Regina Phillips

My first child, a daughter, was born on July 27, 2000, and I found I was completely unprepared. I thought I was ready for her birth. I had read my books and articles on childbirth and baby care; I had bought everything on my shopping checklist. The nursery was ready for use, and my husband and I were anxiously awaiting her arrival. I was prepared for wakeful nights, endless diapers, sore nipples, crying (both hers and mine), and the feeling that I can’t get anything done. I was prepared for sitz baths and hemorrhoids.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the way the entire world looked different to me the minute she was born. I wasn’t prepared for the fact that the sheer weight of my love for her would reduce me to tears on a daily basis. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be able to get through my first lullaby to her because I wouldn’t be able to sing through my tears. I didn’t know that the world would suddenly become unbelievably beautiful and yet infinitely scarier. I didn’t know that it would seem like a new place had been created inside of me, just to hold this incredible love.


I had no idea what it would feel like when the nurse wheeled my daughter in to me saying, “She’s looking for you,” and the way the image of her deep-blue eyes looking right at me would be seared in my heart forever. I didn’t know that I could love someone so much it literally hurts, that a trip to Wal-Mart would make me feel like a protective mother bear guarding her cub, or that my first trip to the grocery store without her would break my heart.

I didn’t know that she would forever change the way my husband and I look at each other, or that the process of giving birth to her and breast-feeding her would give me a whole new respect for my body. No one told me that I would no longer be able to watch the evening news because every story about child abuse would make me think of my daughter’s face.

Why didn’t anyone warn me about these things? I am overwhelmed by it all. Will I ever be able to leave her and think of anything but her, or see a crust in her eye or spot on her skin that doesn’t make me nervous? Will I ever be able to show her and express to her just how deep and all-encompassing my love for her is? Will I ever be able to be the mother I so desperately want her to have?

I have heard it said, and I now know that it is true, that when a woman gives birth to her first child, there are two births. The first is the birth of the child. The second is the birth of the mother. Perhaps that is the birth that is impossible to prepare for.

My hand-me-down wardrobe was threadbare by the time it got to me—the fourth girl out of a family of five. How I envied Ken, the only boy, for he always managed to get new clothing. No faded undershirts or pants with the knees out for him, no siree. He got brand-new. It was so unfair to be one of four girls.

The only good clothing I ever got were those that were the “ugly” clothes—the ones my siblings had received as gifts and were too awful to wear, that had been stuffed into a drawer until they were deemed too tight. That lovely yellow sweater Aunt Martha had sent Cathy, the one with the ducks on it. Pants that were wide-legged when the style was slim. These were my “new” clothes. Luckily, until I was ten, I had the fashion sense of a wart hog, and as long as it fit, I wore it. But one day, something changed.


My friend Rena lived next door. She was older than me, pretty, and fun, and she came from a Ukrainian family. I loved the clothes she wore, full of color and tradition. One day when I was at her house learning how to make perogies, her mother brought out a bag of clothes bound for Goodwill. “Would you like to go through these first?” Mrs. B. asked. I eagerly dropped my dough and went for the bag. At the top of the pile of hand-me-downs was the most beautiful shirt I had ever seen.

It was red, bright red, and silky. There were no tears, no sweat marks, no runs, and it had seven gold buttons on the front, and one on each silky sleeve. I was in love. I crushed it to my stained T-shirt, and saying “thank you,” I quickly ran home to show my mom my new shirt.

The new shirt had a magic to it. For the first time I started to look in the mirror before I left for school. I combed my hair more than once a day and brushed my teeth more than twice. Dirty clothes were put in the laundry pile before they walked there by themselves. I started to notice what other people wore and even sneaked looks at my sister’s fashion magazine. I showed an interest in sewing and soon was making my own clothes out of castoffs.

They were not always successes, and some my mother wouldn’t let me wear out of the house, but eventually I did learn to create a passable wardrobe for myself.

I wore the beautiful, red shirt at least three times a week. I wore it on special occasions, and to school on the days we had assembly. I polished the gold buttons to a shine, and I hung it up after every washing. At twelve, I had blossomed into a young lady with style, all because of that wonderful red shirt.

One day my mother watched as I struggled to button the shirt. I had grown, and unfortunately my shirt had not grown with me. I cried and tried to figure out a way to make it bigger without hurting it, but I could not bring myself to change it. It was perfect, and could not be altered to fit who I was becoming.

Mother had just prepared a basket of things to take over to a new family. They were Portuguese and had recently moved into our small town. They did not have much money to go round, especially after their move. The father had just begun a new job, and the mother did not know much English, so she could not find work in any of the shops. I remembered seeing their youngest girl in school with her threadbare clothes and worn shoes, mussed-up hair, and dirty face. It hurt to remember how much she looked like me two years ago, as I had sat in Rena’s house.

I placed the red shirt on the top of the basket. My mom nodded and said, “Now you have grown in more ways than one.” I smiled and took one last look at my favorite red shirt. It had brought me luck and I hoped it would do the same for her, too.

