What exactly is an illegitimate child?

il·le·git·i·mate  

/ˌiləˈjitəmit/

Adjective Not authorized by the law; not in accordance with accepted standards or rules: "an illegitimate exercise of power by the military". (of a child) Born of parents not lawfully married to each other. I'm calling BS on number 2.  We don't live in the dark ages anymore, it's time to stop using dark age labels.

The e-mail that preceded my Father's final good-bye

Yesterday I posted my father's final letter to me, today I will post the email that caused him to lash out so.  There are a few in-between emails, but the this email from me to him, and his return letter with his award seem to be the most comprehensive in telling the story.

"My children are free to interact with you anyway they wish.  They are children of broken homes. They can handle a little mud slinging between baldy behaving adults.   Do you think I would encourage them to break ties with anyone because of my petty arguments?  If you have a concern regarding my children, you need to not assume anything and ask them directly why they have or have not chosen to so something. Or shall I follow your logic and blame you for ______ un-friending me?   

Is sure is interesting that one day I send you an invite to my Green Housing page and the next day you mock environmentalists in one of your group think emails.  Coincidence? Perhaps.

Now I am to believe that there are 40 young people seeking heartfelt advice from you on whether or not to pursue finding a parent and opening themselves up for all sorts of heartache, the possibility of being rejected again, and/or possibly finding a love they cannot imagine and with the knowledge and insight you have had and instead you put all those amazing lessons and perspectives aside and choose to give them the advice to not expect Demi-gods for parents as a board-cast message on Facebook?You the man of 1 million words summed it all up with that?

I am sorry, I cannot go where you are asking me to go.  But if what you are saying is true, than it is all the better for you to post your advice and thoughts freely without the worry of how I might perceive such good hearted intentions.  Your message will be all the better if your audience is all of the same opinion and there really is no point in having me in the audience.  And if you have ever read my posts you will already know its a very catered message. 

I really don't wish you any harm, any bad thoughts, any extra weight on an already heavy heart.  I wish we could run through the fields of gold again and love and hope that I might somehow be able to join you at a Christmas dinner (or maybe that was only my hope).   I understand now the impossibilities of my childhood fantasies and I get it.  

And I get that it's not personal.  You and yours have customs I don't understand, you pull names out of hats and buy each other gifts and most likely never call each other to say happy birthday or merry Christmas or God bless at Easter.  And I get for five years now I have waited and hoped to be included in activities that are not your activists but rather they are [your wife's] activities and I really really do get it.  

But here's the catch, I can't imagine how you get it. How are you okay with the way things are? Now I don't fault you for being okay with it, but I just don't see you as being fatherly if you are cable of carrying on like you do.  I haven't understood since that cruise you took in 2008.  And I know it wasn't your cruise, it was [your wife's] and I get the look of confusion in everyone's eyes as I strain to validate my complaint.  I don't belong on [your wife's] cruise, not than and not now and not ever. But again here is the catch, why do you go?   If [my husband] bought tickets to a cruise and everyone except one of my children were invited, I would be confused and hurt that all my kids weren't invited. And I wouldn't deny him passage or anyone else for that matter, but there's just no way I could go. And that is the difference between you and me.   

You see, I honestly thought after you told everyone about me that YOU would start including me.  

So tell me the truth, if it was [your favorite daughter] who was excluded, would you go?  

Now the cruise is long gone and its not worth talking about except for the sake that I should have known way back then that for you and mostly for everyone else that nothing would change.  Your entire family wants to so dearly to hold on to traditions that pre-date my arrival into the family and there just noway meaningful change will ever happen without the consensus of the group. 

Now to clarify, I'm not angry about this, but you can't have it both ways. Either I'm your daughter in every sense of the way or I am not.  The same is true for my role as a sister, I cannot do the half-thing, blame it [on my maternal sister] if you must, she forbade me to use the word half since as long as I can remember.  

Now for the record, I'm not saying good-bye, I gave up trying to say god-bye a long time ago.  

If it helps you to understand, I fell apart when I read your words.  I had out of state clients in town and with this crazy market I was on about day 17 of not having a day off with the working day lasting from dawn until dusk and no I don't get to have a quiet lunch break where I can collect my thoughts and regroup.  I just had to find a home for this family before they left town on Friday, and I had to do this when I'm exhausted in a market that is a fierce as you can possibly imagine and I am supposed to do it with a smile on my face.  And than I read your post and its like a wreaking ball on a fragile building.  (This analogy is not meant to imply I am over-sensitive) 

I have asked you not to email me because I check my email as part of my job and it's too much to have little bombs of nasty comments going off in my email.  I use Facebook for work and if you ever liked my fan pages or talked to [a family member] about how I use Facebook you would understand its not all fun and games for me, I actually use it as a tool and I'm very good at turning my efforts on Facebook into money to support my family.  

