Meeting your sister for lunch

I met my sister Sharon for lunch a few weeks ago. Not so remarkable, most might say. But those who know me said, "I didn't know you had a sister." And, as it turns out, my sister didn't know she had a brother either.

It was actually quite a story. She is 73 years young, spry with a great dimpled smile, and teasing eyes that danced and sparkled -- just as I had imagined for years. I am her "little brother", four years younger, the result of a tryst between her father and my mother when they worked together. Each was married to another, and the resultant "love child" -- me -- was raised by my mother and her husband without (to my knowledge at least) him ever knowing that I was sired by another. I had one younger (half)-brother with whom I was raised; she had an older sister who died in early adulthood.

I've known that my origin was "mixed" for fifty years, the result of a coincidental blood test when I first got engaged to be married. Twenty-five years after that, my mother confided in me on a trip we made through Europe -- my genetic father by then had passed away. Ten years after that, at a 60th wedding anniversary for our Scoutmaster, I wound up chatting, no it was more like chattering, to a girl I was certain that I knew -- and she likewise, but we could find no common ground. The next morning, my mother said softly "that was your sister, but I couldn't introduce you there"

Well, as it turns out, it wasn't -- she was a first cousin; fifty-five years and a similar name does confuse things a bit. But on her deathbed, my mother asked me to "find out" if I could, and once her husband (my father, as I have called him for my whole life) passed away, I was "free" to pursue the question.

It was not as easy as the genealogy books would have you believe. But the real test was once I had an idea of who to seek, the next immediate question was HOW? Do you just knock on the door, and say, "Hi, I'm your long-lost brother." I decided against that strategy.

The real dilemma, of course, was that the other party, upon learning the news, may just not view it as the greatest of stories. Anger, denial, a rude dismissal -- all could be likely outcomes. How this transpired, and how it unfolded was in fact a wonderful story in itself.