The First Face to Face

It was probably the most surreal trip I've ever taken. I'd never been to California before, never seen a desert, and had never met my newly-discovered aunt and cousin. As if the itinerary needed more curiosities, it was also the first time I ever attended Comic-Con, but that's for another post.

As we drove for a couple of hours through the desert, I thought alternately of both nothing and everything. I stared out the window, occasionally trying to put my journey into logical steps. A question I'd posed on a genealogy site years ago had been answered. Contact, after twenty years of searching for my mother's birth family, had been made by a cousin I never knew existed. And, she had graciously offered to let us stay at her home to meet both her and her mother, my mother's half-sister. My mother, who had died twenty-five years earlier, would have found the whole thing staggering as well as incredibly wonderful. As did I.

When we were minutes away from our destination, my heart began pounding. What was it going to be like? What would we say to each other after initial pleasantries had been exchanged? As we slowed to look at street numbers, I saw them. A woman close to my age with her mother, both waving happily at us. I couldn't wait for the car to stop so I could see them more clearly and to hug them, possibly to make sure this was all real.

When I did get out of the car and ran over to them, I saw my smiling aunt stare at me with wide eyes.

"You look just like my sister!" She exclaimed, "I can't get over how much you look like her."

It took me half a second to know she didn't mean my mother, whom she'd never met, but the older sister she'd grown up with. I was a little surprised. We'd exchanged photos earlier and I thought the person I'd most looked like was my grandmother. Apparently, that wasn't the case. I did feel a little intimidated by my cousin's looks, then reminded myself that there aren't too many former beauty pageant winners out there. And she was clearly her mother's daughter.

All this happened in a flash. My ever-patient husband and son followed us into the house, where we all sat down, smiled, and stared at each other again. Photos are one thing, being with someone face to face is another. And there was an unexplainable quality to my aunt that brought my mother immediately to mind. It may have been the turn of the head, the fleeting gesture, the gait of her walk. Whatever it was, there was absolutely no doubt that I had found family. My lovely cousin and I seemed to have the same laugh...we certainly had the same sense of humor and way of looking at things. And, perhaps surprisingly, we were all so relaxed in each others' company.


Of course, we spent hours comparing puzzle pieces to the mystery of my mother's adoption and her mother's life. My grandmother, whom I'd been told had died in childbirth. My grandmother whom I'd always imagined as a kindly, poverty-stricken immigrant. My grandmother, who in fact had lived very well in Miami Beach, Key West, and Jamaica while neglecting the four children in her care. Why? We kept asking the same question. There were rumors about her acquaintances, both famous and infamous, and we tried to determine which were likely and which ones unlikely. They are among the questions we're still asking each other today.

Yet, the most amazing result of the experience was the bond of family. My sister and I never gave up our search and our cousin willingly opened the door to us. I'd read recently on a genealogy site: A tree without roots will fall over. I wasn't aware of feeling that earlier, but I now believe it to be true. Since finding my mother's family, my step is a bit surer, the circle of heritage almost complete. And I hope we will all someday know our grandmother's real story.