Our paths will cross again and again, I truly hope above all things that when they do cross it might be a pleasant passing where each person wishes the best for the other without impossible expectations on each other.

That being said, the situation is impossible, and my only regret is my inability to have accepted that as fact years and years ago."

My father's final letter to me

I have made a lot of posts about how I feel.  This post is the transcribe of a letter my father sent to me...

He sent this award with it in a priority tracking service envelope, I guess he wanted proof that I had received his letter.

Here is the letter:

"Since you were kind enough to write back and ask if I was mad, I'll gladly answer.  No, you did not make me mad, you merely broke my heart because no you do not understand and you won't because you read what you want to believe not what I write.

I am including a plaque I received in 1990 for most energy efficient home in the 1800 foot size for the entire northwest from BPA.  It tells how green I was before you ever saw the color.  How many green homes did you sell in 1990.  I built 7 and remolded 9 more.  I have paper certificates for green warehouses 1983, 1986 and 1991, green offices 1987, 1993 and 1997.

Use it to burn a green fire.  I merely wrote that global warming wasn't under complete review a manmade product.  But don't left facts confuse your belief.  I wrote we have to be willing to be a good a steward of all God has given us.  You ignore that statement and proclaim I mock you.  But the facts confuse your belief and you are now green and I am not, but I mock you.  I was installing heat pumps and telling others to install them in 1972 in Salt Lake City before the oil crisis.  You mock me by not reading what I wrote and I was and am greener than you even now.  But don't let that fact obscure your belief.

But the facts are that the world is warming and has been since before Christ was born.  Study the Sahara and see where Rome got their wheat.

You proclaim you understand the traditions and the family.  You don't have a clue and you will never because you have sons and daughters that don't fight each other and don't even argue.  I don't have that luxury and battle constantly to maintain a strict balance between hardhead, loud and obnoxious adults that I love dearly and try to help.  You only have to deal with them in your business and you whine about how hard that is.

You proclaim you understand my wife.  Again no clue.  Your husband has not come to you after 25 years and confessed his lie only to have you meet his lie and say how wonderful she is then hear her harshly criticize a daughter that was and is struggling to keep her family together in what is most unfair and bad circumstance.  You do not know her story of how she views blood and blood relationship nor how that caused her to struggle but still raise children outside of that blood line.  You don't understand her own family nor her fights there.

You'll never understand how much it hurts to not be able to invite someone you love so much and then have that someone tell you when invited that it isn't the right time, right place or right function.  And because you don't want it to be it will never be and you'll never understand.

You'll never understand how hard you fought to not see those two people you think are demi-gods and how hard and heart breaking it was to have to tell you over and over. "JUST GO SEE THEM, THEY LOVE YOU AS MUCH AS I DO." And still you argued against it, but finally went.

You don't understand what it means to be reminded daily that you did something when you were young and dumb and be told that you are forgiven but you can never be trusted again.

So yes, you broke my heart again, but you have done it so often it only hurts when I think about it.   Am I mad, No and cannot be for I caused it all and now each of you get your turn to be as ruthless in your judgement as you wish.  So judge away.  As you point out.  I am mean and nasty and my mocking your green is again proof of that.

So you'll never make the meanest, nastiest SOB that walked the earth mad.

Sorry you just don't have what it takes to make me made but yes you can and do break my heart.  You even ask one time if I knew how you felt to be left out.  No, I don't get left out, I have the much more dubious task of leaving some out here and some out there because they want to fight and scream at each other.  Go figure, the meanest has to make those harsh and brutal calls and then be skewered by both parties all the time.

And it is you that refuses to call and talk or meet and talk.  That has never been a problem with me either. But who wants to talk to a mean and nasty SOB."

I could add commentary, but in my hopes to record the story of meeting my father in it's truest form, I will allow instead the reader to comment.  If I can find it, I will share the email from me to him that preceded this story in a future post.

The first time I met my biological father...

I met my dad for the first time was I was 19, I am now over 40 so I have now had my dad in my life longer than I have not had him in my life.  That is a strange thought.  

This was me at 19, about the time I met my father for the first time.

However, if I were to bet on it, that clock will start ticking backward again now that we really have seemed to have severed any connection.

There are two significant meetings, or first's, if you will.  The first first was one I actually met him in 1992, the other was when I saw him with his family for the first time in 2008.  

