The large, contented, peopled world in which she was raised. The small, confusing, solitary world that I escaped from. Her father—our father, yet in so many ways not my father—with his pink cheeks and thoughtful, kind demeanor. My father—the one whose voice I will hear for the rest of my life—singing
I would not characterize the world I grew up in as “confusing,” or anything to have escaped from. And here, the “she” is the author’s newfound half-sister.
For me, my half-sister’s family was perhaps not always so contented, but it was absolutely large and “peopled”! And my upbringing was in strong contrast to that.
I grew up very much an only child (despite the existence of a much older brother and sister), far from huge family holidays, tumbles of cousins and ever-present aunts and uncles. It was a very different experience from the ones my birth families had.
It was even, now that I think about it, very different from the ones my adopted parents had: he had two brothers and a sister, all very close in age. And my mom was the youngest of eight sisters, with several aunts and uncles who were also part of her life.
My parents had chosen early on in their relationship to leave the town where they had been born and spent their young adulthood, and move to California, then to Oregon. The nearest family member outside our immediate family of three was over 1000 miles away, and our visits to see family on the east coast were exceedingly rare.
I knew my aunts and uncles mostly from holiday gifts and my mom’s stories. Cousins were people I’d met once or twice, and whose names tended to jumble together. Once in a while, family would come visit us in Oregon, and I always loved getting to know them, but all together that was probably something that happened only for a few weeks, every few years of my childhood. I was aware of being part of a very large family, but it wasn’t something I experienced the way some people do, and almost everyone else in my family did.
