Sitting here at the office waiting for the advocate meeting (volunteer meeting) to begin in about 15 minutes...there is a very ominous sky outside, just waiting to drop all kinds of crappy weather on our heads. Crappy that is if you have to be out in it. If you can be home, on the couch, under a blanket, it is perfect.

I had a thought this morning on the way to work. Brent had suggested I listen to the Bill Clinton biography during my drive and as I did so, this thought popped into my head. What is the obession we as humans have to seek out information about our biological parents? Apparently, old President Clinton's biological father passed away right before he was born and so he talked a bit about how he always clung to any information or stories he could find about his father.

I have known several people who have had this odd obession with their biological parent; myself included. All of us have varying reasons as to why one or both of our birth parents weren't in the picture for us as children, but it seems that there is a consistant desire in people to find that/those birth parents.

In my case, my birth parents, didn't quite make it as a couple and I was born without my "father" in my life. My mom never tried to hide anything from me, and was never unkind about my "father." It came down to "he wasn't ready for a family and I was." For some reason that satisfied me as a child and even though I had my moments of doubt relating to a supposed lack of love by my birth father, I seemed to make it through just fine. Then I became an adult.

By the time I reached my mid-20's I had made up my mind that I would find this man. While it had never really been a driving force for me, I had frequently thought about what he was like and if I would ever get to meet him. So, after some serious inner debate, I decided to just do it. I took what information I had, reasonably little really, and paid a somewhat little fee and did one of those US Searches to find this man.

So, now I have the address of a man that is 95% sure to be my birth father. Wait, there is another name on the sheet. A woman. A wife? What the heck do I do??? I know that he is around 50...why wouldn't he have married or even had other kids by now? The question, do I send a letter? What if he hasn't told them about me? Will that cause problems for his family?

Finally, I decided to send the letter. It turns out that yes, my father has married (a lovely woman), but he has no other children. Meeting him was definately a monumental moment in my life. We decided that I should fly up there and stay a week getting to know this other side of my family. My now wonderful husband, then my wonderful boyfriend, offered to go with me. He drove the 16 hours to be there when I got off the plane to meet my father for the first time.

That week answered a lot of questions for me. Over the years, I had created questions and situtations in my mind about what happened. All I had was my mother's words to go on and while I never had cause to doubt her, I did want to hear my father's side as well. Lucky for me, the two stories were the same. I am fortuate in that because I know so many times it doesn't work out that way at all.

Obviously, we are not extremely close, but over the past four years, we had developed a relationship that I feel will last for the rest of our lives.

I guess to get back to the original idea...it is I guess easy to understand why we want to find our "roots" when they are not part of our lives initially. We want to see if any of the characteristics we have are part of that other person. We want to see if blood is thicker than water. For some, this turns out to be a positive experience (like me) and for some it is less than appealing. I would have to say that I have found that characteristics are genetic and that after meeting my father, I have found that even though I was not raised around him, I still have some of those qualities. Obviously, most of my qualities are from my mother and other family members since I spent most of my life with them, but there are still some things that can only come from my father.

I guess ultimatly, that is why we all try to find our "real" parents and seek to develop relationships with them over the years.