I don't remember much of the first encounter and most of what I remember is because at one point during all the turmoil we would go through together later, my dad actually reminded me of all our encounters.  Somehow I had blacked out (or blocked out) all these memories.  When my dad retold them to me, it was as if the memories would come back about 5 minutes before he would tell them to me.  I don't know if that makes sense.  It's as if someone is describing a person so that you can make a sketch of it, only seconds before they tell you the guy had a mustache, you see it.  

The idea that these memories were in my brain but not memories I could pull up on command was very unnerving.  What else had I blanked out? Am I now remembering the truth, or some conjured up story? How did I forget?  

Perhaps it was too painful a memory so I choose to lock it away.  Or perhaps, and I think this is more likely, I just choose to not think about it, so the memory vanished.  My dad met me, and than got in his car and drove back to his life as if I didn't exist.  That's not something a young person wants to think about too much.

So, enough with the psychobabble, here is how I came to meet my dad....

After meeting with my grandmother in the park, I learned what state my father lived in.  With that information I had a friend with connections run a drivers license search and a match was returned with the name and what I guessed would be the age of my father.  I didn't get to see his license, which of course was disappointing since I had assumed I would know my dad when I saw him.  However, I had his address now, I was so close.

Also, this being 1992 and although the Internet existed I sure the hell didn't know what it was.  So the library was a place I spent a lot of time at.  The bigger libraries had phone books of everywhere, so In the labyrinth of the Salt Lake library I found the phone book for the area I needed and as simple as opening a book, there was the phone number for the person who I thought might be my dad.

I was very hesitant.  I had spent probably less than 4 hours of detective work to find my dad. Recalling the steps it took to find him I remembered that most of the time it took to get this far was time spent calling every private investigator in the yellow pages begging for help.  After calling a dozen or so private investigators and feeling completely dejected one eventually felt sorry for me and gave me the tip to search the LDS missionary indices at the main church building in downtown SLC. That research is what led me to my grandmother.  Within a few hours on the phone to P.I.s, less than 15 minutes in the church records building, a lunch with my grandmother, a favor from a friend and now another 15 minutes at the library and I had my dad's phone number clutched in my hand.  Could it really have been that easy?

Why hadn't my mother ever done this? What about the state authorities, certainly with those resources they could have found him.  How could I have located him so quickly with so few resources?  My father would later claim this was because he wasn't hiding and he would later insinuate that had anyone tried to look for him, they would have found him so obviously this indicates he was helpless in the matter.   But the truth is, the state did find him but they didn't have the ability to force him to address paternity. And my maternal grandparent did try to make contact with his wife at the time.  But my fathers wife didn't want to believe that I could have been his child so she went along with his stories and the state can't force someone to be a dad if they don't want to be.

After a few days or weeks, I really can't remember how much time passed,I finally called the number from the phone book.  I decided to play it cool, like I had called the number a million times.  So when I called, I simply said, "yeah, is ______ around?"

"No, he's not here" replied the casual voice on the other end.  I wondered if this was a sibling of mine and strained to get some glimmer of a clue what life was like on the end of the telephone line.

"Do you know where I can reach him at?" Playing as cool as I could while my fingers trembled so much that I could barely hold the phone still.  

"Yeah,he's at his parents house" was the reply.

"That's great, I'll call him there."

"Do you need the number" the stranger offered.

"Thanks but I already have it" I couldn't have planned it better, now I was certain the caller on the other end wouldn't ever suspect a thing from me.  To this day, I wonder which one of my siblings it might have been.

I knew that if I didn't call the number for my dad's parents home right that second I would never get the nerve again.  So I called and again playing it as cool as a cucumber I asked, "is _______ around" 

"Hold on I'll get him for you" was the kind voice on the other end.

The moment was at hand. What was I supposed to say? Will he know it is me? Will he deny me? Will he tell me to go to hell?

My dad answered the phone in his usually matter.  I know today what that usual matter is, but back in 1992, I had no clue. So when he answered the phone, "what do you want?" I just naturally assumed my cool as a cucumber identity had been discovered and now here was this gruff voice just being as blunt as one could possibly be.  

So I replied back with the only answer that made any sense, "I want to meet you" I said.

It is so fascinating to me to tell you this story, even if there is no "you" out there. Even if the only person who ever reads my story is me, as I mentioned above these memories come back to me with clarity as if the picture is being painted before the brush touches the page.  How accurate the memories are I have no idea. 

