Adoptee::update

First writing, sometime in early October:
I have had many more phone conversations with the social worker since my first post on adoption in June linked here.  And I have enjoyed and embraced reading this book, Being Adopted:The Lifelong Search for Self.  The book follows normal developmental psychology through the life cycle from birth to the age of 80 or so.  It has helped me in my friendships, with my relationship with family and even with my oldest son.  I did not know how much it would help put perspective on things for me as an adoptee but it has been tremendous.  I wish I could record every thought and break through I have experienced by reading it but I have not.  I only will have these brief writings and my feeble memory in time.

The social worker called today and told me their names.  Joshua age 39, Shelby age 35 and Bradley age 32.  My sister's letter to me will go out in the mail tomorrow so I will have more from her and a real letter to respond to by Wednesday.  I can call the SW to walk through the letter on Wednesday if I need to but today, as usual, brought tears as I was processing what it is like to have a biological past before me and a biological future at my feet.  My "half" siblings in my past, my children in my home.  I feel so connected to things for the first time in reality.  It feels good and it feels overwhelming.  My sister will have a unique perspective.  She is a birth mother.  She is a mother too.  She did not know about me when she gave up her first baby.  And now, she will meet me, a baby who was given up.  Will she project what her baby will be like by my behavior and my questions?  My biggest question of all, why did our mother give me up?  Joshua was born just two years after me and the SW says that it is typical for a birth mother to conceive again soon after the first one she gave up and then really struggle with whether or not to give up a baby again.  I am happy, my birth mother, did not do it again and hope to learn details of the reasons why she gave me up first.

The SW thinks that Joshua and Shelby share the same father but Bradley does not.  She found my birth mother, whose name I still do not know, with the same last name that Bradley uses.  These details are interesting.  I am not judging choices.  I am filling in holes.  There.  You know about as much as I do.
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Update, October 26th

Still waiting to hear from my birth sister.  I mailed my letter, five weeks ago.  The SW says I am anxious, with good reason.  This biological family, has only me but, I have the siblings, their children, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. out there.  I don't expect to feel a sense of easy knowing when I finally meet them but I hope for it too.  Many a culture has put a high value on blood ties.  Maybe when I meet my siblings, it will, in the words of Tom Hanks from "Sleepless in Seattle"  "feel like coming home, only to a home I have never been to"  Anticipating, anticipating, waiting, writing, laundry, dishes, handwriting lessons, a good book, knitting, nursing, waiting.  The SW is going to call me when she speaks to Shelby.  She says she is going to "give her permission" to not answer all of my questions.  I like it.  We have to file these three letter exchanges.  We need the slow exchanges for emotions and processing but I feel kind of up to speed now.  We need to have a chat over coffee, face to face.  Any ideas for where we should meet the first time, my half sister and I?  A quiet neutral place.  The agency is an option but that sounds so, clinical?