| As I'm sure you guessed, I showed them and lived. Not well, since I still had asthma and a nasty case of allergies to almost everything on the face of the earth...milk and all dairy products, cigarette smoke, grass, dust, pollen, dogs, cats...I was practically a bubble baby. Aside from almost dying and being a pathetically sick child, life was downright dull while growing up. |  |
 | I think the most exciting event in my young eyes waaaaay back then was having my seventh birthday. I thought it was the neatest thing in the world to turn 7 on 7-7-77. OK, so I still do. Like any bored youngster, though, I longed for something, anything exciting to happen in my dull little life. |
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Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for....
Sometime during my 13th year, my brother and I came home from school on just another ordinary day in our lives. (Funny how those "ordinary days" can change at the drop of the proverbial hat, huh?) Our mother was nervously awaiting our arrival, obviously struggling with something she felt the need to tell us. We knew it was pretty big since she wouldn't even look at us...she just kept kneading that bread dough like it was her mission in life. Since she couldn't seem to spit it out, our minds thought up the worst possible scenarios, such as one of us was adopted, had a different dad, was an alien, etc. I guess mom finally figured at the rate we were going, it wouldn't be much of a shock at that point to just come out with it. | |
| As it turns out, we had another sister we'd never met who was adopted out of the family before we were born. It seems our long lost and closeted sibling lived only a couple of hours away and wanted to meet us. She got her wish a few weeks later. How do you adjust to something like that? It certainly wasn't something my family was prepared in any way to handle on an emotional level. Lisa was sweet, very shy, and as awkward about us as we were her. I do feel a little cheated at not having the opportunity to grow up with my own sister, but I can certainly understand my mother's reasons for giving her up. |  |
| Once that secret was out, it seems the skeletons in the family closet just started tumbling out and we learned many other sordid details about our family history we never wanted to know. As you can imagine, the impact of these sudden revalations shattered our family. My parents tried to hold it together for our sakes, but they split a couple of years later. Dad remarried three months after the ink on the divorce papers was dry and my mother moved 1000 miles away, leaving me to adjust to a new stepfamily and life without my mom. My new family came complete with three stepsisters who also happen to be my cousins (confused yet?). All of this was going on right smack dab in the middle of my teen angst years while I was trying to figure out who I was. What timing! I'm sure I was a real joy to be around. |  |