A lot has happened in the month since buying this plane ticket. In that time, my father and I have shared piece after piece of our stories, filtered between the raucous interruptions of his two “new” grandsons, and our dogs (his and mine — his dog is rather bothered by turtles). My sons have shared their days with him, telling him more about the minute to minute of their time at school than I ever get. I find myself smiling, endeared by their complete and unabashed love for a man who was entirely unknown to them, and me, just a few short weeks before.

We talk everyday. Those chats range from serious to silly, with heavy doses of sarcasm and darkish humor throughout. About two weeks in, it occurred to me I was talking to the older, male version of me. The nature v. nurture debate was settled in my head very quickly. Genetics are clearly the winner here. Without knowing more than a name for 36 years, I have grown into a woman very like the man on the other end of the video chat. Both hewn in rough edges, with a deep old soul beneath, two empaths crashed together, and I found a peace I certainly didn’t know was possible. In spite of being an introvert, I look forward to my drive home and the conversation with my Dad. I couldn’t imagine a day without that 30–40 min time between us. Two months ago I looked forward to the silence to decompress before going home and being mom. Waves of change are hardly ever subtle, or gentle.

I am still very uncertain how to be a daughter. I don’t entirely understand the unconditional fatherly love pouring my direction. Sometimes I find myself swatting at it, overwhelmed by its constant presence. But, mostly now, I revel in the feeling. The feeling that someone is there, at the other end of the phone, if ever I need anything. Even just to say hello.

In an hour I will land. Instead of the beeping ring of the video chat, I will find arms waiting to pull me into a hug 36 years in the making.

……………………………….

It’s now Saturday evening. My heart is so full it might burst, and yet it breaks a bit too. Tomorrow night, at this time, I’ll be on a plane back home to my babies, and while I ache to snuggle them, my heart also aches to stay. Stay in the quiet moments of the last 36 hours. In the hum of a Diesel engine, watching trees covered in Spanish Moss whisk by, sometimes with no other sound — sometimes listening to the sound of my father’s voice, telling stories of a lifetime in this place.

Stories of teenage shenanigans, and the wildness of an unmonitored childhood. The home he grew up in, the church they attended, the high school he went to — though not the same physical building. While, as time has a tendency to do, so much has changed, the memories are preserved and shared in a ping pong ball of conversation. Bouncing from one to another, chaotic yet seamless.

I thought perhaps I would have so much to share. So many thoughts and feelings to write out. But instead, my mind is quiet. A state so rare I’m hesitant to challenge it. I’m happy. Happy in a way I’ve never felt. This will do.

The list of things that make me, me is long and winding; and at a glance, spectacularly disjointed. Nothing about my list conforms. Nothing fits neatly into a pretty picture. Instead, it’s more akin to a Lucian Freud self portrait, wild, disdainful, dramatic, willfully outside of the proverbial box.

I have always had a little trouble fitting in. During my years of angst I thought this indicated a serious malfunction in my personality. Now I see it as my most prized trait. Rita Mae Brown describe conformity perfectly, “I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” Every moment I have worked to fit in, I have found myself less and less attractive, less happy, less fulfilled.

Moving from place to place growing up created a need for conformity that was more poignant than perhaps it would have been had things been different. But things weren’t different. I grew up in the space between my parents dysfunction and their love. As adults, the best we can do is acknowledge that our parents did the best they could — I’m only about half way there. Each day as a mother now, I get closer to accepting the “best” that my adoptive parents had to offer. As is typical for those of us who are raised in broken homes, by broken people, one parent is usually easier to absolve than the other.

But that isn’t the story I’m here to tell. Not today, anyway. Today, is about healing. About leaning into that uncomfortable place of trust, pushing out of what conforms, what is normal, and letting go.

Three weeks ago I logged into Ancestry.com and started doing some research for my husband’s side of the family. We decided we were going to dive into the parts of his family that yet remained unknown. It was fun, exciting, as the leaves popped up on the little names in an ever growing digital tree. So much information available, so much to sift through. I’m a librarian by trade — this kind of research gave me a light and pleasant buzz of anticipation and possibility. Then I glanced left a bit toward the bare branches of my half of the tree — and there it was.

I have known my birth mother and father’s names a long time. Since I was 14 or 15. I have met my birth mother, and we continue to work even now toward understanding one another’s stories. My bio-dad, as he had always been called, was nothing more than a name. A name that carried with it a heavy, deep shame. I had been told stories — well, one story. I was unwanted. He had left before I was born. I had put his name in my family tree because I felt compelled to have SOMETHING there, even if it was more a blank and empty space with his name in it than not.

The leaf next to his name meant something was there, something that made him real, more than a name, a figure that had been nothing more than whatever fantasies I had conjured over the years, the excuses I had made for him, and then the anger and sadness that settled in as I married and became a mother. I stared at it. And then I closed the browser.

