Family Ties - A Pleasant Surprise

Occasionally, the horrible, painful, nightmarish situations in life can also cause something good to happen that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. I was reminded of that this week when I received an unexpected phone call.

Before I share more about the call, it would help to explain a bit about my family history.

I grew up with a very, very small immediate family. I was an only child, my mom was an only child, and although my dad has several siblings, most of them didn’t live nearby and I only saw each of them maybe once or twice that I remember while I was growing up.

To put it another way, when R and I got married, the picture of us with my family includes a total of 6 people – the two of us, my parents, a cousin (second cousin or twice removed, something like that since my mom didn’t have siblings) who was about 30 years older than me who I’d only ever met once, and the cousin’s husband. On the other hand, our picture with R’s family includes about 30 people, about 20 who traveled from out of state during the holidays to be there for us.

So you get the gist – I don’t really have a lot of close family connections.

When I was young, I begged my parents for siblings, but no such luck. Then one day when I was about 8 years old, my parents sat me down to tell me something: while I was an only child (my mom’s), I was also the youngest of 4 – my dad had 3 children from a previous marriage. That little bombshell caused some trust issues no small kid should ever have to have with their parents, but that’s a story for another post.

Anyway, it turned out that my siblings were in the tween and teen stages, and their mom had called my dad to say she was putting them on a bus and sending them to him for the summer, so my parents were kind of put on the spot and had to tell me. (There was a lot of acrimony between my dad and his ex-wife, who lived in another state, and he wasn’t able to see them much.)

So I got to spend the summer with them. That was 28 years ago. Other than that, we haven’t had much contact. There was some resentment on their part – as if I had taken their dad away. I understand it, and it doesn’t seem to be there as much anymore (my brother still brings it up occasionally), but it was uncomfortable to bear the brunt of that resentment as a child.

Since that summer, I’ve seen my oldest sister twice (once about 26 years ago and then in December, when dad was in the hospital), my brother twice (ditto), and I haven’t seen my other sister again. We've only talked on the phone a couple times more than that.

It’s always felt weird to know that I have siblings out there, but being raised as an only child, I didn’t have the opportunity to form the normal sibling bonds. As an adult, still living in a different state from them and not having a lot in common, it hasn’t gotten any easier.

So while we were in touch more while dad was in the hospital, I didn’t really share much about the infertility stuff we’ve been dealing with.

And so – back to the phone call – you can imagine my surprise when my oldest sister called me earlier this week and said that her daughter, who’s in her early 20s and has a toddler, would be willing to be a gestational carrier for us.

(Don't get all excited yet.)

Dad’s wife had asked a couple of weeks ago what our next steps are, and I told her that our doctor’s recommendation is to use a gestational surrogate. Then apparently dad called my sister and suggested that maybe she could be the surrogate, not realizing she had had a hysterectomy. So my sister asked my niece and then called me.

I don’t know that it will be a viable option for a variety of reasons, and even if it is, I don’t know that it’s an option we will chose to pursue anytime in the immediate future.

But I was really touched by the call and the offer. I spoke to my niece (who I met for the very first time in December), and asked her if she was sure she wanted to do this and why she was willing to do this for us when we haven’t really been in each other’s lives.

She sounded kind of surprised that she had to explain it to me – she said “That’s what family is for” in a very matter-of-fact, isn’t-this-what-every-famly-does kind of way.

It turns out my family is bigger than I thought. It’s still kind of a hard concept to grasp.