I have spilled my adoption memories in to words and with every post it takes me days to make those words turn into sentences, hopefully my feelings make sense to you, my generous readers. But not this one, this one is easy for me. There will be no middle story to link my thoughts together to keep your attention, this is the story of US, the culmination of the journey.
It takes two to tango. After I unearthed my maternal background, baby daddy wasn’t far behind. Billy…
From Billy I gained TWO more sisters… between Billy and Phillis THREE sisters, all much younger than me (and one that is nearly an identical younger twin)
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Kayleigh, my mother’s daughter, Lindsey and Mia, my father’s daughters. My father’s family did not know about me and he told me that their knowing would be too hard for his parents to comprehend. When we would speak on the phone he would let me talk to my little sisters, I was a family friend, not their sister. I accepted our boundaries and I respected him for making boundaries without completely cutting me off.
Billy was always very candid with me. The ongoing joke was that I had a brother “out there” in the wild blue yonder that I needed to go find. Since I had found my Louisiana people I could surely keep going and find my brother. He told me who his mother was, all I needed was a name, and I harassed that woman for far too long… about my brother. I was overly confident and rude. She cut me off. Looking back now, had I been her, I would have cut me off too. I hurt the other woman long enough, I gave up.
When you have children of your own, lots of life’s mysteries are either solved or no longer matter. Becoming a mother solved many puzzles that were scrambled up in my head. I understood why my biological mother made the choices she made, and I especially understood why my mother made the choices she made by adopting me. I understood the love of a mother, regardless of whose heart that baby grew under, my heart was softened. Beau Jones Blunschi was born July 28th, 2001. His name was tied to both sides of my history, Jones was my maiden name, and I am from Beauregard Parish.
My stir-crazy soul was finally calm. Two years passed before my “brother” finally did surface. All things eventually float to the top.
August 8th, 2002, 4:49 pm, it was a Thursday, I was at work wrapping up my day, my email bling’ed at me.
Long Lost Sister??? What the f—k!!!
Andrea…
April 16, 1975, 129 days before I was born, my SISTER, Andrea Nicole Wilson, entered this world in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She started her life exactly like I started mine, one very brave young lady who loved her enough to know she couldn’t give her the life she deserved, said her goodbyes and Andrea was put in to the arms of another woman who would love her unconditionally for the rest of that woman’s life.
And so it began. Two young women who had been, and ironically still are, the best of friends growing up, both came home from college to DeRidder Louisiana, four months apart, and both were knocked up by Billy. Both women, never sharing their experience with the other, went quietly in their separate ways and had babies that they both gave up for adoption.
The ironic similarities of our story is that our adoptive mothers have the same birthdays and are the same age. Both women with dark hair and brown eyes, opposite of our own lighter hair and blue eyes. My middle name is Renee and Andrea’s younger sister’s name is Renee. We both grew up in the equestrian world and we were both good at our sport. We graduated high school in 1993. We share the same father and mothers that are best friends. All from the small town of DeRidder Louisiana.
When Andrea sent me that email in August of 2002, she was already 27, I was still 26 for a few weeks. Like any sibling rivalry, I will never let her forget that she’s the oldest.
Andrea had Olivia, my niece. Olivia is a year younger than Beau and I swear to you as I write today’s post, that boy of mine will bust another kids ass if they mess with his cousins or sister. Isn’t that what family does? We are violent for each other?
Andrea living in Baton Rouge and me living in Georgia was a helluva long distance relationship. Sometimes we went months without catching up. I had my daughter Maddox in 2003 and Andrea had my nephew Jack in 2007. Every conversation we had was as if we had known each other for our entire lives. We could and still do complete each other’s sentences… most of the time we don’t even need to speak, we can read each other’s minds. We are so much alike we could be twins, that is probably “cute” to folks that don’t know us and terrifying to those that do.
The greatest compliment that my husband ever pays me when we are fighting, “you are just like your sister”.
I did not meet my sister until we were 32… Andrea flew in to Atlanta in May 2009 for a party we were having. There is no word in the English dictionary that summarizes the joy and elation that I felt when I saw her for the first time. It was as if I was meeting an old friend. The bond we had for one another was always immediate and necessary.
