Father and Son Reunion: Part I

For those of you who don't know Kurt's family history, Kurt's parents split up before he was born and he never had any contact with his father. It's complicated. We'll just leave it at that and save the details for the screenplay. His mother’s 3rd husband adopted Kurt when he was a kid (where “Newsom” came from) but no longer has any relationship with him. Kurt knew that his real father's name was Terry and he was an airline pilot and that was about it. Years ago, when Kurt was a teenager, he got curious and asked his mother to find his Dad. Lo and behold, Terry was living here in Charlotte, but being a teenage boy, Kurt hesitated too long, not really knowing how to approach him, and before he knew it they had moved away.


When Kurt and I first met he told me the story of never knowing his own father and it blew me away. Being the inquisitive person I am, I could not believe that they had lived in the same town for years and Kurt had never met him. I for one would have at least stalked him. Parked across the street from his house and watched him mow the lawn or something, trying to figure out if I looked like him. Kurt even worked at the Harris Teeter where his Dad shopped. How crazy is it to think he could have bagged his Dad’s groceries and not have known it. Humorously, when Kurt was swinging single he was always sure to find out about a girl’s parents right away just in case he had a long lost sister around town. (Hey, stranger things have happened – have you seen Maury Povich lately?)

So years went by and next thing Kurt knows he’s up and married and about to become a father himself.  During the pregnancy, we had to do genetic counseling and a battery of tests since I was declared “ancient” in pregnancy terms (their euphemism is “advanced maternal age.”) Come on, really? At 35 I am old and decrepit? Should I just crawl in a hole and die instead of bringing a shiny new baby into the world? Talk about a blow to your already fragile pregnant self-esteem! Anyway, part of the counseling was to sit with this cute blonde genetic counselor (clearly NOT advanced-maternal-aged) and draw out your family tree to get a medical history. Kurt’s poor tree looked like one that Duke Power lopped in half because it was too close to the utility lines. Ouch. It was then that we truly realized we should find this man, even if all we got out of it was a complete medical history.

Despite Kurt’s unknown pedigree, genetic testing went well and before we knew it baby arrived on the scene -- life as we know it is a whole new ball game. Instantly she is all that matters and it drove home the importance of family. Kurt’s not an overly sentimental guy and I’m not exactly a big sap either, but I overheard Kurt saying once that our baby would never not know where her Daddy was, and it broke my heart a little. We talked about how this little one should know her roots. So a few months ago I played Magnum P.I. and scoured the internet for Kurt’s dad. A few real estate records, a news article and some people searches later…I found him and his wife in Texas. Well, at least I found someone that could very well be him. We wrote a letter, stuck a stamp on it and mailed it. Actually, Kurt may have sat the letter on his desk for a day or two and stared at it before he mustered up the guts to drop it in the postbox. But off it went. I guess I hadn’t really thought through what would happen next. Would it be the right Terry? What if he never told his family about Kurt? What if he doesn’t want anything to do with us? What if he never responds at all?

About a week went by and I put it out of my mind until Kurt walked in from an evening run looking white as a sheet. “Guess who called me?” he said, “Terry.” Holy crap. My stomach dropped. Terry had left a message saying that he had sent Kurt an email but he knew how yahoo mail overdoes it with the spam blockers so let him know if he didn’t receive it. Of course we make a bee line for the computer but as expected, no message. Kurt had his mailbox set to immediately delete junk mail – curses, Yahoo! We paced around the house debating what we should do…call him back now? Wait until tomorrow? He hadn’t left a clue as to whether or not we even had the right Terry so we were absolutely dying. There was no way I could bear waiting for the next day so Kurt called him back after much rehearsal of what he should say if (a) he answers or (b) it goes to voicemail. He ended up with scenario “b” and left a message asking Terry to resend the email. And then Kurt sat there staring at the computer until it popped up in his inbox.

Turns out we had the correct Terry. He had indeed been married to Kurt’s mother, and they split up before Kurt was born. In fact, for several years Terry did not even know Kurt existed, and he wasn’t positive that Kurt was really his son. Terry also wondered why he had waited so long to contact him. He did mention that he and his wife would be interested in meeting us at some point. So Kurt responds, explaining how fatherhood had compelled him to find his own Dad. He also shared a link to the blog so Terry could read about our little family and see photos.

I don’t know how either one of us slept that night. It was such a flood of thoughts and emotions and still so many unknowns. The next day, Kurt called me while I was at the park with Sarah Beth. He said he got another voicemail from Terry. This time, he said “Hi Kurt, it’s Terry. Your Dad.” Apparently the photographs of Kurt on the blog left no doubt in Terry and his wife Patricia’s minds that Kurt was his son. Kurt is the spitting image of him. Holy crap.