Bio Week

This past week was kind of momentous week in my life.  Well, it didn't seem like it at the time, but as I reflect, I guess it was.

We visited my biological dad and his wife and met my half siblings on a Friday.
Then the following Thursday we had lunch with my biological mom.

I've always known about my biological mother since I lived with her until I was a pre-teen.  I was put into foster care and my foster parents then became my forever parents now.  But I just found out about my biological dad two years ago and met him about 11 months ago when him and his wife came to visit us in Bolivia.

I look at them and myself and ponder the fact that my features (like my chubby nose and my high cheek bones) come from them.  I look at my children with those same features like their curly hair or dark eyes and it strikes me how biology and phenotype and genotype goes from one generation to the next.

Before I knew about my bio dad, I came to the conclusion that my family line would start with me.  When the kids asked me where their curly hair came from or in Joel's words, "Where did the brown come from?", the best I could answer would be, "From me".  I didn't know anything farther back.

But now I know and now I can trace myself and my children back to people from Guyana and Suriname, to add to the biological family already from Germany.

The whole concept of family I think has deepened as well.  I have biological roots and I have parents who raised me.  I consider myself so blessed that I can stand in both definitions of family.  Not without saying, it's complicated.

We don't have a healthy dynamic relationship with my biological mother.  I'm still 12 years old in her eyes and she doesn't understand the life choices Carl and I have made.  We do lunch once a year so she can see the kids.  And we are just starting on the relationship journey with my biological dad and his family, which is new and uncharted.

I must say though, it's pretty powerful to sit and look across a room to many people who share the same heritage as you.  And then take home your children and know that they share The Brown too.  This connection, this tie.

This will be interesting....