During the rest of the conversation we decided when and where to meet.  It would be at the food court in a local mall.  I didn't ask what he'd be wearing and he didn't ask what I would be wearing.  I don't think he even ever asked my name.  One has to assume that for this man, hearing a young woman call him to ask him if he wanted to meet her, why he must have know it was his 19 year old daughter that he'd never seen or heard before.  I wondered if his parents would have asked him what the phone call was all about. I wondered of he turned white as a ghost when he heard my voice.  Again, with the way he answered the phone, I assumed he knew it was me.  I assumed my grandmother whom I had already met had recognized my voice and must have said "it's her" with that look in her eye that every mother has.   Now that years have gone by, and now that I know this is how he answers the phone, I now assume that he too played coolio the cucumber and never let on to his parents on anyone else who exactly it was that had just called him out of the blue.

It is with this memory that my heart goes out to his wife.  I know as a wife myself how important it is to share moments with my husband.  I can't imagine how shut out she must have felt during this time, when he was meeting his daughter and couldn't confide in her what that experience was like.   This is why cheating is so horrible, it robs you of the companionship of your best friend.  But that's a topic for a different post.

So now I'm at the food court at the agreed upon mall on the agreed upon date at the agreed upon time.  With my heart pounding so loud I can't hear my own thoughts I nervously scan the crowd.  Making this search difficult was that my expectations had been set.  You see my mother had dated a number of gentleman in my life and most of them were not model citizens.  To be fair to my mother, we lived in Utah and at the time if you weren't a member of the church, you probably weren't considered a model citizen and while I knew my father was a returned missionary the expectation of what my father would be like was closer to a drinker hobo than a clean cut Mormon with a newly pressed shirt and tie.  

I scanned the crowd for and stopped at every single man over age 40.  "Please not him" I would think as I scanned the number of strange looking men.  For those of you who have never known your birth parents, this is a procedure us lost kids do in every public setting, always wondering, "could that stranger over there be my father/mother?"  For those of you lucky enough to know both you mum and your pa, humor me and go to any public setting, look around and pick a father, you'll find yourself saying "please not that guy" too.  

My scanning and prayer ritual went on for what seems an eternity.  Deciding to make myself busy, I choose to stand in line for a hot dog at the hot-dog-on-a-stick place, I still love their deep fried cheese thingies.  As I'm standing in line, I feel the prescience of someone behind me and I turn around to look into blue eyes. There he was and I knew it, just as he knew it.

And I don't remember anything else.  I know I didn't ask him if he was my dad.  We just talked, but I don't know how long it was or what it was about?  I remember at some point he met my husband and children (at age 19, I had a 2 year old son and two step-children half my age, but that's for an entirely different blog some day).  I know we exchanged a number of letters, most of which I destroyed after one of many future events were he would refuse to tell his family about me.  The next 16 years are so much of a blur.  I never referred to him by anything other than his name and didn't think of him as a father.  When others asked about my dad I would still answer I didn't know who my dad was and that it might be this one guy I had met but I wasn't sure. 

My dad never said he was my father, only that he would be whatever I wanted him to be.  That is why the time I saw him after his confession, and after he actually said he was my father is really more of the first time I met my dad.

This guy that I met in 1992, he was just some random dude.

Fatherlessness

Saw this video today and had to share.

For most, these numbers are only numbers. For the fatherlessness, these numbers are painful memories. Let's end the Fatherless Epidemic

What I did that I regret most when I was introduced to my bio dad's family

It was a Monday morning, when my dad finally confessed to my paternal siblings.  His confession left me stunned, confused, excited, nauseous, dizzy, etc. etc.

I knew after I made the call to my half-brother the prior Tuesday that the truth would be forthcoming, when I told my dad that Thursday that I had called my brother and that he should be aware that his dirty secret was out, I had expectations.

I expected he and my brother would communicate, have a chat about how to move forward and how to tell the others.  Or at least one of them would call me that weekend to either learn more about me or discuss the method and timing of telling the others.

But the weekend came and went without any event.  I anxiously checked my phone and my computer for any sign of communication from either of them.  I checked my spam folders, re-read emails and dialed my own phone just to make sure it was working.  Needless to say it was a very long weekend.

Than Monday morning came and I felt so dejected, unresolved, tired, and worn out.  I had no plan going forward.  My father had seven other biological children that I knew about, I had only called one.  I was pretty certain at that time, I wouldn't have it in me to call another sibling.  Words cannot explain the terror and resolve it took to call my brother and say, "hi, I think I'm your half-sister."

I went to work and tried to pretend I was okay.  At about 10 a.m., I saw an email titled, "What have I done" and my heart jumped out of my chest.  I couldn't even read the words, I saw a mix of letters and paragraphs swirling around and around on the computer screen.   I wanted to throw up, I wanted to cry, I wanted to jump with joy.

