Family

My mother turned 70 a few days ago. My father would have turned 78 this month, too. This is not the stage in your life where you expect to get a call that you have a new brother or sister. And yet...

My mom's husband has three children of his own, two daughters and a son. All grown, as you would expect. All with children of their own. All happily out on the west coast, living their lives, doing their thing. My sister knows them. I don't. That's okay. We're all adults and our lives are in very different places.

Only the son has tried harder than the rest of us, myself included. On the two or three occasions we've been in California at the same time, he's been the one who made sure I was included in the conversation, shown an interest in me. According to both of them, separately and independently of each other, he and Crow had developed a sibling-brother-sister relationship. He emailed; he read the blog; he kept in touch.

Finally, he got divorced. And, without telling tales that aren't mine to tell, there were some parallels between his divorce and mine. In light of them, I realized this person hadn't just been being polite. He had really been reaching out to me. Maybe it was time for me to reciprocate. I made a friend.

Finally, earlier this month, I got an email saying he was in town for 36 hours and could we meet up? Oh Hell Yes. Two hours flew by, and we could've filled another two without thinking about it. Hell, we could've filled another two days without too many silences. We discovered we had both been telling people we were meeting up with our stepbrother/stepsister, instead of just a friend. When we parted ways, it was even true. There's even almost a family resemblance if you wanted to look for it.

Meet my brother:

Those are surprised and delighted Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.