Holes (the end)

A few months ago, I got inspired to look for my sisters on Facebook.  Which is slightly dangerous, because I am friends with my youngest sister (who doesn't know about any of this) also.  But, I friended them.  They are gorgeous and totally growing into their own.  It's so crazy.  They are both in high school; the oldest will graduate this year.  They have tons of friends.

The older one posts so many photos.  Senior trip to Mexico.  Her walking in homecoming.  Her with the cheerleading squad.  Her getting an amazing new car for her birthday. (totally the car I have my eye on right now, too.) 

Basically having the life that I always wanted.  I wanted to be a cheerleader so bad.  SO BAD!  To the point that I was hanging out with some male cheerleaders in college and started working with them.  I learned how to do a walk-up and a few other things (until I jammed three of my toes while jumping around the living room at 2 a.m. like an idiot.  That's when I realized that dream had long passed.)  But, it makes me a bit sad to see how my life could have been, if it had played out just a tiny bit differently.  If maybe he hadn't gotten scared.  How instead of bumming a ride in my friends Nova, I could have been driving my own [insert fancyish car from 15 years ago].  Or how instead of standing in line for 'free lunch' tickets in the morning, I could have been hanging out with the popular kids.  I know that I have worked hard for everything I have, and therefore deserve it more.  But sometimes I think it would have been nice to just have it given to me.  Not always, just once or twice.  

OK, here is a weird detail that I left out about my father.  He is a professional bass fisher.

There.

I said it.

It's kind of an odd profession.  When I first met him, he showed me a video from ESPN of him winning the BassMasters Classic.  I tell you this because when I google his name, several of these articles pop up. (unlike my name, which links you to one story about myself and about 400 about some chick in Florida who is a writer for a local newspaper.- Yes, I've googled myself.  Don't act like you haven't!)

But these articles mention his family.  All of them.  Except me.  I don't count.  I'm not part of his family.  I belong nowhere.  

There's more.  So much more.  But, I fear that this story has stretched too long.  I open the floor for questions--I know you've got them!  I will answer in the comment section each one.

Holes (part 3)

After that tearful exchange with my mom, she grabbed the phone and called my [real father's] grandparents and told them the news.  "She knows!" I remember her voice bubbling over with excitement.  

The discussion turned to what we should do.  Did I want to meet him?  Yes.  I did.  So a few weeks later, I was sitting in a house two hours away from mine.  That's it.  We lived south of a large city, they lived north of it.  

Growing up, people always told me that I looked like my mom and that my second sister looked like our dad.  Little did we know that we both looked just like our dads.  Lucky for my mom he wasn't a red-head.  At a little over six foot tall, I finally found out where my height came from.  His nose rest firmly on my face, wedged between his oversized cheeks – mine bearing a sprinkling of freckles.

It was an awkward meeting.  I don't remember much about it.  He was married, and I had two even younger sisters, bringing my total up to four now.  While I was fifteen, they were five and four, much younger than I.  

I went back for a visit at Christmas.  I don't remember what we told my sisters at the time.  I remember my gift.  It was a gold ring with a heart-shaped peridot with tiny diamond accents.  I remember it was the first piece of jewelry I ever owned that had any real diamonds.  I slept in a small spare bed, and my little sisters wanted to sleep with "Sister Kelli." So the three of us piled in this tiny bed.  I remember one of them screaming because I slipped my hand under the pillow and grabbed her foot.  I stayed the night and was supposed to stay until Christmas Eve.  But, it was confusing for me.  I had not been away from my mom, not like that.  With this new family.  It was too much for me.  He drove me back the next day.  

And that was it.  I tried to keep in touch.  My birthday is August 8th, and I remembered that one of my sisters birthdays was October 8th.  So I sent a card.  But I sent it to the wrong sister.  Oops.  I was 16 at the time.  What can you do.  I hardly knew them.  They had their own happy family, and I just wasn't really part of it.  He had never made any effort to make me a part of his life and I didn't know if I wanted to be part of their life either.  And that was the last time I saw them.

Until.

Almost four years ago, I was working in the mall (while going to college) and I was walking into the back when a woman yelled my name, "Kelli?"  I had worked at that store for three years, and I had worked at the one next door for two years before that.  If you live in my town, chances are, I have sold you some clothes.  I figured it was a customer that I didn't remember.

"Yes?" I try to put on a face as if I recognize the woman (which I totally did not).

"Kelli. It's me, [father's name]'s wife."

I wish I could have seen my own face.  How did she know it was me?  How did she recognize me, it had been almost ten years since she had last seen me.

"Your sisters are in the fitting rooms." She says.  

So, I went over and re-met them.  As young adults.  And then I knew how it was she recognized me. 

They look just. like. me. 

Scary like me. 

Same little noses.  Same full cheeks.  

We took a photo, the three of us standing there. I still have it.  And they took one too.  I'm sure that they showed it to my father.  We exchanged addresses, but I never knew what to do with it.  And I never got anything.   I think about them often.  Mostly because I feel guilty for not reaching out and trying to have a relationship with them. 

Social media makes things easier to find people.  And I did.  I found my sisters once again, on Facebook.  But that's another painful story.

