Here’s a look back over a year ago, to when I met my first biological family member . . .
I know brothers. Some of my first memories include my oldest brother. I remember the two of us sitting on the floor, and I’m “reading” him the book “The Chosen Baby.” I’m something like three-and-a-half, he’s about two, and we’re basically the same size. He’s a chunker and I’m petite. I have vague memories that coincide with my mom’s reports that I came home each day from Kindergarten and taught him what I’d Iearned that morning. I do recall him pleading to have his turn at going to school and feeling a bit guilty that I got to go every day while he had to stay home.
We were real siblings, my three brothers and I. It didn’t matter that we did not share DNA, nor that our parental connection was court mandated rather than biological. Didn’t matter at all. Yet these strong ties that did not diminish the longing to connect with biological siblings.
While I have no experience with older brother relationships, I’m pretty sure I would have liked having older male siblings. Close family friends who lived just down the road, (yes, road—we grew up in the country!) had two boys older than me, and one of them became like a surrogate older brother. And I liked that. I would have been the youngest if my birthmother had kept me, a middle child if I’d stayed with my birthfather, yet I was the oldest in my adoptive family. A mixed-up birth order scenario for sure.
** the post continues on my new website . . . where it’s now titled “Meeting the Family: Chapter 1 — Big Brother”
The Scriblerians 