Stalking live relatives…

I have been wondering a little bit about doing the whole using the giant can opener to open the gigantic can of worms and seeing what’s inside thing that I have been putting off and off and off probably for about ummm 18 years.

Is that the longest sentence ever with absolutely NO punctuation?

Here’s the facts and nothing but the facts.

Adopted as an infant.

Cool with that. Cool parents and all that. Happy with them, too.

BUT…

Whole itty bitty gap in my space/time continuum here… And every so often, the gap opens up and I can look straight down into the abyss of “what if?” and “why did…?” and well, sometimes I want to know about the who and the what and the why that happened in the space immediately before and just after I was born.

I was born in the mid sixties (which makes me the second oldest person on the internet) and that’s just what happened to women who had children out of wedlock. Someone came and took them away. Doesn’t make it right, that it’s just what happened. Doesn’t make it wrong, either.

Ok, for some people, they’re not right without their biologicals. They have a great slashing gaping hole in their continuum rather than a wee gap that opens and closes (but never truly goes away). But would they have been right with their biologicals? Or is the wrongness they feel something they have attached to their adoption thing, where it may be something else all together?

Now, I could go for years without anything adoption related crossing my mind in the slightest. Most of the time, it’s just “I am tall, I am blonde, I am adopted and my eye colour is subject to change without notice”. It’s a part of me that’s important but not – just like my eye colour and my hair and my height. Part of what makes me “me”.

Then the cosmos aligns and the gap opens up. Sometimes it opens a little… sometimes it opens enough for me to get the application form to apply for more information. And just once, it opened up enough for me to not only get the application, but fill it in and send it off.

So now I have enough information to contact the Biological Ancestor. More than enough, as I have discovered there’s a degree of fun and amusement in stalking LIVING ancestors in addition to the dead ones.

I can tell you where she lives now (white pages), where she lived a few years ago (electoral roll), what her married name is (that was a fluke, ok) Oh, and the reason I know I am the second oldest person on the internet is because the Biological Ancestor has a web page, too. With pictures.

So I have seen what she looks like. That’s a weird feeling.

Because one of the things I am looking for is to see if I have a family face. She seemed to have darkish hair and blue eyes. I don’t have either. Maybe it’s not her family I am needing to see… Although there’s a touch about the eyebrows here and there… We seem to have similar personalities – in writing at least; although she loves Lord of the Rings and I don’t. But she’s into Terry Pratchett as well, so some is forgiven.

So do I contact her? Or not? Do I open up the can of worms and see what happens? My own mum doesn’t know I have found what I have found for a start – and Bio Ancestor placed a veto (it expired, hence my ability to get the information I have) so she’s not expecting me to rock up on her door step and say “Hi Mum, you need to update your  profile… You need to add on one kid and a couple of  grandkids, alright?”

I found her name on a genealogical website I frequent, so I can send her a really simple, non-threatening email to suggest that there’s the slightest possibility that she and I may be related in some way shape or form. It’s the kind of thing that should only be seen by her; as when one receives a message from this forum, it directs you *back* to the website in order to read the message.

Do I don’t I, do I don’t I?

As I sit here with the can opener, taptaptapping…

 

A Story about a Fairy Princess…

Once upon a time, a Fairy Princess was born in a great tower far, far away.

 

Unfortunately, the mother of said Fairy Princess was not deemed to be a suitable person to be the parent of said Fairy Princess; so she deposited her progeny at a place where the Fairy Princess would find a home that would be perfectly suited to her Royal-ness.

 

Or something like that.

 

Perhaps it was more along the lines of Skanky Trollope paused briefly in the process of taking many drugs and rooting many men to squeeze out a crotch dropping and passed it along to the place where homes were found for Mini Trollopes?

 

Although seeing as said infant was a healthy and rather chubby young thing, one would be right to assume that perhaps the reality fell somewhere between the two. It was the mid sixties, and the Summer of Lerve was slow to come to the City of Churches. In fact, it is strongly suspected that the Summer of Lerve secretly bypassed the City of Churches all together. And the Summer of Love happened in 1967, by which stage, the hero of this story was a strapping young toddler.

 

In 1965, the Prime Minister was Robert Menzies; the Governor General was a Viscount or a Lord. And Australia sent its first troops to Vietnam. Light Fingers won the Melbourne Cup and Australia was really crap at cricket. The population was only a bit over 11 million people – which is about half what it is now. They were listening to The Beatles, and The Stones, and Herman’s Hermits with a bit of Billy Thorpe and the Seekers for a bit of local colour. Oh, and Mary Quant invented the mini-skirt.

