A Sister Lost is Found

In about an hour I'm leaving to pick up my sister at the airport. Every time I see her it feels like the first time. Our parents gave her up for adoption at birth, and we found each other 15 years ago. Ours is a story with a happy ending, and part of the reason for that is we both were looking, we both were ready. I had been searching for five years, ever since I found out about her, and she had been searching for a year. She says she had to get to the place where she was willing to find out the worst case scenario, and instead, she says, she found the best: two parents, two siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles.

For me, learning about Sheila was confirmation. I always felt that someone was missing. I was two-and-three-quarters when she was born, before verbal memory, but I do have a sense of my mother's pregnant belly, the day she went into labor. A few months after we found each other, I started the novel. It took me several years to figure out why my main character was mute. Finally I realized that she represented the two-year-old who couldn't speak of the loss she suffered. That's when I fell in love with the book and understood that I was writing it to fully comprehend my own loss.

The novel is done, but I still haven't sent it out, and I wonder, often, why not. I feel protective, yes, of the book and my family, and likely, myself. It's so different from my first novel, I feel nervous about whether fans of Brigid's Charge will embrace this one as well. I could go on; I do go on in my head, but I decided today that I am going to read it again, fall in love with it again, as I always do, and then send out the queries. It's time.