...is that it is tempting to stop along the way. I just put the money orders and the requests back in the mail yesterday. So we are now officially, four weeks or less from our next step.
I would think about sending the request from time to time but I wouldn't get up and do it. Yesterday, time and opportunity showed up at the same moment and I did it.
I don't think I'm procrastinating. I'm just not feeling any urgency. I'm almost 40 and have lived that long without knowing. I think if it was a long lost relative or friend that I had a previous relationship with, I'd try harder.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
A minor delay
My well meaning husband mailed my birth certificate requests not knowing that I had not put the money orders in them. I just got the letter back requesting I resubmit with the money. I'll do that this weekend.
I began searching the SS Death Indexes. There is a name that matches the girl, but the birthdate is 2 days off. I'll just wait until I get the BC's. Hopefully there were both born in the city I'm requesting them from. If not, I only have one other clue to where the boy may have been born.
I am remaining vague enough on this site so that an imposter can't read this and show up claiming to be them. Key details are being omitted so don't even try it, LOL!
I began searching the SS Death Indexes. There is a name that matches the girl, but the birthdate is 2 days off. I'll just wait until I get the BC's. Hopefully there were both born in the city I'm requesting them from. If not, I only have one other clue to where the boy may have been born.
I am remaining vague enough on this site so that an imposter can't read this and show up claiming to be them. Key details are being omitted so don't even try it, LOL!
Friday, August 1, 2008
The process
I've started a journal to record all of the "clues" or information that I have. I have enough information to request birth certificates. The only question is if both of them were born in the same location. One, my father is certain of so I'll send a request to that city for both.
I want to see if my father is listed as father on their birth certificates. Mainly, I want to know if they knew about him. You watch these "shock" talk shows and see people who live their entire life thinking one man was their father and it was someone else. I just want to know how much they know.
The good thing is that as a sibling, I can request the materials. I do not want to involve my father yet. In the past few months, I am realizing how "fragile" he is. I think as daughters we see our dads as these infallible towers of strength and when you see them at all vulnerable the woman in you wants to protect them from any harm. So I am willing to take these first slow steps alone and share my anxieties and impatience here :o)
So, I have the applications and will fill them out today. Make a photo copy of my ID and tomorrow I will get money orders and mail them off and wait up to four weeks.
I'll be working in the meantime to gather more information. Time is never on our side in these matters. My father and his siblings searched for his brother who they had not seen in 30 years. Last year my dad found him, sort of. He died just the year before. If they had pushed a little harder they may have found him and got to see him one last time.
So for that reason, I will remain steadfast.
I want to see if my father is listed as father on their birth certificates. Mainly, I want to know if they knew about him. You watch these "shock" talk shows and see people who live their entire life thinking one man was their father and it was someone else. I just want to know how much they know.
The good thing is that as a sibling, I can request the materials. I do not want to involve my father yet. In the past few months, I am realizing how "fragile" he is. I think as daughters we see our dads as these infallible towers of strength and when you see them at all vulnerable the woman in you wants to protect them from any harm. So I am willing to take these first slow steps alone and share my anxieties and impatience here :o)
So, I have the applications and will fill them out today. Make a photo copy of my ID and tomorrow I will get money orders and mail them off and wait up to four weeks.
I'll be working in the meantime to gather more information. Time is never on our side in these matters. My father and his siblings searched for his brother who they had not seen in 30 years. Last year my dad found him, sort of. He died just the year before. If they had pushed a little harder they may have found him and got to see him one last time.
So for that reason, I will remain steadfast.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The response
I called my father after I spent a few minutes alone with the picture. I wanted to really look at these two children. My husband said that the girl looked like me and the boy was built like the men in my father's family.
My father was overly "jokey" about the subject. But having been his daughter for nearly 40 years, I know him. He was trying not to be hopeful. He said he knew what I was trying to do and he wasn't in it. I could hear between his words that at 70 years old he was not up for the search and possible rejection and disappointment. He is not 100% positive that the children are his. He "thinks" the boy is but has reason to doubt the girl and because they are so close in age, he has reason to doubt either. (More on the series of events that led to the distance between them in posts to come)
My sister's response was basically, we lived all these years without them maybe it was God's will that it be like this.
So I scanned the photo. Enhanced the images and sent them via email to my father and sister.
When I called my sister the next day, she had been online searching for them at whitepages.com and other general sites.
She now felt like I did. Our potential siblings now have a face and seeing their eyes, has made them real.
Armed with the information on the back of the photos and my father's sketchy memories from 50 years ago, I am ordering copies of their birth certificates next week.
