When my parents sat my sister and I down to tell us something, I didn’t know it was going to be something so world altering, mind-blowing, and heart wrenching; but then again, what’s life without a little excitement?
Woah. Exactly my reaction.
I stared blankly at my parents while a million questions and emotions raced through my head. The only thing I could think straight enough to do was cry, when I didn’t even really know exactly what I was upset about.
Who, what, when, where, why, WHAT WHAT WHAT???
I’d never judge my dad, he is a great man. One in fact I know, always puts his children first because they are his world. I couldn’t bear to judge someone who has been through so much in his life, and had to live with this mystery always in the back of his mind. I wasn’t crying because I was judging him, but I felt like I knew so little about his past. Daunting questions were filling my mind and I was living through this monumental moment in his life; through his shaking hands and his fear of me, my sister, and my brother Aaron resenting him.
No one resented him. Once I heard the story, I was completely and utterly in awe.
Someone in this world shares half my blood, and I didn’t even know he existed.
29 years ago, my dad was active duty in the Navy. Like a lot of military men and women do, they easily fall in love. For whatever circumstance or reason, they broke up—but she was pregnant. His ex-girlfriend was pregnant with my half-brother, Larry. As some time went on, Larry’s mom fell in love with someone else, and my dad accepted that and let her be happy to this new man whom he didn’t want to come in between. My dad agreed to her wishes of letting the new husband be the father on Larry’s birth certificate, and Larry was named after his legal father.
Knowing the kind of guy my dad is, I can imagine this broke his heart in some kind of way, shape, or form; but he was young, and life moved on. In many ways, his life was changing fast and this was a difficult time span for him. His mother died a couple of months later, he then completed his time in the Navy and moved to Florida.
He never knew the new legal father’s first or last name, they never even met. This was a time before cellphones, texting, and social media. All he could do was let her be and make sure that the baby would have a family, because that was his main priority.
I can respect that, and years later my mom came into his life and also respected that. My mom always had a feeling someday, someone would come knocking on our door looking for him. My brother, sister, and I had no idea, but they couldn’t tell us because how were my parents supposed to know if it would ever happen? They didn’t know who he would become, or where on earth to even start searching. It was better left unsaid, somethings in the world always are.
Fast forward to the year 2015 where social media and the internet rules our world. Where mass communication is an essential part of our lives, and where Facebook really does let you connect to people.
29 years later, Larry found my mom on Facebook, my dad doesn’t have any kind of social media. If you don’t believe that social media has the capability to do amazing things and bring people together, you haven’t found out you have a brother through a Facebook message yet! The most out-of-the blue message popped up on my mom’s phone that flipped our world upside down.
Larry didn’t know his father wasn’t his biological father until his mom told him at age 20. The same age I was when I found out he was my brother. At 20, he was mature enough to handle the news that he had a father somewhere out there—and he took it with grace and a profusion amount of optimism. The strength and courage it took to reach out to an already established family, took extreme guts. It took him close to 10 years to build up the fearlessness to contact us. A lot of Google searching (and actually my grandfather’s recent obituary) lead Larry to find our contact information.
Luckily, there were no secrets between my parents, and my mom wasn’t taken by surprise—at least not in that stance. We welcomed him with open arms.
Larry has had a successful and fortunate life. His athleticism and genes are all my dad, it’s undeniable they are father-son, he also looks similar to my other brother Aaron. Larry was a four-year varsity starting punter and kicker for his high school football team (he set the record at his high school for the longest field goal of 51 yards his senior year), and also played four years of varsity tennis and played in the Michigan High School All-Star Football game. He grew up into everything my dad would have wanted him to be, happy.
After talking on the phone every week, Skyping, texting for hours, and sending pictures back and forth, we have already become so close. My family has gained a son and a sibling who we can call apart of our family and share memories of the rest of our lives with. Not the average person gets to say that.
In November, Larry is coming down to Florida and we finally get to meet for the first time.
Life really does happen in mysterious ways, and I’m pretty lucky.
Read part 2 of the story here.