Free Off Balance: A Memoir by Dominique Moceanu

wondering why she was taking so long to answer.
    “Hello?” Her voice was raspy.
    “Hi, Jennifer. This is Dominique. How are you?”
    She seemed a bit startled, clearly not expecting a call from me or apparently from anyone else at that time in the morning. I glanced at the clock quickly to make sure I wasn’t calling obnoxiously early. Nine a.m. That’s decent , I thought. I had been on “mom time” for the past three weeks, which meant I ran on a twenty-four-hour clock dictated by my little Carmen. To me, 9:00 a.m. wasn’t much different than two in the afternoon or two in the morning, so I made a habit of checking the clock before calling or texting family or friends on a whim.
    “Oh, hi,” she said after a pause.
    “Christina and I had the biggest shock of our lives. Our parents never told us about you. I definitely have a lot of questions myself,” I said matter-of-factly.
    Silence.
    “I want to thank you for going about this the way you did, Jennifer. I respect you so much for that.”
    “I didn’t know what else to do, but I knew I had one shot to show you that I was for real,” she jumped in.
    “There was no question in my mind from the photos that it was for real. My mouth just dropped when I saw my mother’s handwriting and then my father’s signature on those legal documents you sent with your letter. I just about dropped the papers from my hands. I was totally overwhelmed with emotion when I read everything, but I really do appreciate the way you went about it—there was no question in my mind that this was true.”
    I had little sticky notes spread across my desk reminding me of things I wanted to ask or tell Jennifer. I figured they’d provide some backup help if I got nervous or if there were awkward silences. Mike added his extra support by poking his head into the officeevery few minutes while keeping an ear out for Carmen. What do I say to the sister I have never met before?
    Turns out Jennifer and I had plenty to say to each other, and I really didn’t need my sticky notes at all. Our conversation seemed to open up and flow quite easily and pretty soon we were chatting away. I felt like I was talking one hundred miles a minute. We both had so much to say, and I remember both of us saying, “This is so crazy” several times. It was just so bizarre. The entire situation felt like a strange dream that was still hard to wrap my head around, even as I was talking with her.
    “Talking to you is something I’ve been dying for since I found out that we were sisters,” she said. “When I got your letter saying that you believed me, I almost passed out. I had no idea how you were going to react, but I knew I had to write to you. I figured the truth was something you should know if you hadn’t already been told.”
    I made a point to reiterate to Jennifer that I really didn’t know about her prior to receiving the package. I didn’t want her to think, even for one second, that I had known about her all these years and had simply chosen not to contact her. She said she had a feeling that was the case but had always wondered.
    “I have had real dreams about meeting you, and in them you reacted horribly, and I was so worried. I didn’t know how you’d react—if you’d be accepting or not,” she said.
    I had Jennifer on speakerphone with the volume set to max so I could really hear her voice and not miss anything. I was so immersed in our talk that I hadn’t noticed that Mike had grabbed our video camera and was filming the conversation. I shot him a serious look and gestured to stop, but he ignored me and kept filming. I am thankful now that I have parts of our first conversation recorded. There was so much said between us that I could barely remember half of it after I hung up. That’s my husband, thinkingten steps ahead as always. He knew that one day we would all want to look back on this moment—and he was right.
    “This has been very difficult and emotional for my family