My twin nieces celebrate their 18th birthday this month. They don’t know me, but I celebrate them, too, even as I mourn the years needlessly lost in the fog of adoption. Those years are more visible to me in the lives of these girls and their two younger sisters than in the lives of my brothers. Six years ago, a DNA test led me to my birth family, and even though I’ve never been granted contact with one brother, and have had just minimal communication with the other, I imagine we are much the same as we were then. But life has changed drastically for these girls. And I’ve watched silently from afar, seeing but not seen, thanks to my sister-in-law’s generosity and Instagram.
When I first made contact with my birth parents, who married not long after I was relinquished, it was clear that my existence was a “situation” to be dealt with, not a cause for celebration. I was disappointed, but not surprised. My parents told their two sons, my full brothers, of the situation. I waited, hoping they’d reach out. They did not. But the wife of one of them did, and in the years that followed, she and I slowly became friends, eventually sharing social media connections.
So I’ve watched, through photos and videos, as my brother’s four daughters grew up. The youngest was 7 when I first saw her, the oldest, 13. Now, the older girls, who were just entering their teens when I entered the waiting room assigned to aunts relinquished at birth, are on the threshold of adulthood.
I’ve missed the opportunity to be a part of their girlhood. For me to share a bit of myself with them, and for them to share themselves with an aunt who may be a bit removed from the family as a whole, but who loves them nonetheless. I’ve missed the opportunity to rebuild and repair some of the rupture of relinquishment by being a part of their lives early on, at a time when it feels natural to create those bonds.
Someday, when the time is right, I hope to connect with these young women. And if that happens, we can build from wherever we start and I’ll be delighted to do so. But I’ll always miss those girls, the ones I watched from afar as they discovered who they might be. Discovering who you are is something to celebrate.