The next week in school, I saw the little girl, whose name was Marta. She was busy making friends and playing games. Her smile was a little brighter, her hair combed and tied with a scarlet ribbon to match her new red shirt with the shiny gold buttons that someone had handed down.

She walked out of the Jetway, pushing a double stroller carrying small, tow-headed and groggy identical twin girls, with their older sister, brother and father trailing behind. Except for the blonde hair, she looked every inch my mother—more so than either my sister or I ever have or ever will I suspect. We had written letters, exchanged pictures and a few phone calls, but just like when you read all the books and attend all the classes in preparation for having a baby, no amount of groundwork could have prepared any of us for what this newest arrival would mean to our family, least of all me.

I was sixteen when I learned I had an older sister. My mom had been involved with a married man in her mid-twenties when she found herself pregnant. Being in no position to raise a child on her own, she gave the baby girl up for adoption. A few years later, she met and married my dad and had three more children —me, my sister and brother. She told my dad about the baby before they were married, but opted not to tell us when we were young.


When I first learned of my half-sister’s existence, I hated her. In my mind, she had ruined my perfect family and usurped my esteemed role as oldest child. I knew my mother’s decisions both to give up the baby and finally to tell us about her had been exceedingly painful, but I felt no compassion, only anger. Instead of thinking my mom had marveled at all the newness and excitement of being pregnant with me, I believed she grieved over the child she had given away with each of my kicks. I felt the special connection my mom and I should share because of my birth order had been severed by a person with whom I could never possibly share any kind of bond. It was a good thing that we would probably never meet. What could I, would I, possibly say?

Six years passed. I had graduated from college, gotten a job and was living a more or less normal post-college life. Somewhat out of the blue one early fall day, my mom asked if it would be okay if she opened the adoption files that had been locked by the courts for over twenty years. She didn’t want to search herself, but she didn’t want to prevent anyone from searching for her. Fortunately, I had matured enough in those years to take this news much more in stride than I had the initial information, and I agreed to her opening the documents. Still, I was tentative.

Just before Mother’s Day in 1992, my mom got a call from the Bureau of Vital Statistics that they had a match to her information, and her biological child might contact her. The day after Mother’s Day, a letter arrived. It had been just over six months since she had opened the records. My sister’s search had been even shorter. She had only filed her papers at the end of April and was informed two weeks later that they had a match. A scurry of exchanges via mail and phone followed that first letter (this was before e-mail) as we learned more about my sister, her adoptive family, and her husband and children, who consisted at the time of one daughter and son. She sent each of us our own letter, introducing herself. How I wish I had kept mine! But the fear I was feeling over what welcoming this person into our lives might mean—not to mention my own fastidiousness, a trait that I would later find I share with her—did not allow me to. I figured the novelty of the situation would soon wear thin, and once the major questions were answered as to how everything transpired, we would all go back to life as we knew it. Well, maybe we would exchange Christmas cards.

It came as a huge relief to my mother that my sister had not ended up in foster care and that she had grown up healthy and happy. We learned that she had been adopted at three months by a couple who had a biological son eleven years older than she. They had moved from our city to a small town in the Midwest when she was fairly young, and that is where she grew up. She got married right out of college and had started a family soon thereafter.

It came as a huge shock to me that although my mother did not name her, her first name, Jolee, is almost the same as my middle name, Jolie. Moreover, she chose my birthday as her wedding date, and it is in April, not June or anything as predictable as that. We both like to cross-stitch, a hobby not practiced by any of the other members of our families of origin. We share the same love of the color purple and have a flair for decorating. No longer able to ignore the miracles of similarity, my heart was softened, and I finally met my sister.

Originally, Jolee had planned to travel with her family to meet us soon after first making contact, but then discovered she was pregnant . . . with twins. So it wasn’t until the summer of 1994 that they finally were able to make the trip. The connection between all of us was amazing—magical even. We had gotten to know each other somewhat through the letters and phone calls, but when we finally saw each other in person, it was like reconnecting with that friend that you don’t see for years, but when you do, it’s like no time has passed.

They came for the fourth of July. It seemed like no small coincidence that the fireworks display that my family had always gone to when we were growing up—but hadn’t been scheduled for years before and hasn’t happened since—was on that year. We had a blast watching them, eating fried chicken and ice cream, running through the sprinkler and taking scads of pictures. It was a family reunion for a family really meeting for the first time.

In the years since meeting the sister I thought I didn’t want, Jolee and I have grown close enough for me to ask her to be one of only three bridesmaids in my wedding. We have shared war stories of marriage and childrearing over phone calls, in old-fashioned letters and now mostly via e-mail. Occasionally, the fact that we weren’t raised in the same household or place is evident in our exchanges, but more often, I continue to discover our similarities. Just recently, I found out that we have the same favorite flowers—pink roses with periwinkle wildflowers.

The word “sister” is rife with meaning. She is someone with whom we share biology and/or life experience; to whom we tell our secrets and with whom (and sometimes about whom) we gossip; for whom we will go to the ends of the Earth. Growing up, I felt lucky to have one sister to share these experiences with. I didn’t think I was missing anything. But when Jolee walked off tha
t plane, I let her walk into my heart, and my life is all the richer for it.