IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

One of the first acts we committed as parents was to count the fingers and toes of our children. Once all of their appendages had been accounted for, we started to examine our children to see what features they had received from us. Did they get my eyes? My Ears? My nose? Did they get any of my traits? Or did they get them all from Stephanie? And we were not the only ones who engaged in this ritual, our family members tried to account for what genetic qualities our children got from them as well.

As our children have grown up, Stephanie and I have often joked about which personality traits each of us gave to the children. The debate rages on over Joshua because he seems to have so many physical features and personality traits from both Stephanie and I. On the other hand, though, it has been firmly established by many of our friends and family members that Chloe got her beauty from her mother and her temperament as well as her humor from me.

The fun part of having these conversations is that we can pinpoint exactly which traits Stephanie got from each of her parents but because I am adopted, everyone wants to know from whom I get my idiosyncratic style. Is it genetic? Or is it environmental? And whenever the conversation is brokered, it leads to a lot of fun filled, zany and downright hilarious theories as to how I became the person I am today.

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It had been a little more than a year since I had found my birth name and I was personally frustrated with myself at the progress I had made. Life changing events had consumed a lot of my free time, so my opportunities to continue my inquiry had been put on the back burner. I had gotten married, started a new job, moved to a new state and started a new life. Stephanie and I were newlyweds and we had a lot on our plate. So as my twenty-eighth birthday approached, my mind started to wander back to my search for my biological parents.

I hadn’t completely stopped looking for them. I had flirted around with some new search techniques during the course of the year. My neighbor, Will, was a computer programmer and he introduced me to the capabilities of the internet and how I might be able to find information more easily. The internet (in many respects) was still in its infancy twelve years ago. The abundance of information that is at our fingertips today didn’t exist on the web over a decade ago. And that lack of readily available information made it difficult for me to navigate my search through an ever changing cyberworld.

I had my birth name which gave me some clues as to who I was looking for and I now had a last name that allowed me to narrow the scope of my search. I had a birth location which became known as ground zero and the basic non-identifying information that the adoption agency had given to me when I started looking for my birth parents. And most of all, I had my creativity, my imagination, my ingenuity and an uncanny knack for asking questions in unique ways that allowed me to gain access to useful information. But even then, my quest for the truth seemed more like a constant lessen in futility because I ran into more roadblocks then I ever thought would have existed.

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Josh’s goldfish died a week ago. It wasn’t unexpected as “Goldie” had not been looking good lately. Josh was understandably upset and although he wanted to have a funeral for “Goldie,” he wasn’t ready to say goodbye because he was still processing his feelings. So we decided to have the talk about the good memories we have of “Goldie” and that seemed to help Josh and Chloe get through some of their grief.

This past Sunday afternoon, as I was sitting on the porch watching the kids play in the front yard, I thought about the conversation we had with the kids last summer after Grandma passed. We were sharing fond memories of the good times we had with Grandma when we started going around the room and asking, “What would you miss if I were gone?”

We talked about how we would miss Stephanie’s gardens as well as her arts and crafts projects. The world is Stephanie’s palette and her garden is an expression of her love and creativity. Her passion for art projects is an extension of that originality that allows her to share the world’s endless possibilities with the kids.

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