An unexpected ally has emerged to assist in this search. My mother.
My parents are divorced and she said she has always felt a bit guilty about not looking for them sooner. When she and my father married she didn't want anyone to know he had been married before so the kids were part of the omission. She said there was a point that she informed my dad that she was going to tell us. She thought that it was best that we knew. So she'd be excited for us to find them and find out once and for all if they are our brother and sister.
My father was overly "jokey" about the subject. But having been his daughter for nearly 40 years, I know him. He was trying not to be hopeful. He said he knew what I was trying to do and he wasn't in it. I could hear between his words that at 70 years old he was not up for the search and possible rejection and disappointment. He is not 100% positive that the children are his. He "thinks" the boy is but has reason to doubt the girl and because they are so close in age, he has reason to doubt either. (More on the series of events that led to the distance between them in posts to come)
My sister's response was basically, we lived all these years without them maybe it was God's will that it be like this.
So I scanned the photo. Enhanced the images and sent them via email to my father and sister.
When I called my sister the next day, she had been online searching for them at whitepages.com and other general sites.
She now felt like I did. Our potential siblings now have a face and seeing their eyes, has made them real.
Armed with the information on the back of the photos and my father's sketchy memories from 50 years ago, I am ordering copies of their birth certificates next week.
An unexpected ally has emerged to assist in this search. My mother.
My parents are divorced and she said she has always felt a bit guilty about not looking for them sooner. When she and my father married she didn't want anyone to know he had been married before so the kids were part of the omission. She said there was a point that she informed my dad that she was going to tell us. She thought that it was best that we knew. So she'd be excited for us to find them and find out once and for all if they are our brother and sister.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
This is DAY ONE
Being a Black woman in America, I do not take for granted the fact that I have a relationship with my father.
There have been many societal factors that have not made that possible for some Black families.
It has not been possible for some people I know. Namely, my father's "other" child/ren.
I am the baby of the family and as such there are many situations that I was not made privy to. One of them, the fact that my father was married before my mother.
It wasn't a big deal at the point that I heard about it and the story was so "neatly packaged" that I didn't think much more of it. Until...
I was at my father's sister's house in Suburban Atlanta looking through her photo album and she pointed to a photo of a boy and girl and asked, "Do you know who that is?"
She tells me that she was told that they are my father's children. Ok.....now "they" have a face.
I ask for the picture but my aunt is full of excuses as to why she can't let me make a copy of it. So I move on, but in the back of my mind, I want the photo.
Fastforward about 4-5 years. My aunt is asking my dad for photos from a family gathering and he tells me to send them. I basically say, "No, not until she gives me the photo of the children that may or may not be yours."
Dad says, "What? She has a picture of them? You're kidding!"
Fastforward another two months. I get a letter from my aunt, and in it is the photo. I read her letter and immediately forgive her in my mind. I turn the photo over and it has their names, ages and birthdays. WHOA!
I sat and stared at the picture like they would open up their mouth's and speak to me. I felt warm liquid hit my arm and I realized I had tears streaming down my face.
I wanted to know who these people were and I wanted to know for sure if they were my half sister and brother.
So for myself and for my father I am now on a mission....to be continued
There have been many societal factors that have not made that possible for some Black families.
It has not been possible for some people I know. Namely, my father's "other" child/ren.
I am the baby of the family and as such there are many situations that I was not made privy to. One of them, the fact that my father was married before my mother.
It wasn't a big deal at the point that I heard about it and the story was so "neatly packaged" that I didn't think much more of it. Until...
I was at my father's sister's house in Suburban Atlanta looking through her photo album and she pointed to a photo of a boy and girl and asked, "Do you know who that is?"
She tells me that she was told that they are my father's children. Ok.....now "they" have a face.
I ask for the picture but my aunt is full of excuses as to why she can't let me make a copy of it. So I move on, but in the back of my mind, I want the photo.
Fastforward about 4-5 years. My aunt is asking my dad for photos from a family gathering and he tells me to send them. I basically say, "No, not until she gives me the photo of the children that may or may not be yours."
Dad says, "What? She has a picture of them? You're kidding!"
Fastforward another two months. I get a letter from my aunt, and in it is the photo. I read her letter and immediately forgive her in my mind. I turn the photo over and it has their names, ages and birthdays. WHOA!
I sat and stared at the picture like they would open up their mouth's and speak to me. I felt warm liquid hit my arm and I realized I had tears streaming down my face.
I wanted to know who these people were and I wanted to know for sure if they were my half sister and brother.
So for myself and for my father I am now on a mission....to be continued
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