The Sister Speech

Child2, my half sister,  posted a new picture for her background today.  I think it was her grandkids.  Beautiful little girls!  They are so cute.  I had to just stare at them and compare them to my kids and grandkids.  The youngest was crying her eyes out.  Child2 says she loves it.  Yeah... she has the same rotten sense of humor as me.  Those pictures are taken to be used as ammunition later.

This is going to be awkward.  There is no way this can be anything but awkward.  Do I say "yeah, I have been stalking you for several weeks.  Thanks for posting that picture of the grandkids!  I floated on it all day and fantasized about swapping grandkid stories and sending each other little trinkets to give our grandkids."  Maybe someday, but it's going to be awkward for a while first.  I am her father's sin.  That family prays a lot.  I have no idea which way God is going to tell her to lean.

No status change from Child1.  She's probably busy making last minute Christmas gifts, if I was going to guess.  She hasn't been married very long.  If I go by the exchange on Facebook, she just decided to get married, got married, and told everyone about it later.  Yeah.. that's something I would do.  Did do.  Would do again.

I love them already.  That's crazy, right?  Siblings who live together don't always love each other.  I love them.  I have always loved them, or at least the idea of them.  If they are really angry that I exist and that I am out here, willing to wait my whole life to talk to them, then that's just how it is.  I am a pretty patient woman.  Love is a decision.  You make that decision every day of your life to make a marriage work.  I don't see why it wouldn't apply here.  I have decided I love my sisters.  I just need L to log in and see his results and ponder his life for a while to figure out how to break this to them.  If they say something a little crazy, I will forgive them.  That's what you do when you are family.


I have a speech I say to my kids when they squabble.

Throughout your life your friends will come and go.  Your spouses might come and go.  Your parents will eventually leave you, and when you are all alone and look around you, the ones left standing behind you are your brothers and sisters.  They know who you are, and love you anyway.  They know about your childhood fears and if you are smart, your adult ones.  They are the ones that will be there for you, even when they don't want to, because they love you.  Of all the things I could have given you in your life, your siblings are the most valuable gift.  So be good to them.  Love them, even when they don't deserve it, because one day, you are going to need them when you don't deserve it.  

How can someone who has said that for 30 years decide anything besides "I love my sisters?"  I did this to myself.

A New Note

I went to my favorite Chinese buffet a couple days ago.  Their hot and sour soup is so good.  It is just the kind of comfort food I want on a gloomy day.  After the meal I got my fortune.  It read:


Like anyone who has to wait far too long for someone to respond, I pondered this as a sign of what to do.  Does that mean that as long as he is happy this will continue forever?  So I will have to take away his joy to get him to read his Ancestry messages?  Boy!  I hope not.  It says nothing about the joyfulness of a woman.  Did I get the wrong fortune again?  That is the story of my life!

Or is the important thing on this the numbers?  He will read his message on the14th or 25th, since the 11th passed and absolutely nothing changed.  This is why I hate vague prophecy theories.  I get my hopes or dread up and then when it doesn't come true, I am left thinking I am an idiot because I read it wrong.  Maybe the problem is that I read it.

I had a nice conversation with one of my foster sisters.  She is one of those people who has something nice to say when you really need to hear nice things.  It is important to keep those kinds of people in your life, by the way.  At times like these, you need them.  They help prop that chin up when hope starts draining out of your soul.

That last part, is referring to my Resume that I posted a few days ago.

I needed to read that.  I needed to believe that someone thinks I am a really good person and that I am not the jerk that would ruin lives for selfish reasons.  I needed to believe that I have something to offer these people that they don't know is missing.  It's kind of like having a seventh child.  People will say that you really don't need another one, but our lives would not be as complete without him.


So I decided to write a new note and put it in a Christmas card.

You can mouse over the picture if you cannot read my writing

This is a suggestion I was given in the DNA Detectives group when I posted my dilemma concerning the reading of my message.

No one wants to ruin Christmas.  I don't want to ruin L's Christmas. I certainly don't want to ruin my siblings Christmas. I don't want to ruin my Christmas.  So I will send this and hope that it encourages the logging on of Ancestry, without being brutally invasive.

Really, all I want is to see that login status change.  After that, I can't say I won't eventually want to see some kind of final word about contact, but I could truly be ok with believing he is pondering his own methods of dealing with this.

This whole experience is a little surreal.  It feels like I am a ghost that is haunting them online, but they can't see or communicate with me.  I am able drift around looking for their electronic footprints and see where they have been and what they have been doing, but actual connection is impossible.

