I’m Nat’s brother and here is part of the story that you can’t get from her:
I love my life. All of it. It hasn’t always been easy- but who’s has? I haven’t always been happy- but who has? I haven’t always been right- but who has?
It’s difficult to know what I want to share without writing it out first. It is difficult to know what is appropriate to share without asking first. It is difficult to be as clear as I want to be when there is just so much lead up to something as simple as – I met my sister for the first time, here’s how the story goes.
My English teacher might advise me to “establish my audience first”... no probably not, my English teacher would probably tell me to just get to the point... Then again it’s been 15 years since I had an English teacher, and I hear education has changed. Anyway, there is one very important person who will publish this on my behalf, so this is for you Nat.
I grew up always having a dad. An amazing, marvellous human being, who shared my home, loved my mother, spawned my little brother and was an outright hero of mine. I also knew that he wasn’t there the day I was born – or the day I was conceived for that matter. So I grew up also knowing that at some point there was a divergence; I went one way and my father went another.
I don’t know how this affects other people; truthfully I’m not really sure what kind of effect it had on me. What I know for certain is that there were few weeks in life where, for some reason or another, I found myself wondering about who my mother was first married to, and why he wasn’t around.
My mother was young when she married. And yet only as young as I was the year I met my wife. She was young when she gave birth to me. And yet only as young as I was the year I was engaged. She was young when she left her husband (only five weeks post-natal) and I was young when I was adopted (roughly the age of my oldest son ~2). The reasons I grew up with the early estrangement – he was an alcoholic incapable of caring for an infant, and reluctant to see the issue with that.
My mother was open about her admiration of my father’s talents and her absolute revilement for his character. She allowed me insight into what made me different from the ‘other kids’ growing up. Sometimes these insights were positive and sometimes there were not. What I decided very young was that I wouldn’t press the issue, I loved my mom and certainly didn’t want to upset her by dredging up a difficult past.
Fast forward through to the teen years, when boys start looking to their fathers for support and encouragement as they develop into men-- My dad did the best he could, but even he would admit that sometimes my idiosyncrasies were a bit baffling. According to Mom, I was the spitting image and often strong reflection of my father. 15-20 years of a new life had done nothing to remove the hurt of her first marriage and here I was a constant reminder. No doubt this has a formative affect on an adolescent. I’ve tried hard to rationalize it all and come to terms with it, but I would argue that this put me in a slightly uncomfortable predicament. To this day it still does.
At 19 my new girlfriend started to quiz me on my heritage. She would boldly ask my family the questions that I had long internalized. I was finding more and more out about my mother and my father than I had ever had the courage for. A few years later I ended up marrying this girl.
For years my wife and I would discuss whether meeting my family was a good idea or not. This was the event that settled it: My wife’s younger cousin (married at 19 with 2 kids under 4) had decided she’d had enough of her husband and had initiated a separation. Through this process we watched a lot of people hurt, and get hurt. As I watched this woman cut away her family, make choices about her kids’ future, and deal with the emotions that come along with a hard break-up I realized that I had an outside view of my own situation for the first time.
In leaving her husband, and severing ties, rightly or wrongly, my mother had run from a family and had also taken their grandson, their nephew, their boy. I was seeing first-hand what this was doing in my wife’s family and it was no longer good enough for me to be separated from my own.
But –
I still wanted to honour and respect my Mom and her situation so I endeavoured to make contact with my estranged family without involving my family.
The story about how I managed to do that is an exercise in how to make connections using logic questions and search engines. Going into is long and not really necessary – suffice it to say it took some time and some luck, and it was exciting. In May 2006 I heard for the first time –via email- from my aunt.
The details about meeting this family for the first time are complicated, intense, and I think best left private. Suffice it to say by July I was able to meet a grandmother who had missed me terribly, my two aunts, some cousins, and my father. Mission accomplished. At the time I described the whole process as feeling as though I’d spent an entire week crying not having actually cried. My wife and I came out of the experience emotionally exhausted and at the same time utterly changed and challenged by the experience. I would claim – changed for the better.
One of the hardest parts for me leading up was trying to figure out what the etiquette was for initiating contact, and knowing if what I was doing was invasive or not. I had ascertained earlier that there was a strong possibility that my father went on to have a second family and that I had a brother and sister. This was confirmed but no one knew if my siblings knew I existed so no one else knew whether they should let them know a new family member had popped up. I wasn’t the only one worried about making an intrusion it seemed.
Nat has pieced the rest of that part of the story together for you. Receiving an invite to a wedding reception from a sister you have never met is a unique experience. I thought she’d found out I existed and must have felt obligated to invite me to appease the family. I felt it was only polite if I met her before I crashed her party, so I phoned her.
Hopefully you’ve put together by now that we have met, and roughly how that came about. In fact, we’ve more than met--
Nat and I are siblings who don’t carry the baggage of having grown up together! Truly we don’t know each other all that well, but she has taught me something I think is super important:
You can choose your friends AND you can choose your family. More importantly you can choose to be friends with your family.
I met Nat at a very important time for me. In her I’ve found someone who shares a similarly complicated history that revolves around one of the same central characters. Aside from the quirky things that tie-us together she has been someone who is able to empathize with my struggles and situations in a way that no other friend or family has ever been able to. We don’t all get that chance. We don’t all have someone to be that for us. That Nat sought me out – wanted to know me – thought I was important enough to risk inviting into her life never having met me... well...
There is something I’ve come to understand in life, and it’s balanced by something that comes from the core of my faith:
I am not owed love. I am not owed success or money. I am not owed health or happiness, compassion or grace. Therefore it amazes me when they arrive – even more so when they arrive through a stranger. That it does at all is a glimpse into the type of kingdom the world is waiting for. People hurt each other, but there are great rewards when you choose to live compassionately, graciously, and with mercy in spite of it. For this reason, no amount of hurt is worth carrying for longer than it takes to say ‘I forgive you’.
I love my sister. Her stories, the way she listens, what she stands for... they’ve all helped me start healing the half of me I had decided had no value, was broken, or in darkness. We don’t all get that... but I’m convinced it’s out there waiting if you’re ready to look.
