even when things were good, and I'm hoping to find that at our face to face meeting.

With some luck we'll have good weather.  Nice weather as in the we can go for a walk outside somewhere kind of weather.  I don't do well sitting still.  At all.  It seems my first father doesn't do so great with that either. Actually, Rudy doesn't either.  So at least three of the four of us would feel better if we were moving as far as I can tell.  So nice weather would be appreciated.  Also, I can get a bit nervous sometimes, so it would be nice if I was able to control my nerves.  I'm working hard now to prepare.  I'm running, working on being relaxed, and preparing with Rudy.  All of these things are seriously helping my anxiety and I feel ten times better than I did before I met my first father.  I'm hoping to keep these things up.  The last thing I want to do is go to meet her with huge black circles under my eyes, tired and wound-up, and lose my ability to stay present in the moment.  So with a little luck I'll be well rested, calm with an appropriate level of excitement (enough for a healthy glow, not enough to scare her off), and the mental awareness to actually enjoy what's going on and remember it.

I'm not sure if my first mother will want anything to do with me after she meets me.  According to her, it's not me.  So it doesn't matter what I do, she's not going to want anything to do with me.  She's meeting me because she feels like I deserve at least that much.  She's not a bad person at all.  But she's coming because I asked her to.  And once we met, that could very well be it.  It'd be nice if it wasn't, but I have to respect her desire to not have anything to do with me after we meet.  So if that's what she wants, that's what she'll get.  She can control our relationship in the sense that it takes two to be in a relationship of any sort.  She can't control my other relationships though.  Those are mine and mine alone.

With a little luck, next week will go well and things will fall into place.  I hope and wish and pray that it does.  Maybe I'll just borrow some of the luck from my Irish family to get through it :-)

Exercise Update

If you squint, this is a treadmill

I've been keeping up with my exercising and boy does it feel good!  When I started my ten week program, I felt like I was going to give it my all, but probably wouldn't manage to make it through the whole thing.  When I was honest with myself, I didn't think I was going to make it past Week 2.  I pushed through, made adjustments, and powered on.

The first few weeks were brutal.  I barely made it through my workouts.  I felt discouraged but tried to think about my goals.  I was determined not to give up.  I had told my parents, friends, and Rudy about my goal.  I posted about it here.  I didn't want to feel like a failure or let anyone down.  So I pushed on.  Around Week 4 my lungs stopped burning.  I stopped paying such strict attention to the clock.  I started to see some major benefits.

Not only did I feel stronger, but I was noticing a major difference.  Others were too and I started getting comments from those who knew what to look for.  My dancing was stronger.  My legs started to plump up.  I was handling stairs much easier.  And I started to feel better mentally too.  I started to have a better attitude, and it was something I noticed a lot.  It started to get easier to relax.  I wasn't as depressed as I had been.  Things started to fall into place.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped counting week numbers.  I have to look it up to see which week I'm on to know how long to run for.  Every week I do another set of intervals until I can run for 20 minutes straight.  I just finished Week 7 out of 10.  I'm getting there, even if I did have to add an extra week (so it's like I'm on Week 8 of 11).

I took a few days off because I didn't feel so great last week.  I had to do all my running back to back three days in a row instead of spreading it out.  I was really nervous about it because I had taken so many days off and it was a considerable jump in how long I was running (which for me is really jogging) verses how much I was walking.  I was nervous.  But I needed to run.  I was so wound up from not running for days that I felt like if I didn't run, I was going to lose my mind.  And I got on the treadmill and started.  I kept going and before I knew it, I was done.  I felt like I could have easily kept going, but I knew to stop so that I wouldn't hurt myself and I'd be alright to run the next night.  It felt great!

Before what had seemed like a crazy goal is now slowly coming into focus as a lifestyle.  It's not just something that I'm doing to prove a point, but rather something that I can do for me.  The more I run, the better I'm getting at recovering afterward.  I used to run and feel like I couldn't do anything for a long time afterward because my legs were so tired.  The other night I ran and then cleaned my entire room (which hadn't been really cleaned in weeks).  Tonight my plan is to run and go through some paperwork I've been avoiding.  I'm trying to accomplish one extra thing after I run so we'll see how that goes.  Maybe I'll start to feel more productive.

I'm taking advantage of the extra energy I have from the nerves and excitement of meeting my first mother.  If I have extra energy from this, then I'm going to use it to benefit me.  I'm not going to let it ruin my life for the next week or so.  I feel like that happened a bit before I met my first father.  I feel like I lost that time.  I'm determined not to let that happen again.  I'm going to be healthy about it this time.  And after I meet her, well, then I'll figure the rest of this stuff out.  I'll save that for after my face to face reunion with her.  Until then, I'll be running and thinking about when I'm going to run my 5K.  I'm getting closer and now I can actually feel in my heart that I can do it!  Wish me luck!

The "Look"

I come from a different tree

My adoptive family is huge.  And nearly everyone looks alike.  Most have the same face shape, similar hair, and the same laugh.  Even I have a hard time telling my mom and her sisters apart from their laughs and I've been with the family for twenty-four years.  They are just that similar.  Most of my cousins look alike too, which means that when we get together, you'd be able to tell we're a family (with the exception of a handful of us, mainly me).

