Thanksgiving

This year I am very thankful. 

Top of my list is finally hearing about our daughter.  For years I have been trying to reach out to her to establish some sort of contact. This summer we finally heard from one of her children and through him about the others. Through our son’s persistence we finally made contact.  It’s been 19 years since we left Syracuse and maybe two years before that when our relationship with our daughter became really strained.  We knew Sterling, her first child, but nothing of the others.  I have been sending birthday cards and Christmas cards but there has never been any acknowledgement so I never knew how life fared for her.  It has been a constant tug at my conscience.  Then this summer through Facebook my son was able to establish contact with her second child, Denzel.  I have not seen him yet but he was able to make a trip to New York and meet some of his relatives there that he had never met. I hope to meet him one day and I hope to establish a more meaningful relationship with Nicole and get to know all her children and grandchild (my great grandchild).

Yes I am also thankful for my health.  I am blessed there.  I can still bike 100 miles in a day and earn 1^st. place in my age group in a 10K race. Most of my former competitors can no longer walk a 10K much less run one. This makes me feel super thankful. 

By far my greatest thankfulness is for the growth, depth and richness of the relationship between my wife and myself.  We have gotten to a place that just makes life and living wonderful. It’s not because we have the means to travel now (we did the Las Vegas/ Grand Canyon this year), nor is it because we have more leisure time for TV or going out to dinner or a show.  Yes, the means and the time helps, but it’s much more than that.  My thankfulness is for the place we have reached in our relationship where we truly care for each other, depend on each other and live for each other.  It’s a place where we talk without reservation; we are each other sounding boards and support system.  In today’s lingo it’s deeper than a BFF. It’s a special place and a special bond.  I hope all my children and grandchildren gets to enjoy this feeling of closeness in their lifetime too.

 I am thankful also for all my children.  Nicole I am still working on re-establishing contact.  Chevol, you will always be my BFF even when we get mad at each other.  You make me happy. Aaron, you are so much better than I was. I admire you.  I am thankful that my grandchildren are happy, healthy and loving.  They are the joys in my life.  I am thankful for each little moment that they each of them chose to spend with me.

Then there are my siblings, my support system.  I am thankful that they are still alive, happy and wonderful.  They make me proud. 

 Yes, this thanksgiving day I have a lot to be thankful for.

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Nicole

After a long hiatus today I am back to log another session. And I am going to leapfrog a whole lot of years. It’s just an occasion that I have to document.

I got married in 1977 and my wife had already had a child, Nicole.  To make our family feel like a family I thought it only right to adopt Nicole. So Nicole is really my first child.  Throughout her childhood I really tried to make Nicole not feel any different or was treated differently than her siblings.  Growing up we were close, she was the only daughter, but somewhere in her teenage years I at times felt uncertain in how to treat Nicole.  There was no overt distancing, just sometimes I was unsure how she felt about me and I was tepid about how to treat her. How I regret those instances.  

But that might not have been the issue. I just remember that exactly on her 18^th birthday Nicole changed.  I think she felt that at that exact age she was a woman.  I remember agonizing about why she felt that at that exact age life has to change.  This behavior eventually caused a rift in the family and Nicole moved out to live with her boyfriend parents.  That was some 35 years ago. 

At the start we kept in touch a little.  It was not a happy relationship but we did see each other occasionally.  Yes I blamed the boyfriend parents.  I could never understand how they would condone such an arrangement.  But I never voiced it to her or him.  I remember when her first child Sterling was born. She brought him to he house and I had a chance to hold him and of course loved him. But rather than bringing us together we grew further apart.

Then my life changed. I had to leave Syracuse and the family moved to North Carolina.  Nicole knew of the move but elected to stay in Syracuse with her new family. Somewhere in the transition, either before or after  the move we lost her phone number and exact address.

Over the years I tried several times to reach out to her. I sent birthday cards every year to one or all the addresses I could find for her. But I never had a response.  I searched the Internet regularly but found nothing. 

There were nights that I would lie awake wondering what could I have done differently? What could I do to mend the relationship?  My name is all over the Internet and her children were older so I am sure they are just as curious as I am so how come they never reached out to us. Why has she never tried to contact us?  How did her children feel about us? 

My eldest son shared some of these feelings and he was digging too. Today he hit a milestone. He found some of Nicole’s children on Facebook

Nicole still lives in Syracuse and now has five children and at least two grandchildren.

·      Children:

o   Sterling IV. Is in the US Airforce and is currently stationed in Virginia

o   Denzel.  Is a student at Le Moyne College studying Communication and Media (2017

o   A Girl. No name yet and that girl also have a daughter

o   Sterling Jr.

o   Another boy, very young

·      Gran Children

o   Sterling IV has a son

o   The daughter now has a daughter.

The picture of this last daughter is what makes me turn to mush.  Such innocence.  Why does she have to grow up in a life of exclusion when there is a whole other family waiting to embrace her?  I hope I get to do just that one-day.

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