I’d just turned 36, and it occurred to me that my biological grandparents—their existence at that moment distant, hypothetical and abstract—were also getting older. If, IF, they were alive, I had to find them now or face the consequences of never. I immediately consulted Google, searching, “Adopted Ontario Canada Find Biological Family.” I clicked on a few of the results: an adoptee who found her family in a cemetery and now fills her own void by helping other adoptees search (dreadful), a support group for searching adoptees (still dreadful) and a retired police detective in Ontario with a track record of finding birth parents (significantly less dreadful). By the time I crossed London Bridge, even later for work, I had emailed the private detective.     

I had lunch with a journalist at the magazine at Elliot’s in Borough Market, who was clearly horrified by my decision to search. “You just opened Pandora’s box.” He was right. I had tried and failed to search before. If I was fortunate enough to find my birth family this time or at all, I had no idea who—or what—I would be inviting into my life.     

To search or not to search was a choice my parents prepared me for. It was a decision I could make when I turned 18. Whenever I tell people I am adopted, the response generally goes something like: “I didn’t know you were adopted!?” It’s a statement and a question. They’re asking, are you all right with this? (Yes.) Why did your parents give you away? (Teenage pregnancy.) Will you search for them? (Yes.) Some adoptees, like my brother, have no desire to seek out their birth families. But I always knew I would.