I have a group of cousins who look very much like my mom.  They have the same facial shape, use the same expressions, have the same hair, and their eyes are like carbon copies of my mom's.  It's interesting to see how genetics come into play, especially when they have a father who clearly isn't genetically related to my mom.  It's different.  Anyway, we've been spending a lot of time together lately and when that happens, things come up.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone comment on the [insert last name here] look.  It's the "look" that clues everyone in that we're a family.  Well, that they're a family anyway.  I have to wait to be introduced and then it's assumed that I take after my father.  I do, just not the father they're thinking of.

Oddly enough, it hasn't happened as often over the past few years.  I think it probably has something to do with the fact that we're growing up and don't spend as much time together as we used to.  We don't have the same amount of family fun time that we used to, plus I've been living in another state for five years.  I haven't even been home a year, but I'm reintegrating with my family and getting back into the swing of things.

Back to the family fun time that we've been having lately.  We've been together a lot in public places and meeting new people.  And new people love to comment.  And thus the "look" was brought up again.  Only this time, it didn't bother me so much.  I didn't feel like there was a knife sticking out of my back and being twisted. It didn't hurt as badly as before.  Before it had been a reminder that I was different, that I wasn't "one of them" and that I didn't have people that I looked like.  Now, I see it as a celebration of those differences and I know that had my first family been there, those people would be saying the same things about us.  What a difference it makes knowing where my own "look" comes from.

This is just another example of how reunion has allowed me to start to heal and to live a happier life.  It's certainly one with fewer questions and more awareness of self.  Yay! :-)

Hockey Tournament Mind Blown

My adoptive family is a hockey family.  My mom's family hails from Boston and if you weren't aware that Boston is a hockey town, then I'm letting you know that it is.  My uncles all played hockey growing up and all had a decent amount of skill.  All of my cousins (myself included) tied on their first ice skates once they could walk.  I remember being three and learning how to skate (and I was a "late bloomer" in our family).  Skating lessons followed for years.  I chose the figuring skating route, but most of my cousins (girls included) have chosen to play hockey.  And here's the thing.  They are all amazing at it.  My four year old cousin just got her first skating medal this month.  She's four.  A medal.  And not a participation one either.  When I say they are amazing, I mean it.

Here's another thing about my adoptive family.  My mother is one of eight siblings.  There is not one sibling who lives further than one hour away from my mother's parents.  Not one.  There are 23 first cousins.  Only one lives more than an hour away (and is planning on moving back soon).  Two of us went "away" for school and we've both moved home.  That's just how we are.  Two of my aunts are neighbors.  Not like in-the-general-area neighbors, but honest to goodness next-door-sharing-property-lines neighbors.  And my grandparents about a mile away.  And we live seven minutes up the street.  And my other cousins are 12 minutes in the other direction.  To say we're close is an understatement.

How are the two related?  Well, my cousins are amazing at hockey.  Which means that they've all been making their high schools' varsity teams since they were freshmen.  And because they live close, but in different towns, the two teams end up playing each other.  A lot.  And because it's fun to watch, the rest of the family shows up for support.  And to give them credit, my cousins are incredibly supportive of one another, even when their teams are playing each other.  I have some great photos I took at the games this season of all three boys on the ice at the same time.  How amazing!  I've watched them pond skate since they were little kids so it's not an unusual sight, just a different one as they were wearing different jerseys this time.

I've been going to a lot of the games lately because it is tournament time.  I have cousins on two different teams, plus my home town is in the same league.  So I've been cheering them on, driving an hour to the rink after work and on weekends, and screaming for hours as one team and then another would play.  Sadly, that journey has come to an end for one team, but not before they took out my hometown.  I was actually cheering against my hometown.  Weird.

So I was looking back through the pictures and reflecting on the season they had.  This particular team is losing nine seniors and will probably have to build themselves back up.  Their amazing goalie is graduating, a tough loss for the team next year.  I was looking over the bracket, amazed at how far they'd come.  I saw where they beat my hometown, where they beat another, and where they finally fell.  They were the top team going into the tournament which I knew, but never really thought about.  As a side note, the other team won the tournament.  Great talent I know!

Gee, I wonder how my team ranking coming into the tournament?  Down the list I go.  Wow, there's a lot of teams on here!  Oh look!  There's my hometown!  Only 1, 2, 3... 6 from the bottom.  Wait a minute.  Wait just one minute!  What team was that three from the bottom?  Oh.  My.  God.

My sisters' school was in the tournament.  The high school that both of my first parents graduated from.  The school that KungFuPanda is about to graduate from.  And where Sandlot plans on attending next year.  There they were.  Right there.  Lost in the preliminaries.  But still.  Could you imagine the possibilities there?  What a small world.  What if they had made it to the game against my cousins?  Stranger things have happened.  What if my sister and I had both been at that ice rink at the same time?  What if my first parents had?  They are proud alumnus after all.  Freaky.  As in twilight freaky.

Even though they were in the same tournament, it turns out that my cousins never played my sister's school.  Neither did my hometown.  But still.  I was not expecting to see them in the same bracket and it threw me for a major loop.  Our paths could have crossed.  When I was driving home from the game the other night, I probably did cross paths with my first father.  We were on the same highway at the same time, me on my way home and him on his way to work.  I'm never on that particular highway ever, so it was sort of unnerving knowing that he was probably just ten minutes behind me.  So many what ifs and possibilities.