July 2026

Wedged between two hulking strangers, miserably masked and nursing a torn meniscus, I was uncomfortable on the flight from Toronto to Vancouver. I distracted myself by rehearsing the upcoming meeting with Tracy. Though we are in our sixties now, she’s two years my junior and I enjoy thinking of her as my little sister.  Since we found each other three months earlier, we’d written, spoken and Zoomed, but this was our first in-person meeting. I wondered if there was a protocol. Would we shake hands like polite strangers, or might we hazard a sisterly embrace? Despite having led very different lives, we both hoped to forge a relationship.

I was adopted in 1959; a time when abortions were illegal and unwed motherhood was stigmatized. I was told as soon as I was old enough to understand. My father called me in from outside. I’d just learned to ride a two wheeler and I was showing off my new skill to the kids on our small cul-de-sac. His tone was gentle and deliberate, unlike his usual boisterous manner. My mother hovered beside him. He went straight to the point:

“You did not come from Mom’s tummy. We chose you. You were adopted. We love you and we are your parents.”

I remember responding to this revelation with impatience; it did not strike me as noteworthy and I wanted to get back to my bike.

In the following months, while lying in bed at night, I gave more thought to my chosen status. The first order of business was to flesh the meager facts into a story with which to entertain myself. My parents would have chosen me at Eaton’s, because we bought everything there. I imagined rows of babies in cots, near the toy department. But with so many to chose from, why did they choose me?  

The apparent randomness of their choice eventually prompted some disquieting thoughts. While my cousins and my friends clearly belonged to their parents by dint of physical resemblance, my connection to my parents now struck me as more tenuous. It troubled me to think that everything precious to me—my family, my home, even my identity—might never have existed if my parents had chosen a different baby. Then some stranger would now be sleeping in my canopy bed and playing with my Barbie Dream House. And if I had been adopted by other parents, would I be celebrating Christmas rather than Chanukah?                                 

Religion was a further complication: my parents were secular Canadian Jews with olive skin, dark eyes and strong noses. I had white blond hair, fair skin and an upturned nose. As a child, going to Temple with my parents,  I was frequently reminded that we didn’t match.

“You don’t look anything like your parents,” I heard. And
“What a pretty Shiksa!” These comments, benignly-intended, struck me with the force of an accusation that left me feeling I was an impostor both as a daughter and as a Jew. 

As a questioning adolescent, I felt the pull of the biological connection: it seemed truer because it was impervious to chance or separation—no matter where your were or what you became, you’d always be linked to your biological family.  It tantalized with the promise of a stable identity. The one detail I’d extracted from my mother about my birth mother was that she had red hair.  Whenever I spotted a redheaded lady on the subway who seemed the right age, I’d wonder, “Are you my mother?” like the little bird in P. D Eastman’s children’s story. Of course, when I balked at my parents’ rules, my thoughts turned longingly to the mysterious red headed lady. Surely she would have understood me better. She would have let me go out on school nights. She might have given me the car.

I never discussed any of these ideas with my parents, because, after having dealt with the fact of my adoption with textbook correctness, they exhibited such discomfort with the topic that I sensed it was off limits. With any mention of it, my mother would look stricken. The adoption became a family secret tainted with shame. I had an older brother who was also adopted, and we had both so internalized the taboo that, astonishingly, we never once spoke of it privately.

A series of dramatic choices, beginning in my late teens, consolidated my identity and appeared to put the whole adoption issue behind me. I met a nice Jewish boy in summer camp and we got married after my first year of university. We began exploring traditional Judaism and we forged our own path by becoming Orthodox. We built a large family, giving me the biological connection I’d always craved. While raising seven children, I became a teacher, then a principal, then a PhD candidate. I was no longer curious about my birth mother or troubled about the solidity of my connection to my parents or my religion. I came to see my adoption as having been part of God’s plan. We’d been chosen for one another and there was nothing random about it. Biology, I thought serenely, has so little to do with destiny. As someone who was essentially self-fashioned, wasn’t I the living proof?

As we say in Yiddish, Man plans and God laughs.

In 2019, I finally requested a copy of my birth records. By then, my parents had been gone for many years—I’d never have done this while they were alive. If my birth mother would be willing to be contacted, I wanted to thank her for the gift of my life. I calculated that if she’d been a teenager when I was born, she’d be in her late seventies now. I had no interest in a relationship—I just wanted her to know that whatever she’d endured, I was grateful for the life she’d given me and I’d done my best to make use of it.

