Meeting My Birth Mother - For The First Time

The 2 hour and 30 minute drive was absolutely the longest 2 ½ hours of my life. In addition to the urges I had every 5 miles or so to jump off one of the exit ramps and speed home, my mouth was seemingly full of cotton, head was spinning out of control and still had no idea what I would say once I met her.

Oh, for those of you that did not read the back posts…I went to go meet my birth mother (BM) (oh, I am using BM just to annoy ManicMariah) for the first time today. I was adopted at 10 days old and until this year barely knew anything about her or my natural father.

So anyway, we arrived in the area where we were going to meet about 45 minutes early…so what better to do than get a car wash? We handed over the keys, paid and then went out front to pace back and forth until the car was ready. Did the city planners and business owner know that I’d be making this trip when they situated all of the businesses in the area? I have a sneaky suspicion that they did...because low and behold…DIRECTLY across the street was a very inviting (not really, but it fit the circumstance) establishment. The sign on the front of the small, beautiful building read, “BEER, POOL TABLES & GAMES”

I turned and with a mischievous smile whispered to ManicMariah, “You think we have time for a little drinky-poo?” Her response was both swift as well as direct…”Yeah…RIGHT! Not a good idea!”

I let it go, knowing that at this point she was the one with the level head. I paced a bit, sat a bit, but was too anxious to do anything more than a bit. Looking at my watch, I peered around the lot and did not see our car…but the people that came in at the same time were conveniently done and gone. Did they “loose” our car? What was the hold up? Did they not get the memo about MY BIG DAY?

A few minutes later the car emerged from the mechanical cleaning monster. Knowing that we would be meeting BM in less than 20 minutes, I looked over at ManicMariah and hesitantly smiled, then noticed that she had chewed ALL of her fingernails down to, on the verge of bleeding, stubs. I guess she was not as calm as I had thought.

After navigating the last 2 mile to MY HALF BROTHER’S house, I stopped the car a few houses away, made that lovely BARFING sound (and action) … just checking to see if I would puke or not. Luckily, since I am super human, things were good…no puke today.

We parked, gave each other that look, you know, the one that you give someone when you don’t know if you should just bolt or bite the bullet. Not letting myself think, we slowly made our way up to the front door. I hesitated before ringing the doorbell, did another dry heave test run, then thought….SHIT! What if she is watching me through a window? This will look good.

I rang the bell, fidgeted with my hands and waited. As the door slowly opened…