Sunday, June 10, 2018

We're Calling Ourselves Sisters

I just talked to my sister for more than three hours! That sentence brings tears to my eyes. You see, I've never touched this sister, never knew she existed until a couple of weeks ago. And she never knew she had a half-sister on her mother's side. We met through the magic of DNA and it is a most amazing experience.
Brother on the left, sister in the center and niece on the right.
AncestryDNA calls us 1st cousins, but she's convinced and I have to agree, we are actually half-sisters. She has always known about a half-brother two years older than me who lived with her family and grandparents. That she had a half-sister was never mentioned, never even hinted. All the people who would have known the true story are dead, but all roads lead Kathy and I to believe we are half-sisters and, as Kathy said, "We can call ourselves sisters, and if there's ever evidence to prove otherwise, we can still call ourselves sisters."
Our mother
This is my mother in about 2000. I never imagined I would ever know what my biological mother looked like. I don't know that I ever even really daydreamed about her as a real person. As I look through family pictures, I know where I got my hair color. I wonder if her eyes switched between blue and green depending on mood and clothing color. I'll have to ask Kathy.
And my sister! We talked and talked. Neither of us cared much about dolls, but her/my mother made extravagent outfits for her Barbie. I still have my original Barbie, but the only outfit is her black and white striped swimsuit. I know I had other clothes, but I no longer have them. Kathy was the tomboy sister. I was the indoor sister, maybe, at least physically, the more timid sister. I loved horses, but she owned one. She rode motorcycles and did a lot more sailing than I did. She's obviously very intelligent, but I might be more bookish.
Me
We agree that we might have fought a lot because we are both a bit outspoken, but that we would also have been close. We have so many things in common and so many very different experiences. She almost went to the same college I attended. We would have known each other, at least known of each other. Would we have recognized each other?
It's all suddenly so very real, but so sudden that there is still much to process for all of us. I haven't spoken to my half-brother at all. I have a new-to-me niece in the town where I live. So there is much still to explore, a whole family with which to develop relationship.
Kathy and I are beginning to make plans to visit each other and thinking about even traveling together to see the ancestral hometown in Germany. In some ways, it seems that things are moving at warp speed, but we have a lot of lost years of sisterhood to make up for.

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