We took the trip to Baton Rouge for Thanksgiving of the same year. Again, a necessary and urgent bond, completing each other’s thoughts, having the same irritations, we shared the same anxiety and depression that would creep up on us like a Louisiana swamp fog.
We had missed the big milestones. We couldn’t take back the missed memories, learning to ride bikes, fighting over clothes, celebrating graduations and births, boyfriend troubles, marriages, divorce. We had a sense of urgency to not miss the rest of our milestones.
February 2010, we were still in Georgia, they were in Baton Rouge, and we got the call… Billy said come now. His mother had died, his father had passed several years prior to… regardless of the cost or the current circumstances we were told to come NOW. Billy flew me in to Baton Rouge the next day, Andrea picked me up at the airport and we made the trip to DeRidder for the funeral of the grandmother that neither of us had met, we were told we would be too much for her to handle. I doubt that now, she seemed like a very strong woman. And it was as if we were the main event at a petting zoo, we were paraded in a funeral home with our dead grandmother in an open casket. We met our younger sisters, our uncle, our cousins, our sisters mother, aunts, extended family, neighbors and strangers. 
Billy had no problem introducing us as his daughters. For the first time in either of our lives, me and Andrea felt truly wanted by our biological family. It was as if Billy needed to scream it from the mountain tops… WE WERE HIS! And this evil part of my soul had so hoped that Andrea would have forgotten about that one hot roller in the back of her hair but damn-it she had to remove that bitch just as we walked in the funeral home… I was praying she would forget about that roller HA!
June 2010, the bottom of the economy fell out in Georgia with no ending in sight. Everyone was losing their jobs and their homes. The recession had been going on for years and we had been unscathed, but it became very obvious that my time was coming and then we would be screwed sideways. Brett had been out of work for nearly 2 years and we could see the writing on the wall. I had no choice but to start looking for work all over the United States. We left no rock unturned.
God had plans…
July 2010 I landed a job with a contractor for the Corps of Engineers in NEW ORLEANS. Could karma be any louder! The company paid for our moving expenses and we walked out of our house in Georgia in search of a new adventure… a decade later we haven’t looked back. It was a hard decision but we couldn’t feed our kids sticks and bricks or set an example for them to see what failure looked like. When times get tough the tough get going.
Andrea helped us settle in the community that she felt was most suitable and similar to where we lived in Georgia, Ascension Parish. There is no one that knows me and my family better.
Looking back over the last decade of our lives in Louisiana, my sister is responsible for the beginning of every memory we have made in our great community. She placed us here. Every friend, every crawfish boil, every bonfire, every parade, every celebration, is all thanks to Andrea.
There are too many milestones we missed in each others lives but it was all saved for the finale. Since we moved to Louisiana I have been present for my sister meeting the love of her life and marrying him, I have watched my niece and nephew grow in to wonderful humans, I have witnessed my sister blowing up half marathons, she has been there for me through surgeries and she was the one who met me immediately after a breast biopsy to hand me a beer, I have experienced the joy of my niece Stella giving my sister more grey hairs. 
I taught my niece how to toilet paper someones yard while I sat on the back patio and drank their beer. I taught my niece and son and the sweet neighbors kid how to drive when they could barely see over the steering wheel. Am I proud of those moments…. Does a bear shit in the woods???
We may have not started acting like typical sisters until we were in our mid 30’s but Andrea makes up for every missed blackmail moment that a smart phone can capture… who else would take pictures of someone like this except your sister… when she is crapping in her pants at the old folks home I will get her back.
Our lives may not have played out like typical siblings lives, we are in play back mode, but I wouldn’t trade one thing about my youth, about my journey, about how our lives connected, I wouldn’t trade the sad or happiest parts of my life to change one thing that made us who we are today.
You are my story Andrea, my happy ending. And we have the rest of our lives to make memories…
“all the days that came before led us right to where are, right to where we are, its all written in the stars, we’ve already come so far, and we can’t change who we are.”
I love you…
That’s What She Said…
That's What She Said... 