You walk into the room, a look of confusion on your face and say, “Mom, there’s this girl trying to talk to me on Facebook. I don’t know who she is but she says she’s my sister.”

I look up from the legal case I am working on. A case of great importance to both the clients and to me. But not as important as this.

“What did she say?” I ask.

“She says she knows she’s my sister and found me from ‘23 and me’ and they said we’re a sister match.”

With that my daughter walks out of the room.

I am stunned, traveling in my mind to a time long ago, at the adoption center in Kiev, Ukraine, where we scanned through books of “available children” under the watchful glare of the director, Mrs. Kunko. She picked you and sent us south to Simferopol, deep in Crimea, where we embraced all 11 pounds and 6 months of you.

They called it “winning the lottery” when a child was chosen to leave Ukraine for a better life. In that moment, we all won: you, me, dad, and all your new brothers and sisters at home. 

Before we left Ukraine, I gathered as much as I could find out about you and your family, anticipating that far-off day when you would want to know everything about your history. Perhaps in trying to satisfy my own father abandonment questions (a story for another day), I went overboard searching for your birth family. It was no easy task but what I discovered was truly remarkable. There were photos of your family, information about your health, references to other children, even twins. I kept all of this information secret but safe, waiting for the day when you would ask.

You showed no interest when you were younger, but gradually you asked a little at a time. I answered what I could. I suspected that these shadows of your past would eventually need full sunlight, but only when you were ready.

So here we are. A moment that has come about not from your curiosity but someone else’s. As we talk and as we later learn through contact with the family, you have sisters who are twins who came from the same orphanage as you. Just two years younger than you, they were adopted by a family from Michigan. Indeed, it appears that we almost crossed paths in September of 2001, just before 9/11, when we returned to Ukraine to adopt another child, two-year-old Annabel. Your twin sisters were born shortly after we left the country and brought to their home in Michigan.

That these beautiful young women have now reached out to you is momentous. I can see it in your face. A first connection with your birth family in the flesh. Twin sisters who share the same mother as you, who also have many of the same quirks as you. They look like you. They even sound like you.

They have little information about their origins, and so we share what we had learned. Photos of your birth mother, photos of a grandmother and uncle. A letter from a grandmother that details how the family wanted a better life for you and how loved you all were. There are photos of the family home, the hospital where you three were born.

I cannot imagine the conversations that now take place between the three of you. So I ask and you tell me. In the last few days, you three sisters have talked about the reasons you were adopted and you can see in the photographs and letters how poor your birth family was. You wonder where you would be had you not been adopted. You speak of taking a trip back to see the places in the photos, to meet those people who are your family. You know about the war in Ukraine and worry for the safety of your birth mother, an elderly grandmother, extended family and other siblings — people who are inextricably tied to you but who you don’t even know.

In the end, I imagine the three of you are discovering so many missing pieces, some that you didn’t know were missing, and that for a time you didn’t even know you needed. It is a Christmas gift, one filled with so much mystery and promise.

Linda Pearce Prestley lives in West Tisbury.