Second contact - and fourth - and fifth - and...

Well, brother and I started exchanging e-mails. I sent him one with a pdf attachment (how typically digital age) outlining the family tree and such standard facts, a little about dad's life and of course a little about me and sister.

Got an e-mail back stating that he was far more interested in me and sister than dad. Which I found strange, but perhaps that is normal? I don't have much experience in this department. Then e-mail after e-mail followed, and I seemed to have more contact with him than with my own -- sorry -- uhm, with my sister and parents. We kind of know that we're here and there and don't have such a strong need to communicate. I got a feeling he was trying to make up for lost years, all 50 of them, and must admit I ran out of things to say. He sent a lot of late-night e-mails telling me about -- having a beer, or watching the sunset and such.

I didn't always answer. Just didn't know what to say after a while. There's only so much to say after a bog-standard day.

He complained that sister never answered his e-mails. All I could tell him was that she never really does with any of us. Not really worth getting upset about. She's still there, if you know what I mean. That's what having siblings is about. They're there, somewhere. But because you don't marry them, at least not if you know what you're doing, you only have contact when you have to. You get together for Christmas to remind yourself why you left home. And then you swear to never ever go home again. That sort of thing.

You know, my sister doesn't normally call me on my birthday, nor I her. But he did. And I still couldn't understand what he was saying; kept having to ask him to repeat. And he opened the conversation saying 'hi! It's your brother' which had me completely baffled for a moment.

After a few weeks my mum called. Her report was short and to the point. "C -- you have to talk to him. He's stuck his head firmly into the sand again. He's depressed. And he won't talk about it at all." My poor dad. My heart broke. We may not be good a birthdays, but we carry our hearts on our sleeves.

Why I think he said no

I read in this blog that open records is the thing. That secrecy, refusing adoptees the right to know who their biological parents are is really bad, that it leads to all sorts of mental problems, that -- the theories are all there. And I understand and agree even. Mainly because as a person of quite liberal attitudes I can't see what the fuss is about, why there's supposed to be so much shame involved over a pregnancy. I'm not even sure the shame is about the baby, but that -- guess what -- now everybody knows you are sexually active! What a blow to mankind!

Well, it's a real shame when that leads to a 13-year-old getting pregnant, but that is what the abortion laws should be there to solve (and decent sex ed should help prevent). But why should there be so much shame involved once the pregnancy is a fact? And why so much legislation to keep the children from finding out where they come from? After all, it's not their fault.

And that was pretty much what I thought, that this is not such a big deal, that unless the 'kid' is a down-an-outer who is now going to come running demanding money and generally harass us, there is no reason to refuse him contact with the family, perhaps even regular contact, involvement as 'one of us'. What's the harm? Why turn it into a tragedy? WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?

So I downplayed it. Fine, someone else came first. What's he like? You haven't met him? Ok. Would you like to meet him? No? Ok. I take it he would like to meet us, though? Does he have any contact with his birth-mother? No? She said adamantly no. Right. That must be a tad disappointing for him, don't you think? You said no to contact too? Oh.

It was this last bit that got me. The gut reaction 'no'. Because, you see, it felt all wrong. And now comes the bit where I'm going to philosophise over why he said no, based entirely on my own imagination. Because one can never really know what is going on inside another person's head.

I think he said no because of the way he was brought up. By a deeply religious mother who never admitted to ever having had sex despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Immaculate conception perhaps? OMG! The return of Christ, and none of us knew! Sorry.
I think he said no because of the place he grew up in. A deeply pious area, a tiny community where tongues easily wagged, and rarely in a kindly way. A place where gossip was the main form of entertainment. Where those who put a foot wrong received the highest gawk-factor and presented a free-for-all to be laughed at, talked about, sneered at...
I think he said no because he spent a lifetime getting away from that, building a career, creating a life and a lifestyle that he'd always dreamt of, taking control over his own destiny.
I think he said no because he lost his own childhood through the loss of a parent and was left with the main responsibility for his siblings (shouldn't this have made him more compassionate? ah! psychology takes no hostages -- he was trained through the death of his father to be completely reliable, to never let anybody down, least of all his family -- quite a burden for someone so young).
I think he said no because when A was conceived, he was busy trying to survive on next to no money while studying and he could see no way of adequately supporting a wife and child.
I think he said no because he let them down. And that has stayed with him ever since.

Though of course he did his best to forget. And the rude awakening, that the past always catches up with you, was something he could not bear having to face after half a century of burying his one mistake in life.

Oh, if we could all be blessed to only have made one mistake. :-)

But that decision was taken out of his hands by someone who, through circumstance, is essentially a stranger. And all his old fears resurfaced. How would it be received in that tiny, intolerant community?

Don't say it. 'Who cares?!' Someone who's cared all his life, cares. Someone who's painstakingly crafted a rich life out of nothing, cares. Someone who really, really doesn't want to let anybody down, cares. Someone who fathered an illegitimate child in the 50s, cares. Someone whose life was irretrievably coloured by the values of the 40s and 50s will not easily adapt to the more carefree 60s or 70s (I personally believe we have gone into reverse since then, starting in the 80s). Because back then, 'illegitimate' actually meant something. Something bad. Something that could ruin your life, your career, your future relationships.

So his face clouded over, life went from his eyes and he looked into the abyss of having failed, both the birth-mother, himself, but most of all the child who was given up. Rejecting him again was not as bad as having to face all that failure.

