Starlight,
star bright
First
star I see tonight
I
wish I may, I wish I might
Have
this wish I wish tonight.
I
whispered to my pre-teen self, as I gazed out my bedroom window
beyond the street lights.
I
recited that poem religiously. My wish was always the same.
I
was a surprise, born 11 years after my parents had married, and I was
their one-and-only. I was also my paternal grandparents’ one
and only, as my Dad’s twin brother had died in the war, and his
two sisters had never married. All their expectations and ambitions
were placed, none too gently, on my skinny little-girl shoulders. I
was going to be the first in the family to go to college, a brilliant
student, and a talented musician. I would be better than and more
successful than anyone in the family before me. I felt like a
specimen on a microscope slide, with my parents and grandmother
staring down the eyepiece at me, and there was nothing I wanted more
than to deflect that piercing attention. I craved a sibling who could
share the blame when I screwed up, the sting when my mother fought
with my long-suffering and gentle father, when her migraines were
attributed to some failing of mine, or we chose to forego vacations
because the money would be put to better use by going into my college
fund.
At
age four, I made up an imaginary sister to share my room and clothes.
Her name was Susan and she came to the dinner table with me, though
my mother would not allow her to sit with us. I insinuated myself
into neighborhood families who had loads of kids. I made up a family
modeled on The Happy Hollister books I devoured and had “awake
dreams” every night about my life with the five siblings.
In
fifth grade a flyer recruiting families for local foster and adoption
programs was sent home with each child. I raced into the house, the
flyer sweaty in my hand, and begged my mother, “Can we please
foster a child? I will be the best sister to them! I will share my
room and all my toys and books. I promise!”
“We
can’t afford to do that. And you realize, don’t you, we
would have to give the child back when their parents were ready again
to care for them? And that would be harder than never having a sister
or brother. It is not for us.”
I
had cousins, but they slowly disappeared from our life when I was
young. My mother and her own siblings eventually ceased all contact
and they moved to the other side of the country. I missed them.
So
I remained an only child, one who felt more like my mother’s
project than a member of a normal family. Normal families had more
than a single child on whom all hopes for the future rested. I had
sleepovers every weekend with one girlfriend or another. I went on
outings with my schoolfriend’s families. I did everything to
find a place where I could feel I belonged. I eagerly anticipated
leaving for college and getting away from home. Perhaps my roommates
would become my siblings.
When
I was 22, married and still in college, my mother was diagnosed with
lung cancer. It came after forty years of her penchant for smoking
unfiltered Chesterfield Kings, and a life of unspoken desires and
lack of fulfillment. My childhood wish for a sibling resurfaced hard.
I ached for someone to share the pain of losing a mother, even one I
wasn’t sure I loved. I was alone in this loss, which was
different from my Dad’s sadness at losing his wife, and my
grandmother’s misery at losing her oldest daughter and
caretaker. I yearned for someone to share the responsibility of
visiting every weekend, making treatment decisions, shopping for
clothes she could put on herself, cleaning the house, and cooking for
my dad. When her protracted march to death ended six years later, it
came as a relief but also with guilt at that relief. I wished so much
for a sibling who might validate those feelings.
A
year after my mother died, my Dad called me with news. “I
met someone. Her name is Natalie.”
I
was thrilled for my Dad, who deserved finally to have a chance at
marital happiness. I was possibly even happier for myself since
Natalie had children my age, and I would get some step-siblings. I
met my soon-to-be step-brother at Dad and Natalie’s engagement
party and looked forward to meeting my new sisters.
But
it was not to be. A month after the party, the couple split up. Dad
was not enough fun for Natalie. He didn’t like to dance, and he
preferred eating at home rather than going to restaurants. Dad packed
up his life and fled to Florida where his two sisters lived.
A
decade later I was thrown back into the position of making decisions
for a parent, taking care of Dad’s finances, and hiring home
aides as his health rapidly deteriorated. I had watched friends argue
and debate with their siblings over how to deal with the many issues
of aging parents, and I realized I had an advantage in being an only
child. I could do what I thought best without consulting anyone else.
There was a benefit to not having my starlight, star-bright wish
fulfilled after all.
At
64, with both parents gone and little connection with extended
family, my own kids grown and out of the house, I felt untethered.
Being a geneticist (yes, I had finished college and even graduate
school), it was unsurprising that I would send a sample to some DNA
testing sites to learn more about my ethnic background and my
ancestors. I waited excitedly for the email telling me my results
were available online.
Like
many others who spit into a tube and send a sample, I got smacked
with a DNA surprise. It did not take much time to review the data and
determine I had no matches with any relatives on my dad’s side
of the family. This is how I learned that my kind, gentle dad was not
my biological father.
What
I did find was dozens of matches with an unknown family who lived all
over the state. My skills in genetics transferred well to
genealogical research, and soon I discovered who my biological father
was. With the help of a cousin match on 23&me, I found out that
my family doctor, a man who was 27 years older than my mother, and
who had spent many hours at my house having coffee with my mother and
grandmother during my childhood, was my biological father. My mother
worked in his office. She did his patient billing for years. I had
photos of him and me playing checkers at our kitchen table when I was
five. I still had the microscope he gave me when he retired, along
with several medical books I used to read when I visited the office.
I remember him offering to buy my mother a fur coat if she would quit
smoking.
I
had to admit to myself that I always had an inkling that something
was amiss, and had demanded that my mother show me my birth
certificate when I was twelve. I thought I might have been adopted
and not been told. I had never looked anything like my dark
curly-haired Dad or his family, but as an adult, I strongly resembled
my mother and her sisters. I had concluded there was simply no room
in me left to look like my Dad’s side. But I also was unlike my
grandmother’s siblings and their children. They were a
boisterous bunch, while I was a serious kid, drawn to science and
medicine from a very young age.
I
learned that the doctor had produced no biological children with his
wife, but had adopted a son who was 19 years older than me. That old
wish for a sibling came roaring back. I located his number and,
holding my breath, whispered “starlight, star bright”,
and dialed the phone. His wife answered.
“Hello”,
I said, “My name is Sherri and I want to tell you a shocking
story. It seems your husband, David, is my half-brother.”
I
asked to speak to him.
“I
am so very sorry, Sherri,” she said. “David passed away a
year ago. And he would have loved to have had a sister. He was not a
happy only child.”
We
talked about David’s life. He had gone to the same high school
as me. He had walked those same halls, sat in those same classrooms,
and eaten in the same cafeteria, all 19 years before I did. He had
told his wife that he never felt that he belonged in his family, not
an unusual sentiment for an adoptee. He was interested in sports and
cars, and his Dad was a doctor whom he felt didn’t understand
him at all.
When
I got off the phone, I cried. While David wasn’t even my blood
brother, he was the only connection I had with my biological father,
and he was gone before I found him. I was left wondering if the good
family doctor had fathered any other children outside of his
marriage. So a couple of times a year, I log onto the DNA sites and
say a quick “Starlight, star bright” and check to see if
I have any new DNA matches. Maybe a sister or brother is out there,
wishing just as hard to find me, though now at the age of seventy
that possibility gets slimmer all the time.
Sherri
Bale is a retired medical geneticist who writes personal essays,
autobiographical pieces, short stories, and flash. She is working on
a YA/Historical fiction novel set in Alaska in 1919 after the Spanish
Flu wipes out much of the indigenous population. She resides in
Maryland, USA.
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