TheStoryAbout.Us

This is the first post of which I (Steve) hope are many.  It’s a little long so please bear with me as I want to give you the background leading up to all this excitement.  My name is Steven, a name that I now know was given me by Cathie at birth.  I was born in Lansing and was immediately given up for adoption.  The information I had about my birth family and the first three years of my life fit on two sheets of letter size paper, single sided, double spaced.  Not much information, but it did say my birth mother was pretty.  That part was right.

I wasn’t adopted until I was three.  Cathie says I missed out on all that early age-bonding stuff.  I think she’s right since I personally can be stand-offish, sometimes slow to make friends, and generally uncomfortable in crowds.  It’s interesting that none of that has been true over the last week and a half as I’ve met, texted, and talked with so many of you.  Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

In my (Steve’s) first post I summed up 56 years of experience in four paragraphs.  In this post the story speeds up and summarizes a couple of months’ experience.  I previously shared that my wife (Patty) has always been worried about not knowing my family health history.  She’d asked me often to take one of the DNA tests on the market.  Last August I acquiesced and sent in the test package.  That evening I offhandedly mentioned to my sons that the results might reveal a family member out there in the world.  But I did not take it that seriously at the time.

At noon on September 20th I received the email from the DNA test site saying my results were ready online.  In first scanning the results I was happy that finally I could answer my boys’ assertions that I’m eastern European.  (I’m not.  I’m 70% British/Irish and 30% French/German, and 1% other).  That was cool.  Then I clicked on the DNA relatives tab on the web page.  Clicking the button on a mouse is such an innocuous action but this click practically stopped my heart. Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

I (Cathie), like Forest Gump, say “Life is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what you will get”. Imagine my surprise, to say the least, when I received a call from my sister, Terry, that her son, Wally, had been contacted by Steven, that he had a DNA kit that said he was related to our family. Steven has told you that part of the story.

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I first met Cathie at Burger King, East Lansing, Mi. It was 1966, I was a sophomore at Michigan State University. I lived in the Chalet Apartments. Burger King was right across the street. When I started working there, I first met Cathie, some of her sisters, her Mom, and her Uncle Doug, the Manager. Cathie’s mother came up to me and said “my daughter, Cathie, thinks you’re cute”. I replied, “does she have any beer?”. Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

Hi, this is Cathie.  In my case, I’ve found a whole new family.  I would like to share a little about my son Steven, and his awesome family.

Steven is fifty six years old.  He will turn fifty seven on April fifteenth.  He is a graduate of Mich Tech and is an electrical engineer.  Steve is head of technology at his company.  He has been married to his wife Patty, for twenty five years.  Patty has worked in the Fenton schools for many years.  Patty also keeps score for the Fenton High School swim team.  We are very much alike in many ways.  I worked in my son Nick’s schools until he graduated.  Poor guy!

Steve and Patty live on five acres in Fenton, with their two sons . Mike is twenty two.  He attended Mich Tech.   Kyle is twenty and attends Kettering University in Flint.  I have met them both, and look forward to getting to know them. They are very handsome men.

This is a wonderful family, and I am proud to call them my own.  I can’t wait to get them together with my son Nick, his wife Stephanie and grandson Greame, and granddaughter Gracie.  To think that all of the years that we lived in Whitmore Lake, they lived only twenty miles away!!!  Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

In my (Steve’s) last post I had just hit send on the 23andMe website where Wallace’s and my DNA results had been matched up.  It had taken me a month of thinking about all of this before I finally got the courage up enough to send that note.  On hitting send my heart jumped up in my throat and I had to physically swallow (a couple of times) to make it go back down again.  Now I was committed! Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

On Thursday evening, January 17th, I (Wallace) got an email in my personal email that basically said, “hi, you’re my half brother, let’s meet up.”  It was about 9:00 and Karen was already in bed.  I thought to myself, “yeah right Nigerian Prince, you’re not gonna get me.”  I deleted the email.  All the next day at school, I was feeling bad, thinking “what if…”.  Not only was I thinking “what if…”,  I was wondering what the hell is going on.  I struggled with what to do, so I texted my mom (Terry) and asked her if she had a long lost son out there somewhere. She denied it, and blamed my dad.  She said, “nobody knows what he was up to in 1962.”

When I got home from school I checked the 23 and me website and saw that there was a half brother connection, but it was on the maternal side. I talked more with my mom about it, trying to figure out the story, and we finally came to the realization that Steve is my Aunt Cathie’s long lost son. I was freaking out, trying to figure out how to approach her and give her the news. My mom and I discussed it and she told me that she would do it, thank God. Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

I (Cathie) am sure that everyone is shocked by the last three weeks events.  I hope that it’s in a good way.  It has been emotionally exhausting, but truly awesome too.  As Steve and I get to know each other, we find that we have a lot in common.  I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as Steve likes to say.  We are very much alike. Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

In my (Steven’s) last post I had just hit send on my “Can we meet for a coffee or a beer?” email to Wallace.   I’m actually sitting and writing this post now in the same spot I was sitting that night back on January 17th.  So much has happened in the last 5 and a half weeks.  Wallace shared what happened immediately after he received my email in his “Nigerian Prince” post.   Its really funny that his reaction was exactly what I had feared that it would be.  When I clicked send on that email that night I felt it sounded exactly like one of those “cousins who needs money” emails and I feared it would end up in the garbage.  And that’s exactly what happened.  What happened after that though is awesome. Click to read the rest of the post and leave a comment.

So I (Steve) have dragged out describing the process leading up until the day that Cathie and I finally met.  But I’ve done that for good reason.  Effectively, I had waited my entire life, and had honestly never imagined that this day would come.  I’ve previously shared my efforts to locate Cathie and the fact that there was nothing more than two sheets of paper, single-sided, double spaced text to hint at who my birth mother was.  (Reminder:  That information did say that my birth mother is pretty.  I’ll say it again … They got that right. 🙂 )

Once Wallace shared with Aunt Terry that he and I shared a “maternal haplogroup” connection in our DNA (that sounds really technical) … Aunt Terry figured things out.  Wallace’s concern at that point was pretty funny … “was he going to have to tell his Aunt Cathie?”  Terry took care of it.  Once Terry made the connection, then things accelerated very fast.   My email had gone to Wallace on Thursday.  His initial reply to me was on Friday afternoon.  By Saturday afternoon Wallace called me to say that “we know who you are.”  We setup a time to meet on Sunday for lunch.  Wallace and Karen along with Patty and me.  Wallace shared at that time that he’d bring information about my birth mom.  

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