You know what's surreal? Writing an email of introduction to your "new" adult cousins who are your full blood relatives but who, up until three weeks ago, you did not even know existed. Up until three weeks ago, you thought your father was the oldest child in his family and your aunt, his younger sister, thought her only sibling living was your father. Your grandmother, who was forced to give up her first child with your grandfather two months before they were married kept that secret for a long, long time. And who can blame her? When you've kept something like that a secret for over 50 years, a secret that not even your sisters, with whom you currently have very close relationships, did not even know about, a secret that you had to leave your province to get rid of, a secret that was necessary to keep in order to protect your family's social standing in the 1950s, a secret that today
still carries unspoken judgements about the taboo of sex outside of marriage, then how to you even begin to start sharing that secret?
Well, the secret is out and we're all very happy about it. As my aunt said, it's full steam ahead, no looking back, they just want to catch up on life. And they did, this past week, when the baby who was given up for adoption 55 years ago in Ontario, went back to PEI as an adult to reconnect with her birth mother and meet her two younger, biological siblings.
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| New siblings |
Oh, yes, the surreal moments continue and I haven't even met her yet. I can't imagine what that must have been like for my father. But he's taking it in stride. How do we know that? Well, now that he's no longer the oldest child, who according to birth order, should be the responsible one, he, as the middle child, plans to act out. Typical jokester. Yes, he'll be fine.
As for my grandmother, my aunt says "she has a new spring in her step and is already busying herself withChristmas decorating", something that she has definitely scaled back in recent years. This year, however, "she wants to celebrate." And so we will.
