FIRST CONTACT

My mom and I sat behind a long table covered with knick knacks. It was my neighborhood's annual garage sale. The perfect opportunity for people to make my crap, their crap. I sipped coffee and enjoyed the crisp October morning. I opened my laptop, a hand-me-down gift from my father-in-law, to read my e-mail.  A perfect way to pass time during garage sale lulls.

I scrolled through my inbox, reading the interesting messages and deleting the junk. Then I came upon the message above from Registry.Adoption.com. Registry.Adoption.com? What even? It was most likely more junk, but I opened it anyway.

It was a message from a person who shared my birthday and was searching for her birth family. At least, that's what I thought the person meant. Did I register on Adoption.com? The details were blurry. I typed Adoption.com into my search engine and pressed enter.

The site was a treasure trove of information about adoption, adoptees, and reunions. I clicked on the link to the registry database and typed in my birthday. Voila, my name appeared. When my father-in-law gave me the laptop, I spent hours surfing the web. I must have entered my information on the site during one those late night surf sessions, never expecting anything to come of it.

My adoption was closed, and the only information I had was on my birth certificate: the day, the hospital, time of birth, name of the doctor, and it was done through Catholic Charities. The chance of a reunion was low. I registered for fun and didn't think about it again, until that October morning.

I read the e-mail, thinking the girl shared my birthday, and contacted me to share the news she found her biological family. Odd. Why was she telling me? She was probably just excited. I replied with a short message, "Congratulations on finding your birth family." 

A new message appeared in my inbox. She explained she wasn't adopted. She was looking for an adoptee with my birthdate. Her aunt and uncle had a daughter and she was looking for them. 

Gulp. I knew I was adopted. I liked knowing I was. It made me feel mysterious. It made for interesting chitchat. A fun idea, that was suddenly not fun, but real. An uneasy feeling began to grow inside me. This was like Pandora's Box. What if I open this and don't like what I find inside? Would anyone be the same after finding the answer to this mystery?