I looked at some of the pins my half sisters pinned on Pinterest.  We really do have quite a few hings in common.  They are country girls, like me.  They like making things.  I always thought that was my maternal side, but maybe there is a paternal element to it.

I do hope they have a Christmas filled with joy and laughter.  I mean that so sincerely.  I hope they post pictures in the public space so I can see it.  That would give me joy.

What Do I Want?

As a lover of history, it is quite normal for me to want to know what functions my ancestors played in historical events.  There is always that hope that I might be related to a hero, or a famous figure. Beyond that, it feels good to know that no matter what the challenges were, or the issues my ancestors faced, that they continued to thrive at least as long as it took to make me.  It is a battle to be out here as a live human being and trying to live in a society that has civil unrest, and economic challenges, and day to day history making events.  It is a morale booster to know that I come from the kind of people who had real moxie.  I love it most when I see an ancestor that did something way out of the box, or braver than I was expecting.  I love bravery.

As a lover of science, I love that I could use scientific method to deduct and deduce my origins based on comparing data.  I love even more that this is a collaborative effort and in order for anyone to get anything from a DNA research site, they had to at least give their DNA data for others to compare to.  (I believe that is my Swedish showing.)  I loosely follow epigenetic research.  I am a fan of cognitive behavior research.  In general, I am fascinated by my own species as a whole, and all the ways we have been built to evolve and change according to our environment.  My own DNA is no exception. I put my DNA data on DNAland purely to contribute to research.   I want to know what they figure out.

When I set out to submit my DNA, I had one primary reason in mind.  Half my family tree was missing.  I wanted to fill it out.  I wanted to know who to put into the empty spaces.  My biological father was one in hundreds of people I wanted to know about.  He just happened to be the most likely to be alive.  There is something a little frightening about knowing nothing about half of yourself.  Is there any history of heart attack in my family?  I still can't answer that question.  What is your genetic make up?  Ahh.. now that I can tell you!

So in terms of getting what I want out of this, I can honestly say I have achieved and am still achieving one of my primary goals.  I know what I am made of.  I know how I got here.  I can find names and locations and make a nice little book about the history of our family for my children and grandchildren.  My grandchildren will be able to tell what their ancestor did in history class.  Those people mattered.  They were important.  I want them to be remembered, at least by name, even if I can't find another thing about them.  We will make songs about them.  They are our personal family hero's.  We won the battle.  We will write our history.

My second reason is more personal principle in nature. I have never known if my biological father did not contact me because he chose not to speak to me, or if he was never given an option. Nothing went as the people in charge had planned. When my mother chose not to tell anyone who the father of her child was, she had no idea she would die when I was three.  When my grandmother decided to raise me, she did not know she would die just before I turned nine.  Both of them were trying to do the right thing, but they left me with very little in the way of resources.  Would my mother have told me? Would my grandmother? I will never know those answers.  What I do know is that I was given this brain and this set of tools and I used them.  I like to believe they would be impressed with my determination even if they didn't like my decision.  I am in charge of the DNA they gave me.  I am simply doing what I think is right, just like they did.

I feel like I carry the weight of a family debt that is owed. It is my inheritance.  If he was never told about me, now he gets to know.  If he was never given access to speak to me, now he has my number.  If he chooses not to have contact, my conscience is clear and I am free from any guilt I might have carried for the decisions of my foremothers.  My life is open, honest and up front.  For the very first time, I get to decide my future in this matter.  Me.  The woman actually living this life.  I have waited 49 years to do that.  If he decides he doesn't want to talk to me, then I have lost nothing and still maintained my high sense of integrity.  I have very little hope that anything but information will come out of this, if I get that.

But those sisters.  I can't stop looking at them.  Those I want because I am greedy.  I want to show them that I am funny.  I want to learn something from them, anything.  I have no idea how to be a real sister, but I would like to take a crack at this.  I catch myself getting my hopes up that they will want to know me and let me know them.  I want something crazy, like a non verbal tick or a silly thing to say to be in common.  I want our gene pool to give us a sign.  I want to geek out with child2 and play with designs with child1.  I want to enjoy them.

I missed out on playing with them.  I didn't even know I missed that.  I didn't know I could miss that. I am not mad or resentful, but if I get to pick the one thing that I get to mourn the loss of, I choose this.  I could have been loving them my whole life, and they have no idea what that means.  I am really good at loving people.  I have references!  Just in case L and D get worried that I might be a problem, I am really good at avoiding places I am not wanted.  I have references for that too.

Will somebody please log in to that account?  Please.