Sister Act

So. Matt's long lost sister. 

This isn't a terribly uncommon thing for our generation - I was once at a Christmas party in a conversation group of four people, and three had discovered hitherto-unknown siblings existed, or their spouses had. We found this out when one woman said "I got my parents the Ancestry DNA kit for Christmas and I got a new brother!" The less-common aspect is that this is a full sibling - Matt's mom and dad had a baby before they got married, the baby (girl) was adopted and they subsequently had three boys. 

We'd known about her for a long time but had kind of given up on hearing from her. Then we heard from her. We were shook. There were emails. There was conferring. She could not have been more sensitive and kind about not wanting to cause any trauma or open up any wounds, meanwhile we were all like hell yeah, bring on the sister stuff. The three brothers did a zoom call with her from here (Ottawa), Edmonton, and Toronto, which is very close to where she also lives.  

Freaky stuff. My husband Matthew Adams, is one of three boys. Dara has three boys named Matthew, Adam, and Ben. 

Slightly freaky stuff: She was raised Jewish. Jeremy's wife is Jewish and two of Eve's very tight friend group are Jewish and they are very into Eve having a Jewish connection. Two of Eve's six housemates are also Jewish (more on this later). I am realizing this is not actually freaky, t's just kind of cool. 

The really really tragically sad part that I can't let myself think about too much is that Barb (my mother-in-law) never got to meet her. I did talk to her about it once, when she was here helping me wrangle the kids when Matt was away. I didn't know if she would want to talk about it, but turns out she had just been waiting for someone to ask. For a few reasons, chiefly that Barb died too fucking young (fuck fucking cancer in the face, sorry for the people who don't like swearing), the timing didn't quite work out.  

Once you get that wrenchingly sad fact out of the way, it's all kind of wonderful. Eve said "my cousin count has gone up by fifty percent!" The new cousins have never HAD cousins, so this is exceedingly trippy for them. Eve met two of them at Jeremy and Laura's just before she came home. She and Ben connected on Instagram, and she was a bit surprised that they had zero mutuals given that they are both in fourth year university in the same province. She came home and her housemate (one of the Jewish ones) had TWENTY-ONE mutuals with him. And she knew about Dara because her friend (also named Dara) knows her. Six degrees of Kevin Kosher-Beef-Bacon, I guess. 

What does this do to the birth order stuff? This summer we were going out to a party and Matt had to fly out early the next day for a work trip. I told him he shouldn't drink too much and reminded him he hadn't packed yet, and he said "get off my back, I'm not the oldest anymore, I'm an out-of-control middle child". 

Eve says that Matt told her about the sister existing years ago. When this all went down, it was a few days before Matt and I were going to go to Ithaca for Angus's grad school commencement. Eve said "has anyone told Angus?" and Matt said "I dunno" and Eve said "well then no one has, dumbass". Eve and I Facetimed him because we didn't want to spring it on him on graduation weekend and I didn't want Matt to have to NOT talk about it either. I said "uh, so, there's a family thing that we should tell you" and he looked a bit alarmed and Eve said "oh for god's sake, you're making it sound terrible - Nana Barb and Mike had a baby and it got adopted and now she's gotten in touch." Angus was like "uh, is dad okay? Okay, cool."

Good then.

As far as I know, she's met Matt's dad, Barb's sister Kate, Matt's cousin Mary, Barb's widower Bill, Jeremy and Laura and the kids, Matt, and now my daughter (not me yet NOT THAT I AM BITTER, I was super close to jumping in the car and driving five hours for the mini-family-reunion Saturday except I had just done that drive the weekend before and Christmas LIVES ON THE BACKS OF MOTHERS).

Eve said the two cousins she met are really nice. She's only aggrieved about the fact that Mitchie, the littlest cousin, is really a man's man, so Eve loves him so much but he only had eyes for Ben.

It is SO WEIRD. I keep thinking of the time my friend Suzie, whose ex-husband went to Thailand and got a girlfriend who he then married - when their two daughters were getting ready to go to Thailand for the wedding Suzie said "I'm sure this woman's parents are overjoyed about meeting their adult, white grandchildren". 

But come on - we could all have wandered around the world (just one province, actually) our whole lives never connecting, never knowing anything about each other. I have no idea where I stand on the afterlife, but I really hope Barb is happy about this, because she would have loved it beyond all description. And Dara - welcome to the family. We are extremely weird but also kind of awesome. Some of us are hard to get off the phone, others are a bit too enthusiastic about fennel, and do not mention anything about World War II around (redacted). But we'll have your back.