When identical twins Marielle and Mireille Landry were growing up, they often daydreamed about their birth mother. What did she look like? Did she still think about them?
“We both had so many questions,” Marielle Landry, 33, tells TODAY.com. “All we knew was that she was 15 when she had us.”
In a closed adoption, there is no contact between the biological parents and adoptive families. But fate had other ideas for Marielle and Mireille.
“Our story could be a movie,” Marielle says.
In the summer of 2004, the Landry twins and a friend were taking photo booth snapshots at a local mall in Nova Scotia, when they noticed a strip of prints that didn’t belong to their group.
“It was two blonde women,” Marielle says. “So we tracked them down and were like, ‘Hey, these (pictures) belong to you.’ And then they thanked us and we went on our way.”
About 20 minutes later, Marielle noticed her adoptive mom, Lorena, in deep conversation with the two blonde women. Whatever they were discussing looked serious.
Marielle and Mireille were intrigued.
“We were like, ‘Who are they? And why on earth would our mom know them?’” Marielle says. “My sister and I have talked about how as we were approaching, we both had this feeling that something crazy was about to happen.”
Their instincts were correct.
“My mom looked at us and said, ‘Girls, this is your birth mom,’” Marielle recalls.
Nicole, the Landrys birth mother, had recognized the twins from the yearly photos that Lorena sent to the adoption agency.
Marielle remembers feeling frozen in place. There was so much she wanted to say, but she couldn’t find the words.
“It was such a surreal moment,” she says. “Nicole asked us if we had any questions but I couldn’t think clearly. I had so many, but I was in shock.”
Over dinner that evening, Marielle and Mireille learned that their birth father lived in Zambia, and that he and Nicole met when he was in Canada playing soccer at a university. The Landrys also got acquainted with Nicole’s sister, Crystal — the other blonde woman from the photo booth. Coincidentally, Mireille and Crystal were wearing the same shirt on that fateful day.
“Even though they were strangers, they felt so familiar,” Marielle says.
Nicole has been a part of the Landrys lives ever since that day. Marielle describes their relationship as being like “close cousins.” They have also have a relationship with Nicole’s family, including her son.
