3451117397_3d9119fdb2_m Happy Fatherhood Friday!! Check out Dad-Blogs.com for some great reads. You’ll be glad you did.

I have a brother. I have a sister. Big deal you say? Well, I only found out that one of them even existed about 2 years ago! I grew up with my brother, (C who also contributes to the blog) for the most part. When I was in high school my dad and mom divorced and I lived with my mom and my brother lived with my dad but for the majority of my formative years we grew up together. This was the complete family that I knew of for over 25 years, until I decided to construct my family tree.

Here is some of the background story:

Many years ago when I was roughly in the 8th grade I happened to stumble upon a photo. I don’t really recall exactly how I found this photo but I did (kids tend to snoop a lot more than they probably should). The image before me was of a man holding a baby. It was an old picture. It had a huge white border around it and the colors were faded 70’s style. I flipped the photo over and found the only writing to give me any indication of who these people were: J and B, 1974. [names shortened] I was very confused and I stared and the picture wondering why this man was holding me when I was just a few months old. I asked my mom if she could shed some light on this and she most certainly did. “He’s your dad.” she told me. She then revealed that the man I had known my entire life was actually my step-dad and when I was very young he adopted me. Needless to say I was more than stunned. It was so incredibly surreal I didn’t really know what to say.

My mom explained to me that she and my “bio-dad” were together for a number of years and I was born of the two of them. Their relationship was (obviously) less than ideal. Far too many nights of drinking, fighting and financial irresponsibility eventually convinced my mom to separate permanently from him. This is a decision that I’m sure she struggled with and I can now look back upon and feel that she probably did the right thing.

So suddenly I had this huge bomb dropped on my and all I could really do was ask questions. My mom did the best that she could to answer them but it had been a number of years so things like names of his siblings and such were not very precise. I asked more and more questions throughout my young adult life and compiled everything I could. Considering the lack of info from those around me I didn’t really have much to say the least.

Fast forward to September of 2006 and I had gotten myself knee-deep in my genealogy quest. It had become an obsession. I spent many late nights searching and analyzing. I just kept pushing and pushing to try to find any information that I possibly could to help find out more about my bio-dad. Then, I hit the jackpot. I signed up for a website called One Great Family. This site lets you input any and all of the information about your family that you know of and then the system automatically tries to match your info up with what it already has available from other users. It gives you the chance to accept or deny any correlation. If you accept the match then it links you up with a TON more branches of your tree. It doesn’t take long before you can be scanning through your family history reaching back centuries. It’s a beautiful thing.

Late one night while poking around looking for clues I rooted down to my bio-dad from his father to see what info I could find regarding his siblings or other potential wives. Then it hit me, I found his other children. I wasn’t even really sure he had other spouses/children but there it was glowing on the screen in front of me. I wasn’t the only one. Unfortunately at the time I only found the name of one girl, a sister.

This was incredible! I had a sister. This was a completely new word in my little world. All I had ever used in my life was “brother”. Now something new. I wrote a quick email to the person who had posted the information regarding my sister. Which, by the way, was way more than what I’d ever think I’d find. I now knew her birth date as well as where she was presently. My email was short and to the point: How well do you know W? I got a reply very quickly stating that she did know her and that she would like to talk on the phone if possible. I agreed.

The phone call with the knowing party was excellent. She was W’s half-sister! (It’s getting complicated isn’t it. :D ) She told me that W lived in the same town as her and they were very close and spoke almost daily. We talked for roughly 30 minutes and she told me that W was rather stunned by news that I had tried to contact her and she wanted to make sure that I was for real (and not crazy). In closing the conversation she told me that she would have W call me soon. And she did.

Within less than a day or two I got the call. It is so hard to convey the emotions I dealt with during that conversation. More than anything I was absolutely elated. I found out more information during those two hours on the phone with my newly discovered sister than I had from talking to any other family member previously willing to discuss it. I found out that unlike myself who never knew of our bio-dad, W had a lot more contact with him, but not necessarily in a good way. Apparently he would drift in and out of her life when he felt like it and that had an unfortunate effect on her. I quickly realized that maybe it was for the best that I really didn’t know anything about him until later in life. He wasn’t a good father at all.

Our contact remained great over the phone and via email for over a year before the day came when we were able to coordinate a time to meet face-to-face. She and her husband were going to be in town for business and we decided to meet for dinner. It was a beautiful thing. We talked like we had known each other since we were kids. It was so easy, nothing awkward at all. Our relationship was growing already and I loved every minute of it.

As of now we talk whenever we can and her step-son is living here so they make it to town every so often which is great. We don’t get together nearly as often as we would like to but we do what we can. We are hoping to coordinate some vacation fun or holiday time in the future and do our best to make up for lost time.

This whole experience has taught me a hell of a lot. Most importantly, be there for my kids. Not only do we learn from the great role models of our lives on what TO do but we also learn from the not so great ones on what NOT to do. That is where my bio-dad came into play in my life. I now know exactly what kind of dad I’m NEVER going to be and I feel that’s just as important.

What has become of our bio-dad you ask? Well in a very sad and ironic twist he died in 1999. We were less than 100 miles from each other at the time and we didn’t even know it.

Family is the most important connection we have as human beings and I missed a lot of years due to the mistakes and decisions of others.  I am so grateful to have the opportunity to have found people with whom I share a deep bond regardless of time spent together over the years. I have found this entire episode of my life very therapeutic and psychologically helpful and I feel lucky that I live in a time where this is possible.

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