I focused over and over and over again on the recipient list.  I counted the names; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.  There were TEN names on the list.  I knew of 7, there was an extra 3. 

Who were these people, what did they look like?  Were they too in front of their computers?  Why did my dad send an email?  Are they happy to have a sister? Does it say I'm their sister?  Will they accept me? What will my life be like now?  What about my children and their children? What will my dad's wife do?

Excitement was probably the most prominent emotion, but as I scrambled to read the email with all the rambling paragraphs about Christ and the Garden of Gethesemane and my dad's ego and pride all splayed out that finally about three quarters of the way down there it was.  And this is what it said.

"You have a half-sister by my wrong doing, her name is Jana, her number is 800-XXX-XXXX"

THAT'S IT?

How will they know me? What will they expect?  And while I understand the underlying shame of my father's confessions, a sadness filled my heart as I thought to myself, "well, that is my birth announcement"  35 years late without any mention of love or pride for me as a person, just a sadness and sense of shame that I existed.

Well, without thinking and in my eagerness, I composed my own email about me, about my children, about my challenges and triumphs in life, about my pets, about my job, about everything and I hit "reply all"

Now, I regret a lot of things about this action of mine.  What I didn't realize than, is that a lot of my siblings didn't have smart phones or computers in front of them like I did.  I assumed they all got my dad's confession in real time, I had no idea that when they got home later that day, they would see my email first and my dad's second because for reasons only God knows, that is how emails are organized?  I regret that I didn't recognize that they would need some time to digest the email from their father.  I regret that their mother had no idea that this is how they would be told.  But these reasons are not why I'm sharing this story.

Mostly I regret that I shared my personal story with persons who didn't deserve to know about me.

Now that sounds kinda mean, but it is true.  Those siblings that have chosen not to accept me will tell you it's because of something I did or said, but I don't buy it.  There are a handful of siblings that have taken the position since day one that I'm not anything more than "a physical representation of a lie" and that I don't belong in their family and I really regret that they know anything about me.   Not that they know I exist, but that they know my personal stuggles. 

I was so eager to tell them my story and to hear their's I just assumed it would be reciprocal.  But some of them didn't want to know, didn't want to care.  

I have since learned that if someone doesn't ask about you, don't volunteer.  (ironic for a blogger to post this, however, if  you didn't want to read my thoughts, you wouldn't have made it this far, so obviously you are interested.)  I have learned that my story is valuable and I don't want to give it to anyone that isn't interested in paying me for my story, and the payment I expect is time and consideration.

Over the course of time, I told my dad more and more about myself.  When I reflect back, he never once asked about my life, ever.  I wanted him to know the heartache I endured because of his absence, somehow I thought this would make things a little better for me.  To face my tormentor and look him in the eye and say, "this happened because of your actions".   I have also learned that while my life would have been different had he been there, I still would have had heartache so perhaps while his abandonment was a horrible event that I had to learn to get beyond, it wasn't necessarily a cause and effect of all my other woes.

But more than that, I cherish my woes.  They are uniquely my own story.  Things that have happened and things I have overcome are my only trophies, ribbons and awards for a life well lived, even if those trophies, ribbons and awards are only in my mind.   At this point in time, my father doesn't deserve to know these stories.

My paternal grandfather is a WWII hero, a paratrooper that faught and survived some of the most historical battles in all of US history.  My father was content with denying me this heritage.    I only wish I would have denied him the story of me.

Again, for those of you out there with illegitimate parents, you are valuable, you are cherished and your life is worth knowing about, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  I hope you are smarter than me and save your story for those who deserve it, those who will cherish it and for those that love you as a person.

Growing Up Fatherless

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

I grew up not knowing who my father was or anything about him. I didn't even learn his name until I was 19 years old. When I found him, he kept me a secret from his 7 other biological children by convincing me that all I would ever mean to them would be heartbreak. I broke though that horrible message and found a love I never dreamed of, this is that story in Haiku Deck fashion.

The Haiku story is meant to be simple.  There are many layers of complexity in my story.  There have been many different responses by my half-siblings; from being completely ignored, to be called a liar and compared to a thief in the night, to being loved, to being miss-understood and so on and so on.

This Haiku isn't meant to diminish the love of some of my other sisters, it's just that the actions of one sister have stood out and in choosing to wanting to end this Haiku Deck on a positive note, I choose to share her actions as a beacon of hope for other kids born to illegitimate parents. 

My story was filled with heartache, as yours may or may not be.  But if you feel it's worth the risk, than there is hope that you can be accepted and loved by a biological family member out there who doesn't know you exist yet.