Family Reconnects 38 Years Later

Amy Bruhl was in line buying drinks for her children before a soccer game in Kauai, Hawaii, when her cell phone rang.

Bruhl figured the woman who asked for her by name was trying to sell something. But when the woman talked, Bruhl's knees buckled. She had just heard her little sister's voice for the first time.

"I don't know how you're going to take this," said the woman, Norsala Schlaht of Ottawa, "but I'm your birth sister."

Bruhl didn't know what to do, so she walked to her car, leaving her children with her husband. She asked Schlaht to repeat everything she had said. They talked all the way to the soccer game.

Later that day, when Schlaht was talking to her sister Yusefa Carmack of Ottawa, she couldn't remember anything from her conversation with Bruhl.

"She was like, 'How many kids does she have? What does she do for work? What does her husband do?'" Schlaht said, referring to Carmack. Schlaht kept answering, "I don't know."

Soon the three sisters began to learn little details about each others' lives. They talked for nearly three hours each day. Bruhl said her cell phone bill for the month after Schlaht first called was $800.

"I had to change my cell phone plan. Let's put it that way," she said.

Bruhl, who knew she'd been adopted, had been found by her natural family in Ottawa.

This weekend Bruhl flew from Hawaii to visit her Ottawa family. It was her second visit. She first visited during spring break this year, when she spent six days with the people she had come to know well from pictures and telephone.

Schlaht had found her sister six weeks after she was told she existed.

After Schlaht adopted a baby boy, Dyann Hill, her mother, had an anxiety attack that sent her to the hospital. She finally told her children she had given up a baby 38 years ago. They had another sister.

The next day, Schlaht told her mother she was going to find that sister. Knowing only the girl's birth date, place of birth and mother's name, Schlaht made several phone calls and eventually learned the girl's name, Amy L. Shapiro.

After one wrong address and an unanswered phone, Schlaht finally found her sister, now married with three kids and living in the same state Hill raised her daughters, Hawaii.

Getting the message to her mother that she had found Bruhl turned out difficult, not because of emotions but technical problems. Schlaht said the only way she could communicate with her mother, who was on vacation in Mexico at the time, was through e-mail. When Hill received the message that Schlaht had found Bruhl, she could not write her back. She could only write short responses in the subject line.

Eventually the women set up a time for Hill to call Bruhl. After some troubles with telephone cards, they spoke for the first time. Frustrated with the phone card problems, Hill said she had forgotten all she planned to say to her daughter.

"By now I had no clue what I was going to say," she said, "so both of us, for this exorbitant price, were crying."

"She said, 'I had it all planned out. Now I don't know what to say,'" Bruhl said.

They said the family keeps finding out strange similarities. Schlaht, 32, and Bruhl both have one weak eye muscle, and Carmack, 30, and Bruhl have the same handwriting; all four women wear the same size shoe.

Bruhl, who had the same father as her sisters, said she noticed that she, Hill and Carmack all had four children. She said she her first baby died when the girl was 2. Bruhl said having lost one of four children was similar to her mother's situation.

"I understand that feeling of not having one of your children," she said.

Bruhl pointed out other significant connections about her daughter. She said her daughter looked exactly like Carmack's 1-year-old girl. Also, Bruhl said all her children's names had some sort of meaning, such as a relative's middle name. She
named her first daughter Carley Marie, Carley after her favorite singer, Carley Simon, and Marie, just because "it had to be." Later, she found out Hill's middle name was Marie.

The women said they had problems with the way adoptions used to be handled. Hill said the state only used nonidentifying papers when Bruhl was born. She said it was like she had the baby and then the state told her to go home and forget about it.

Hill and Bruhl said they had looked for books about others in similar situations. Bruhl said she couldn't believe the number of people who had negative experiences. She said often when children seek their birth parents, they are rejected. Hill said she found books only by psychiatrists.

"What do they know? It's like a marriage counselor that's never been married," she said.

Hill said she and Bruhl are writing a trilogy of books, one by Hill, one by Bruhl and one a group effort. They invite people searching for children or who have found children to e-mail them. Hill can be reached at dyvitsol@yahoo.com. Bruhl can
be reached at kailuabruhls@hawaii.rr.com.

Hill said they are a family now. On Monday, the day before Bruhl returned to Hawaii, they sat in Hill's living room watching Schlaht's and Carmack's children play. They acted like sisters, throwing pillows and sticking their tongues at each other.

"I always felt like I should belong to a big family," Bruhl said.

Share your story and read more stories.