But inside every adult is the child that was rejected by someone, at some point in time. And I was not about to let it all fizzle out into my dad shoving his head back in the sand and my sister clamming up and being awkward. The only one who seemed to be perfectly laid back about it was my mum who said, well, it was before my time and I didn't exactly expect to marry a virgin.

But I think he said no because he still felt ashamed.

It's so easy to instruct others to feel differently to what they actually feel. I didn't feel any shame, so why should he? This is the twenty-first century; people don't think like that any more! This is NO BIG DEAL! Get over it! But the habit of a lifetime tells you differently.

Mixed emotions

I am in no way a stranger to emotions. Of any kind. But I was terribly unsure how to react. I was dealing with my own uncertainties, while also trying to find out what dad, sister and mum were feeling; possibly to find out what I ought to feel myself. You see -- I didn't really feel all that much. The first question I had asked dad was 'well, what does he want?' -- perhaps unkindly, suspecting the stranger of having ulterior motifs. Money, inheritance, what did I know. But no, he apparently only wanted to know if there were any siblings. To find out if blood really is thicker than water, or something. But no matter. I spent the initial few days and weeks tiptoeing around dad and sister who seemed to be pretty knocked out by it all. While I continued to think that perhaps there was something I should feel too? But all I felt was worry, about them, but most of all about dad who seemed very, very down. He totally clamped up and didn't talk about it.

The facts themselves were in so many ways totally unspectacular. A result of a brief affair while a student, dad and the birth mother realised they had nothing in common and that a marriage would only result in a divorce somewhere down the line. Not a great future. Abortion in the 50s? Fat chance. And, luckily, they were well enough educated to not go down the route of the knitting needles... So the unborn baby was put up for adoption. And dad did his best to forget. I guess in many ways he succeeded.

First contact

I got his number from sister and rang in the evening while mum and dad were watching TV.

I told him I was his youngest sister, presumably, as I knew nothing about his birth-mother's family. I can remember very little of the conversation. Just that I found him hard to understand and had to keep asking him to repeat what he'd just said. He spoke so fast. And in that dialect, a dialect I hardly ever hear so have no practice understanding. Perhaps he was nervous, I know I was. I only remember him cutting me off when I said it was rather a long time ago, that dad had been very young -- he blurted '27!' -- which took me a little aback. Well, I suppose that's not all that young, not exactly a teenage pregnancy thing. I guess he'd thought about it, studied the facts as he knew them from the paperwork. To me it was another lifetime, a past I in no way was a part of. Did he feel rejected by knowing that youth was not one of their excuses for giving him up for adoption?

We exchanged some more pleasantries, exchanged e-mails and hung up.

In the beginning

there was us. A small family; mum, dad, two kids, a dog. House, car, suburbia. It was all pretty nice, as far as I was concerned. I was the youngest.

Mum and dad were my best friends. They were great, never treated me as a kid, talked to me properly. I fought with my sister -- or perhaps she fought with me, I'm not sure, but we fought. But that's ok. We eventually stopped, sort of grew up and turned all adult and sensible. At least she did. She went off to set up her own standard family, and I started faffing around the world, unable to settle down.

And so it went. For years. I'd visit 2-3 times a year, spend every minute with mum and dad as intensely as I could, knowing that time was precious and I would soon go back to wherever my life took place at the time, to whatever job I was holding at the time. We laughed a lot. And sometimes we cried. We're a little sentimental that way. We cry together.

Sister lives close to them, so she spends her time less intensely with them and gets annoyed with them more easily. I can't afford to get annoyed any more, the time with mum and dad is too precious for that.

You're waiting for the upsetting break, aren't you?

Here it is.

Phone call made by strange man to sister while she is at work. The man says he is her brother, that they have the same father. Sister has no idea what to say. She is understandably shocked. Like me she thought she knew her dad. She thought the strange man must be some sort of nutcase. She asks for time, gets his number. But he asks her not to talk to dad.

That's strange. Why not? We've always talked to dad. About everything. There is nothing we can't talk to dad about. Or is there? And what about mum?

Of course she talks to dad. There is nothing else to do. She offers to tell me for him, to make it easier as she knows how close we have always been, that it might be less of a let-down hearing it from her. The let-down being that there was something I didn't know, that a secret was being kept. From me. By him. The number 1 person in my life.

But he told me himself. It wasn't easy for him, and the moment he told me I realised his world was falling apart. My dear, sweet, kind dad was suddenly looking into the blackest black of his life, and I could see in his eyes that he had no idea how to live with having kept a secret -- or perhaps, lived a lie -- for so long. And I knew, just knew it was up to me to find a way for everyone to live with the news. Including the stranger.

Because if there was one thing we could not do, it was to reject him. A man who had spent half a century not knowing his birth parents, not knowing if he had brothers and sisters. There is enough imagination and empathy in me to know that facing rejection for an adoptee must be absolute hell.

I'm going to skip the intervening first contact for now. Apart from hardly understanding a word he said -- he spoke with a heavy, northern accent, we're over the first awkward point, but have yet to meet face to face.

But there's one thing that really irritates me. He keeps opening every damned communication with 'little sister'. As if he's marking his territory and can't stop in all the excitement. I hate it. And I have no idea how to tell him not to as I don't know him well enough to know how he'd take it. And I still don't want to hurt him. Or my dad. Or my sister. Or mum, who has nothing to do with any of this. When is he going to get over it? Not even my sister refers to me as sister, and he's only my HALF brother. Should I perhaps open my replies with 'Dear HALF brother' in return...?

Of course not.

But...