I opened it back up 4 and a half minutes later. And clicked on the leaf. I went from complete indecision, almost a stubborn defiance, to utter desperation so fast I almost didn’t completely feel the shift — it all felt like the same emotion even though it was starkly different. My anger and sadness and closed the window, my need for a family that was mine — not borrowed — opened it and clicked on that leaf. In one short motion I was face to face with my father. A yearbook picture stared back at me. A young, mischievous and handsome face, with features I recognized, was smiling back at me. Those eyes, that nose, that smile. Woah.

The flurry of the next steps were impossible to track. I went to Facebook, because I’m over 30 and that’s what we do. I knew where he had been at one time, so I typed his name and a city in the search box. The first two results were an easy no. I clicked on the third, a profile picture filled with children. My heart sank a bit, at that sight. Maybe just from pure selfishness. I clicked on the photos and confirmed that this was, indeed, my father. His sister had posted a photo of them all together, when they were young, and that same smile, eyes, and nose were looking at me again.

Then I walked away and cried.

The waves crashed into my chest with such incredible force that my sobs could hardly keep up. I just surrendered. So much of my life *could* be answered — it was right there. He was real, he had a family, grandchildren, a life beyond his mistake at 18 years old. Fear, devastation, utter and complete surrender, and a tiny, small blossom of hope. In those scary moments full of heaving sobs I decided one of two things would happen if I reached out: he would tell me he wanted nothing to do with me (or ignore me entirely), or he would not do that. I couldn’t actually get myself to consider what him NOT doing that would mean, what it would look like, sound like, feel like.

It took a minute for me to collect my shit. Or as much of it as I needed to pretend to function for the rest of the day. It was a Wednesday. I had things to do. I opened my phone, went to his profile, sent a friend request, and put the whole thing, emotions, vulnerability, pain — in a box, and went about my day.

Well, sort of.

I told all of my closest friends (all 4 of them plus my husband) that I had found him. I didn’t go into detail. Just said I found him and it was weird and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I left the part out about sending a friend request. Because I thought people would tell me that was dumb. I needed to shield what shreds of protection I had around me for just a little while, until the storm raging just under the surface calmed to an easy spring rain. The next 24 hours passed quietly enough. I told myself that I was fine with whatever happened, that I had put myself out there and that this was going to be whatever it was — I needed to do nothing more. When I went to lunch on Thursday, I drove around in my car BLASTING Metallica. I pulled over into a park, opened facebook messenger, and started typing. My message was guarded, “I don’t want or need anything from you…just had some questions about family medical history…” I mentioned my son, how since his diagnosis I have wanted to know the whole of my family medical history. Which was the truth, my thoughts about how much I didn’t know felt overwhelming and profound when we received Jon’s Usher Syndrome diagnaosis. I was apologetic, and evasive, and feigned vulnerability in a way that I felt would keep me safe when the inevitable response of “go away” came — or when nothing came at all. I would like to say that this was all well thought out and carefully crafted. It wasn’t. My emotions were a wrecking ball inside of me, leaving a wake of destruction to all the walls I had built over the years — the walls that kept me safe from the fear, the abandonment, the not ever being enough. I was crumbling from the inside out. I was reaching desperately for something, while fully expecting to fall into pieces.

He wrote back that day. One hour later. He was guarded, but he was there. He said simply, “yes, I remember her (my bio mother) but lost touch after I left Atlanta” and then the conversation started. His answers were short, unsure in feeling, but honest and direct in content. We talked for that entire day on messenger, and into the evening. No hard questions, just two people getting to know each other using a medium that does NOT lend itself to knowing the person on the other side of the little bubbles. But it was real, he was there. I told myself the hard stuff could wait.

It waited about two days.

I have discovered over the last three weeks that my father and I have a lot in common. We are most content to jump into the shit, and then climb up out of the depths together. The conversations have led us both to places we haven’t visited with anyone else, places we share in spite of never knowing one another. We have opened dusty boxes containing memories and emotions we can’t grapple with all the time and be able to live fully. It has been hard. I have given in to the heaving sobs a few more times, and I know there are more waves on the horizon, moving toward the shore. I am ready. He is with me. I am with him.

This isn’t the usual story. This isn’t the safe version, where two people take them time to tackle things that are painful. This is a literal crash course through trauma, abandonment, and regret. But it is also a story that is laying out hope, love, and most of all, healing. I recently read an article written by Brianna Wiest called, Trauma Is Not Your Fault, But Healing Is Your Responsibility, where she lays out, quite beautifully, what a gift healing is: “When we heal, we step into the people we have always wanted to be. We are not only able to metabolize the pain […] We are more willing to dare, risk, and dream of broader horizons, ones we never thought we’d reach.” I did not want him to fix what he had done, or somehow change the fate that befell me when he walked away. I wanted the truth, and I went to find it knowing that even if it hurt like hell, it would allow me to heal one of my deepest sources of pain.

While our story defies convention, our genetic (perhaps) predisposition to nonconformity has given us both back something that we had lost — or never had:

Each other.