This little adventure really had its start when I was back in grad school and had to put together a family history project for my family counseling class and a part of the project included a family tree. I've pulled this family history project out from time to time over the years to look it over and review the stories that my family shared with me - some made it in the final project and others didn't. Then I got married and the family tree grew a bit so I pulled it out again. As I've had questions and wonderings about my own history over the years, the tree comes out and I try to see if there are answers I can find that hadn't appeared to me before.
A few weeks ago, I was watching the program, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and found myself needing to take another look at my genealogy files once again. I started doing a bit of searching on the internet to see if there were any answers about my history out there in cyberspace. While I was at it, I worked on making sure my husband's branch of the tree was all up to date at ancestry.com. As I added more bits of information, there popped up some other family trees that matched up with ours. One in particular caught my eye as I knew that my husband's father had been married prior to marrying his mother. My husband thought that there were a couple of children from that prior marriage as well and those little bits seemed to match up with our tree.
My husband had long thought about trying to find these other family members out there so I sent an email to the creator of the intriguing tree asking if her father might be my husband's father as well. I thought maybe some months or possibly years down the road, if ever, I might get a response back and that I probably wasn't even correct in my guess. And with that, I did a little more investigative work on my own branch of the tree and finally decided to call it quits for the night.
The next morning, I had been busily working away on various projects for a couple of hours when I clicked over to check out my email. I was stunned for a moment when I saw that I had received a response to the prior evening's message. As I opened the email, I marveled as I read that I had guessed correctly and I was in contact with my husband's sister. She gave a little background information and I quickly sent off a reply letting her know that I would be filling in my husband on this exciting news. My husband was so excited and couldn't wait to find out more about this new sister and brother.
Over the next few days and weeks we excitedly emailed back and forth, learning and sharing little bits and pieces of our lives. As we did, we were amazed to find some pretty remarkable similarities and instances where our lives may very well have crossed paths. None of us wanted to let too much time pass before meeting as so many years had already passed without being in each others' lives. Plans were made and we were finally able to meet face to face this last weekend.
It was an amazing day - we shared lunch at Tobie's which stretched into a five-hour long conversation about all sorts of topics, but mostly family. I was thrilled as I witnessed my husband making this long-sought connection with this wonderful, warm and caring woman who he now can call sister and friend. Plans are already in place for more visits down the road including a stay to include our participation in the BIX 7 race, which my husband and her husband have participated in for years and we discovered may very well have ended up in medical tent together during one particularly brutal race day.
We both feel very blessed to have happened upon her and the miracle of timing and good fortune that brought us together. I have cried so many tears of joy at the happiness my husband feels to have his sister that he's bonded and connected with in such an amazing way and I am just happy to have witnessed all of it happening!
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Wow that's wonderful news! Really great to read about it! :-)
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