Then I found out I had an older sister
Update:
Okay, here’s the story. My mother was pregnant before she was married to my father. She had a little girl and gave her up for adoption. That’s the short version.
And this is the longer and more interesting version.
Back in those days when an unmarried girl got pregnant, abortions were illegal, dangerous and expensive. The alternatives were: get married, bring shame to the family and have the baby at home, or go to a home for unwed mothers. My mother chose the option of going to the home for unwed mothers and giving the baby up for adoption.
She was born and raised in a small town and couldn’t have a baby there so she moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota which was the largest town in the state. She found work as a maid and eventually had the baby in a home for unwed mothers and gave her up for adoption.
Now, here’s the part of the story where I come in.
While she was having her baby, her roommate was there giving birth to a boy named Donnie and they became close friends. She introduced my mother to her brother who eventually became my father. So, her roommate became my aunt and Donnie became my cousin.
Meanwhile, unbeknowst to me, my sister was adopted and grew up in a nearby town. She married, had four children, moved to Oregon, and became a grandmother while we
became grandparents of ten and moved to Illinois.When her adoptive mother died, she discovered she was adopted and found mother’s maiden name on the adoption papers. So she decided to search for her birth mother and her whole family began the hunt. Mother’s first name is uncommon and her maiden name is an extremely uncommon German name so it should have been easy to find.
They found the marriage records, but my father has a common Scandinavian last name making the search more difficult. In addition, both families were determined to keep family secrets. After a couple of years she gave up looking. But her son, my nephew, didn’t.
My sister’s family is in the photography business and they travel to different towns taking family portraits. One of her son’s customers near Seattle was my uncle (mother’s brother) and his family who obviously have the same uncommon German last name. The link was made, and my sister was able to travel to South Dakota to meet with my parents.
It was a couple of months before we were able to travel to Oregon and meet, but it was very emotional as you would expect. We’ve met a couple of times since then and our children have hooked up with theirs. We keep in touch, but we haven’t seen them as often as we would like.
So, if my sister hadn’t been born, my parents never would have met and I wouldn’t be here to talk about it.
And that, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.
