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Title : Finding Amie
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Finding Amie

Amie is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I've written about her on this blog in passing before. She was with me at my first rock concert (Guns N’ Roses at MSG when we were 14 and 15) and she was the first person I ever emailed. (Yes, we are that old).

Over the years, we’ve fallen out of regular touch. She’s lived her whole adult life in San Diego, and I’ve lived mine in Alaska. The geographic and logistical challenges of getting together have caused the years to pile up, until a decade managed to pass without us seeing each other. We've kept abreast of major life developments and chat online from time to time, but we are simply not in each other’s everyday lives like we used to be.

To paraphrase Stephen King though, you never have friends later on like the ones you have when you’re a teenager.

When I think of my adolescence, I think of Amie, because she was such an integral part of everything that was fun and memorable about that critical time in our lives. We had, and still have, a deep and lasting friendship, which in early 90's NYC was characterized by the absolute most fun imaginable.

We would stay out all night and blast our eardrums watching struggling hair bands play shitty nightclubs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We’d swoon over leather-clad, Slash-from-GNR-wannabes. At dawn, we’d head uptown for gross chicken soup and a marble frosted donut at Dunkin' Donuts before we slept until noon and I took the bus home.

Amie had terrific parents who adopted her at birth.

Amie always knew she was adopted, but like many adoptions in the 1970s, there wasn’t much information available. She knew that her biological parents were Portuguese teenagers who were not prepared to raise a baby, and that was about it. We would sometimes speculate that perhaps they were a prince and princess living in Portugal.

Fast forward to yesterday, when I saw on Instagram that Amie’s lifelong best friend, Jen, helped orchestrate the first-ever in-person meeting between Amie and her birth mom, Della. I immediately froze with my phone in my hand and texted Amie for the details, and we caught up early this morning.

Amie put me on speaker phone with Jen and Della, and although it had been a few years since I’d heard Amie’s voice, it felt like no time had passed. I had a million questions and got the gist of the story.

Della was 16 and living with her father, brother, and grandparents when she had a brief romance with Amie’s 19 year-old biological father (Amie has located him, but has not reached out to him yet). Della became pregnant with Amie and it was a scandal of sorts in her traditional family.

As with many teen pregnancies at that time, Della didn’t have much control over what happened next. She finished out her pregnancy at an apartment in New York City, a private adoption was arranged through an attorney, and Della tried not to look as Amie was whisked away a few days after her birth in the hospital.

That was the last time Della saw Amie until yesterday at the airport in Austin, Texas.

Both women had been on Ancestry.com looking for the other. Through a bunch of detective work by their friends and families and with help from Ancestry, they discovered they were a DNA parent/child match.

Della wrote first, and Amie wrote back right away. I'm sharing their email exchange (and writing this blog post) with their permission and a few personal details omitted:

Della to Amie:

Hi Amie. My name is Della Pagano. Several weeks ago with the advice of a dear friend, I submitted my DNA. Today I hope a miracle has finally happened. I believe I am your biological Mother. If so, my search is over and my dream has come true. I am Portuguese and have 2 other daughters, Alexandra, 27, and Jaclyn, 24, both of whom are very excited right now. If it is you and you want to meet me or speak on the phone first, it would be my greatest wish. I pray I hear from you. You have been in my heart for always!

Amie to Della:

Oh my gosh! I can't even find the words . . . I can hardly breathe at the moment. I'm so overwhelmed with emotion! I have been searching for you forever!! I am incredibly overjoyed that you have found me, and even more so that you wish to meet me. I can't believe I have sisters!! I have always wanted sisters! You, by the way, have a 2.5 year old grandson. His name is Julian. My sisters are aunties. :) He is beautiful! You would be very proud. I most definitely want to speak to you and meet you as soon as possible. I currently live in San Diego and I know we have a 3-hour time difference. What time of day is best for me to call you?

xoxo,

The happiest girl in the world, your daughter.

So mother and daughter quickly dispensed with their mutual fears that neither would want to meet or know the other.

Della said she had never stopped thinking and wondering about Amie. For her part, Amie had wonderful parents, but was naturally curious about her birth parents.

Jen arranged for them to reunite in Austin, with Amie traveling from San Diego and Della from Fairfield, Connecticut where she lives. Jen—forever loyal, tenacious, and fiercely loving—flew them both to Austin where they are presently enjoying a reunion together with Jen and her family.

So in the course of just two weeks, Amie learned the identity of her birth mom and her two sisters, Della learned she is a grandmother, and Amie and Della met in person. They will all be having Thanksgiving together this year in North Carolina.

Intense much?!

Through tears, I told Della that Amie had a great childhood, which I knew because I was there for a bunch of it. I told her how amazing Amie’s parents are and were. (Her dad was a private pilot who died in a plane crash when we were young adults). I told Della what Amie and Jen surely had already told her many times: that Amie’s mom and dad, grandparents, and step-dad loved her and gave her everything she could have wanted or needed: love, support, an amazing home and education.

You can see not just the physical resemblance, but the love that Della and Amie share despite only meeting in person yesterday. It’s an amazingly moving thing to witness.

Even if you don’t know Amie, I defy you not to cry when you look at these pictures, watch this video and read the poem below (author uknown) that Della sent to Amie.

A true once-in-a-lifetime moment. Absolutely incredible. Seriously, watch the vid.

Once there were two women,
Who never knew each other
One you don't remember,
One you call your mother.
Two different lives,
Shaped to make your one,
One became your guiding star,
The other became your sun.

The first one gave you life,

The second one taught you to live it.
The first gave you a need for love,
The second was there to give it.
One gave you a nationality,
The other gave you a name.
One gave you a seed for talent,
The other gave you an aim.

One gave you emotions,
The other calmed your fears.
One longed to see your first smile,
The other dried your tears.

The age-old question
Through the years:
Heredity or environment
Which are you a product of?

Neither, my darling, neither.
Just two different kinds of love.

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