phil: a brief current

Ages? We're going to tell them ages? Hmmm... the things I agree to... ;)

I'm 36. I suppose I've been thinking about this on and off for... well, 36 years... But I've only seriously considered doing anything about for the last ten or twelve. College was too insane for me to deal with all of th emotions surrounding searching for my birth parents.

But this year, Ronni, my partner, finally got through to me. I had been dragging my feet about doing something, and she kept asking me about searching. She didn't want me to wait until it was too late. So I finally gave in, and contacted Catholic Charities (the agency through which I was adopted). This was the beginning of April I believe. I started my search.

Shelly suggested to me, about a month after this, when I told her about the search, that we do this blog. I wish I had taken her up on that right away. Now events have gone pretty far, and I feel like there's a lot of backtracking I'll have to do later. Ah well, such is life.

Let me, in order to avoid writing a full book here in this one post, cut to the chase. My search process began back in April. Today, it bore fruit. Seriously, today.

Well, okay, Wednesday. Well, probably earlier, but today is when it really came home. Wednesday, I received a phone call from Catholic Charities that I missed. I didn't get in touch with them until Thursday. That's when I was told that they had made contact with my birth mother and a letter was being sent, through them, from her to me.

Today, as we were sitting at our table eating breakfast, I heard the mailman knock on the front door. He said something like "I've got your Harry Potter." (I know, I know... But it takes me back to my childhood. And ordering from Amazon seemed easier then going to a bookstore today.)

I'm sure the mailman though that the Harry Potter book was the most important thing in the mail today. He was wrong. The letter from my birth mother arrived today.

It's just the first taste of filling in some gaps that I don't know I had even fully realized were there. I had already found out a few more things about her than I knew before. But now I knew more. And from her directly.

The anticipation from Thursday to today has been intense (as Shelly will attest to). Now I have a lot of things to process. But I will say it was a good letter. And I feel good about where this process has led.

At some point, I want to write more about the events and emotions leading up to this point. And I'm sure there will be a lot of things still to come. I've always thought that a good story begins in medias res, in the middle of things. I don't know if I can get more in the middle of things in this story than to start where I'm at today. I'll try to catch you up along the way. But this seemed too important to sit on.