This has been a family heavy week. Or a week made lighter by family. Four years ago a woman named Judy contacted me through ancestry dot com to tell me that we appeared to be mysteriously related though by what she was not sure. After a bit of digging we realized we were half-sisters. I already have a full sister who went by Judy through my entire youth and is now called Jude. There are no victims in this story – only winners. All the parents that could be shocked or embarrassed or driven by duty to do something are now playing cards at the Afterlife Bar & Grill. Judy was happy to have extra family and so were we. She looks so much like our dad that she said “if I had a moustache I’d be him”. Last fall the fella and I went to Alberta to hang out with my brother and his wife and our new sister came with her husband and we all got to know each other. We laughed, told stories, went to both the dinosaur provincial park and the world-famous gopher hole museum. We ate lots of good food and some junk, played lots of games, and found out what weird shit dna is. Apparently there’s a marker for reading all roadside signs aloud and one for singing a lyric that fits what someone just said to you. Who knew? My regular sister Jude didn’t come out but this past week my new sister Judy flew here to be with us for the visit of my regular sister so it has been a three sister jamboree. Yesterday I got to introduce them to the folks I meet on the road when walking with the dog. “This is my sister Judy, and this is my other sister Judy.” It’s something I could only have dreamed of. Later we went to Peggy’s Cove. Tonight we’re going to my son’s for a family dinner and tomorrow we’re going to Lunenburg (when you are perhaps reading this we will be looking at the birthplace of the Bluenose. Look at a dime. A Canadian dime you dope! Why would I get you to look at an American dime? Jeesh.)
Having a second sister is both interesting and somewhat disturbing. Like looking at yourself in a shop mirror – both sides at once. I finally can see and concede things that maybe I sort of knew but could just put down to my original sibling being different than me and well, my brother was a boy so there is that. It reminds me of when I went to England and realized what a Canadian was. I knew we weren’t Americans but I had to find out we weren’t British either. We were a strange amalgam of new and old world with our own little Canadian idiosyncrasies as well. Not exactly made of either but we could see some things that hadn’t been clear before. This is like this. Also finding out that nurture doesn’t beat out nature in quite the way I used to believe. The new sister isn’t a carbon copy of me (or rather, as she arrived first, I’m not a carbon copy of her) and neither is my regular sister. We are all opinionated and chatty and a trifle argumentative and basically cheerful. The new Judy is probably more practical than we are in some ways. I’m probably the most woo-woo of the lot, but we all like to play games and read good books and argue politics. We have two kids apiece and we like our kids and our grandkids but we aren’t any of us the fawning sort of mothers. We like laughing but who doesn’t I’d like to know. We like animals and museums and a good deal. We have far too many aches and pains and spend far too long elaborating them for each other (the fella I’m pretty sure is ready to be rid of us all shortly for that reason alone) but we also have that essential mode of our dad’s – we think we are lucky and we aren’t suspicious that anyone is out to do us a dirty.
Could feeling lucky be a dna trait?
I sure hope so.
Oh what fun in the ups and downs of life ...!