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…

 

Just a little wafer thin mint…

Just one little thing.

It will only take a minute.

Really.

A minute of your time is all that it will take.

So you feel compelled to say “ok”, because it really is only a minute and it really is a little thing.

But hang on, wait a second… What about that little thing you’re doing for Fred? And that one for Mary? Not to mention that wee five minute job you said you’d do for Tom in your lunch break? Then, that one little thing gets added to a pile of other little things and all of a sudden you’re facing a mountain of tiny little jobs that will indeed only take a minute or two. EACH. And that five minute job? Well, yes – the actual job takes five minutes, but it takes 15 minutes to get there, 10 minutes waiting to be seen and another 15 minutes to get back to work – and there goes your 45 minute lunch break.

Why can we not just say NO to a request for a minute of our time? Is it because we fear being seen as unreasonable and stingy – what’s a minute, anyway? Sixty seconds, what can you do in sixty seconds? Not a lot, so surely it’s no bother to help out…

Right now, on my desk, I have a little pile of paper – “You’re here til 5pm, can you just call this person for me” No worries, a phone call will indeed only take a minute – but there’s some follow up, a fax to receive, check that it has the right information, call back and confirm receipt of said fax and that yes it indeed does say what it needs to say. Then it needs to be handed off to the person who asked you to make the call, explanations need to be made and that one minute phone call has turned into an hour of your day.

And I have four of them, in varying stages of completion, that I have to check on becase I said “Sure, I’ll do that for you” And that work I have to do, regardless, gets rushed or pushed aside; and instead of leaving work calmly at 5pm, I’m running out the door half an hour late to pick up the kids, there’s a mountain of unfinished work to deal with in the morning and you just know that because you’re running late now; nothing is going to help you catch up – short of taking a leap through the gap in the space-time continuum or some judicious use of a transporter beam – your well-oiled evening routine goes completely out the window because you only took a minute to help someone out (because, ironically, they chose to leave work on time…)

Why can we not ask someone else for a minute of their time? Because we know damn well it’s not actually a minute we’re after and would feel guilty for offloading something to which we are committed. At home, it’s even worse, because you know that you could nag, beg, cajole, bribe, yell, scream and/or plead with a family member to pick up their socks or put their dishes in the dishwasher – but it only takes a minute to actually do it (rather than the three hours of nagging), so you do it yourself. Multiply that minute for the washing, that minute for the dishes, that minute to take the bins out, that minute to find the lost whatever it was that wouldn’t be lost if it’s owner took a MINUTE and put it away… by the number of family members you have, though and all of a sudden, you have lost half a day. You still have the same amount of jobs of your own to do, but less time in which to do them.

And where does that extra time come from? Your time. Your time to relax, unwind, watch your favourite tv show is eaten up by doing something for someone else that will just take a minute…

Remeber that scene in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life where the waiter offers the gigantic man “just a little wafer”…

STAND BACK!!!

I think she’s gonna BLOW!