Holes (continued)

(Remember, Dad=raised me, Father=biological)

When my mom came home, I took her into her bedroom and showed her the letter.  I just sat, silent, waiting.  What did I want to hear?  Did I want her to laugh and say it was some cruel joke?  Did I want her to admit that in fact, it was true and that the man who raised me, who hugged me as a child, called me "Pumpkin" but then turned into something else as I aged was nothing to me? An adopted father?

"I'm sorry.  I wanted to tell you."  She said, crumpling onto the bed, wrapping her arms around me.  "Your dad wouldn't let me."  

Who is this man who made me and then abandoned me?  

She began to tell me this:

When she was in her early 20's, she met a man and they were happy and they ended up pregnant.  HE had been in a similar situation before and the baby was lost.  It scared him.  The thought of keeping the baby, as well as the thought of losing the baby.  He left my mom. After she and my father split up, she remained friends with his younger sister.  They shared a birthday and other things in common.  We would visit her frequently as I grew up.  I knew her family (my cousins, my grandparents, my uncles), but they were simply 'our friends.' My mom was pregnant and working.  She felt that "God had blessed her with this child and she wasn't going to give it up."  During this time, she met my dad.  He was drawn to her and in July of 1980, they were married.* I was born August 8, 1980.

But, when I was born, my dad said that if he were to adopt me right then (basically, put his name on my birth certificate) he did not want me to know about my real father.  He said that he was going to be my only dad.  

So, they lied.  My grandparents knew.  My other grandparents knew.  My aunts. My uncles.  And seeing that I lived in a small town, I'm sure the circle was wider than I could ever know.  I look back and imagine scenes walking through the grocery store and in the background, two women whisper, "You know, that family lives a lie.  I heard the man raising her isn't her dad, and she doesn't even know."

It was like my little world was ripped from me.  As if my Science teacher sat me down and said, "Look, we decided to do an experiment on you as a child.  We told you the sky was 'Blue,' but it's actually 'purple.' Sorry about that."

Then, my mom told me that I couldn't tell my sisters.   And, since we didn't know who wrote the letter, maybe we shouldn't mention it to my dad either.  My mom was worried that he might stop paying child support for me.  So, I never said anything to him about it.  Ever. And he never brought it up.

Until I was 25.  I was visiting my dad in Georgia.  It was late and we were sitting around talking and he started crying and he told me everything.  And I sat there, stone still.  I really didn't know what to say.  I had come to terms with this years ago.  I told him about the letter, about meeting my real dad, about the sisters I never knew I had.  And I told him - well, you'll find out more about that tomorrow.

A few years after I found out, we told my second sister.  But the youngest, still has no clue, even to this day.  

* My parents had always told me they married in July 1979.  And even went on about how they were married for a little over a year before I was born.  She even had a wedding dress she told me was hers and that she wanted me to wear it when I got married.  I still wonder where that dress came from. 

Holes

Some holes in your past just can't be filled.  You look back on them, every once in a while, you trip and fall because of one, but usually, you just find a way to tiptoe around them.  

A few posts ago, I mentioned that my parents divorced.  Like, most my age, I was raised by a single parent and things were rough, but I didn't know any better.  And that was OK.  My dad left a few days before Christmas when I was twelve.  It was a day before my younger sisters birthday.  We learned to get along, just us girls.  My mom was excited by the prospects of not having to 'be home by a certain time' and she filled her holes with antiques and bargains at Target.  

Things were fine (if you overlook the battle with child support where I was forced at a young age to call my dads mother and beg her to call her son and ask her to convince him to pay it, only to have her hang up on me).

Until I turned 15 and my dad started sending letters to my sisters and I that spoke very poorly of my mother (an opinion that ten years later I agree with). I ended up standing up to him, and telling him that I didn't think that kind of behavior was acceptable.

A few weeks later was Parent-Teacher conferences at our schools.  My mom had to visit about a dozen teachers (three kids, each with about 4 teachers), starting at noon, and she didn't get home until late- like 8 p.m. My middle sister was on student council, so she was at school directing lost parents.  Leaving me with my youngest - and mentally handicapped- sister, home early.  Which was fine.  Until I got the mail.  There was a letter addressed to me from a company called "Child Find America."  It informed me that the man I call my dad was not my father.  Another man was, and identified one of my mother's friends brother as my biological father.  So, I sat at home, alone, with the weight of the world on my tiny, teen shoulders.  Even at 15, I knew better, whether or not the content of this letter was true, I knew that the sender was fake.  The letter was typed, but not by computer.  It was laced with typos and inaccuracies.  There was no letterhead.  And the reference to a person- how would a company even know that I knew that woman?  

It was sent by an individual.  But who?  For the longest time, I believed it was my dad.  (Note, I call the man who raised me, "dad" and the man who made me, "father.")  It could have been my new step-mother.  She was not warmly welcomed by my sisters and I.  Several years later, I began to think it was my mother.  Either way, some adult was playing a very mean game, and I was simply a pawn.  

When my mom came home that night, I confronted her, my face red and splotchy from crying all day.  I didn't know who to call.  Who I could talk to.  Was it true?  Did my grandparents know?  Did my dad know?  Did my father know I even existed?  I mean, he had to.  I had met my grandparents, except I didn't know they were my grandparents.  I had seen pictures of their son- my father, I just didn't know he was my father.  

This story continues.  I will finish later today, or tomorrow.  Because even at 28, those holes still trip me up, still play a big part in my life.