Reading the forms was an uncanny experience. Apparently, before I was me, I was someone else. The Statement of Birth records my name as “Susan Walker, and my 19-year-old birth mother’s  as Laura Lynn. Unsurprisingly, she checked off “single” for marital status. Under trade, she wrote “secretarial,” and she identified her race as Irish, confirming the origin of my Celtic skin. The second page is the adoption order itself, bearing my parents’ names and my new one. In the eyes of York County, I remained Susan Walker until a year after my birth, when I officially became Sherri Lynn Gurvey. Looking at the forms, I wondered if my parents had given me my second name to honor my birth mother, Laura Lynn. I hoped so, though there was no one alive to ask. I signaled my willingness to be contacted by her or a sister, should one exist, but I never heard back.

Three years later, I found Tracy because I’d written  an essay. I was taking a course in memoir writing and every week I had to write a personal story in 1,000 words. One week I wrote about being adopted, ending on a cliff-hanger that suggested there had been a dramatic turn of events. Other than the scant information on the birth record, I had nothing to write about for the next class and I was starting to panic.  It was then that my son Zev, then in his thirties, came forward to tell me that he’d recently done a DNA test and connected with a woman in Vancouver. He thought she was a cousin. Maybe she could help me with my story? He hadn’t told me until now because I’d been so insistent in downplaying my adoption that he assumed I’d be angry. He wasn’t wrong. While I was, in fact, angry with him for what I perceived to be a breach of my privacy, I was wildly curious. He forwarded me the email correspondence.

The first shock was the subject line: “Laura Lynn.” I’d never told Zev about  learning my birth mother’s name. Attached was a picture of a young woman holding Tracy as a baby. I was staring at my twenty-year-old face topped with a head of lovely red hair. Here was the mysterious redheaded lady. Seeing this picture—irrefutable proof that I was not self-created—shook the edifice I’d built up over the past decades about who I was and how I’d got here. I could no longer pretend biology didn’t matter.

I wrote to Tracy and began learning about our mother, Laura Lynn. She’d never doubted we were sisters; she’d seen a picture of me and said “I looked like so many people she loved.” Laura Lynn, who’d lied on the birth record, had been only 17 when she gave birth to me. In order to avoid the scandal, she’d travelled alone from her Calgary home to give birth to me in Ontario. One of the more startling revelations was that Laura Lynn had chosen to have me adopted by a Jewish family. The Jewish identity I so valued was mine thanks to the decision of a 17-year-old non-Jewish girl.

Over the next months, Tracy and I spoke regularly. We loved learning about one another’s childhoods and dating histories. While I enjoyed speaking with her, I wasn’t sure if we’d ever progress from friendship to sisterhood. We continued to lead such different lives. My schedule was directed towards the weekly Sabbath, when my home would be filled with my grown children and their kids. It was chaotic and noisy. It was a lot of commotion for Tracy, a childless divorcee, who lived quietly with her cat. And yet there was much we shared: we’d both been teen models, we’d both studied English in university, and our temperaments, tastes and bone structures were pleasantly aligned. After a few weeks of chatting, my non-Jewish sister surprised me by announcing that we should henceforth refer to each other as shvester—Yiddish for sister. She said it felt right.

After getting off the plane, I followed the other passengers to the luggage carousel, near the exit. The sun was shining through the windows, and the people waiting at the entrance appeared as darkened silhouettes. Then I caught sight of her. She was swathed in a flowing skirt and red scarf and waving at me expansively. Her movements were balletic and when she spotted me, I thought she might clear the airport barrier in one grand jeté. I’d recently torn my meniscus, and the searing pain meant that I could only hobble-hop my way to my shvester. There was no hesitation or thought involved. I tore off my mask and we embraced each other tightly while we both wept, while time slowed to standstill and the carousel, the people and the airport melted away. We had entered our private world of Shvesterland. Though we’d never be able to make up for the lost years, we had found one another and we both felt complete.

Finding Tracy has immeasurably enriched my life. Three years later, using the word “sister” still gives me a thrill. Tracy hopes to retire in Toronto so we two seniors can experience the sisterhood we missed as girls. We are gleeful as we plan the hobbies and outings we’ll share. My husband and my children all love her and delight in watching our new relationship flourish.  But that doesn’t surprise me, as Tracy is an unusually charming and loveable person. But I suppose I’m biased—she is my baby sister.

While I am very grateful for this unexpected turn of events, I feel humbled as well: despite my august age, until finding my sister, I hadn’t fully grasped to what extent my adoption had informed my life choices and shaped my identity.

It continues to do so.