 

Australia officially abandoned the White Australia Policy (was it really only that long ago?) and an erstwhile young chap called Tom Angrove invented the wine cask. He held the patent for the container for Chateau Cardboard, and is thus the Godfather of many cheap and nasty nights on the piss (perhaps Our Fairy Princess was more closely related to Skanky Trollope? Although her tastes swiftly turned toward wine of the bottled variety; which does  indicate a definite touch of princessery…)

 

Classic television such as Gilligan’s Island, Batman, I Dream of Jeannie and Hogans Heroes all first took to the airwaves in 1965. Our Fairy Princess distinctly remembers watching these shows as a five and six year old, well after they’d finished being produced; so it would appear the Summer of Lerve was not the only thing slow to come to the City Of Churches.

 

Now, our Fairy Princess was adopted by a lovely young couple who lavished her with love and affection. They provided her with a home and a baby sister (although according to family legend, our wee princess would have much preferred a puppy…) and everything else a girlie could need.

 

This did not stop Fairy Princess from turning into Angsty Teen, however. But unlike most Angsty Teens who wished they were adopted and their Real Parents ™ would come a knockin’ on the door; Fairy Princess could console herself with the fact that Loving Parents were not really her parents and that she actually was a Fairy Princess and surely one day her Real Parents™ would come flying to her rescue and save her from these terrible people who wanted her to smile occasionally, and oh maybe do her homework instead of aimlessly staring out the window and plotting their demise.

 

Of course, time passes, and Loving Parents resumed their former role in the life of our young Fairy Princess – that of loving parents! However, Fairy Princess was not immune to this tiny little nagging feeling of “hmmm, am I missing something?” every couple of years. After a few of these “couple of years” went by, the Fairy Princess realised that what she actually wanted to do was find out what went on before she was adopted by the Loving Parents…

 

So she sent away for the application forms. This was indeed the very olden days decisions had to be made, letters had to be written and responses awaited eagerly. Of course, by the time the eagerly awaited response arrived, the Fairy Princess had changed her mind sort of… Or chickened out, most likely. Away went the application form for another day; until that niggle arose again. Naturally, being as how these applications had to be lodged with a government department, and being as how government departments like nothing more than changing something that’s working perfectly finely, Our Fairy Princess would again send away for the application forms, wait, and subsequently change her mind.

 

This happened more than once. Maybe more than three or four times. By which stage, the government department had gone all 21^st century on her and the application form was available WHENEVER she wanted it. So much for that excuse any more. Obviously, though, the availability of the aforementioned application form at her fingertips just made it easier for her to say “oh, another day”.

 

Then, the Fairy Princess had progeny of her own, and the need to find out at least a little something about what happened all the way back then was getting a little harder to ignore. Somehow, the application was downloaded and completed in many different pens, the identification was copied and certified and the application was posted. Not without first checking with the post office as to when the post box would be cleared and if it were still possible to change one’s mind. It was, and she didn’t.

 

Finally, the giant envelope arrived and was opened and our Fairy Princess had a name. Strangely, it wasn’t a name that fit. In fact the name that she saw made her snigger a tiny bit. SO not her, and so indeed someone she used to know but we’re getting away from the track here…. There was more information to be read about and a letter from someone who sounded a lot like her… “Strange, reading your own voice”, she thought as she read it. Even more so, as she was the same age, give or take, as the person when she wrote it.

 

Another application form or two, some judicious googling and at least one or two strokes of luck, and our Fairy Princess had more than enough information to go in search of and to locate the recently named Biological Ancestor, who seems remarkably similar to the Loving Mother!

 

So there’s not a thing to stop her from going ahead with contacting the BA… Except for one or two minor details… Like the subsequently expired veto placed on her records by the Biological Ancestor – technically, our Princess has been ‘rejected’ twice. Would her ego stand up to a third time? Did the veto mean the BA really didn’t want to know about her? Or because she didn’t renew it when the time came, changed her mind again? Oh and there’s the whole not even quite sure if she wants to go open what is potentially a can of worms and get involved with a whole ‘nother bunch of people when she has as little to do with her actual relatives as is humanly possible…

 

And this is where we will leave our Fairy Princess, sitting in front of her gigantic can of worms, can opener in hand…

 

To be continued…