I've Written to My Half-brother's Wife!

This scene above is from the southwest coast of England depicts a "superior mirage." It's a type of optical illusion that appears under particular weather conditions. When there's a layer of cold air on top of a layer of warm air, light refracted through it distorts.

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Monday had such an incredible beginning. I heard from Lee, giving me contact to my half-brother, before dawn. What a start to a day—a day that became bright and sunny!

I went dog walking with my little group and then came home to stack wood. As I worked, I pondered my good fortune at meeting the Gordon family. To feel, from these “strangers,” so much enthusiasm and warmth astounds me. My parents never ever expressed enthusiasm for me; I can’t get over being desired by family.

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And more good news: Gabriola is going to host an immunisation clinic for everyone, regardless of age. Island Health will be sending a team to our island to inoculate every adult in consecutive day-long clinics until we are all vaccinated. That is fact; I read it on the Island Health website. Rumour has it on the island, that this will occur this month or next.

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It actually felt good to be back toting and stacking wood. At the relaxed pace of doing the last two cords, it is pleasant work. With each load, I was closer to finishing and moving on to re-seeding the front lawn—my next project. It’s so, so wonderful to be spending my days outdoors—plus I’m reading a great book, tolerating my new drugs and so, so happy to be a member of the Gordon family.

I did ten wheelbarrows full, did some shopping and then came home and did ten more barrows full. Then it was time for a spa and then a relaxing evening by the fire. I’ve reconfigured my living room, yet again, and each time it gets more and more comfortable and cozy. 

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It didn’t rain last night, and the day has dawned with promise of decent weather, so I’ll walk Her Highness and get back to my toting and stacking. I might get close to finishing with the wood but I’ve lots of time to do it so I won’t push myself. 

I’m in very good spirits because last night I could feel the headache that had been bothering me for over a week, melt away. I’d had a persistent (but mild) pain in the back of my head; I was afraid it was becoming a permanent issue for me, but it disbursed last night and for the first time since the weekend before last, I woke up with absolutely no head pain this morning. It’s a huge relief.

As I lay in bed last night, I realized how anxious I’m becoming about meeting people from the Gordon family because I can’t see myself going through such an emotional experience fluently or without having a seizure—and what a nasty way to present myself. So, last night I was pondering how I might best experience meeting Paul Robertson or my half-brother for the first time.

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This morning, I wrote to Brenda Gordon. She is married to Paul, my half-brother. It was weird writing to strangers asking them to accept me and allow me to get to know them and their sister, Sue. I did the best I could, being careful to include that should they want me to get lost, I would. But now I am waiting for her response, hoping that she’ll be open to my request. There’s no guidebook for such an enterprise. More to come …

Finding my Half-Brother!!!!

Well … where to start? Oh, I know: I have a living half-Brother (Paul) and half-sister (Sue). I found out thanks to one Tara Skewes. Tara’s ex-husband is Lee Gordon. His father is Paul, a half-brother born to my father’s second marriage. Tara gave me Lee’s address and I have written asking permission and for assistance to communicate with his father and aunt. I’m so powerfully overwhelmed by this revelation that I tremble every time I write about it.

And there’s more to come. I await Lee’s response.

Also, yesterday was my first day on my new HIV medication that may reduce my seizures and will likely lesson the frequency and intensity of my nightmare’s as the new drug is not psychotropic. What a day was yesterday!

I also had two Zoom sessions yesterday: One was two hours long with my stuttering support group, all of whom I am coming to almost love. After several sessions now, I’m becoming very attached and I think we all are. So, two new families!

And I Zoomed with another batch of beloved friends—my friends from my theatre days who are also like family to me. This orphan is rocking life now!

I was trashed by the end of the day yesterday. The two-hours with my fellow stutterers wore me out as talking is so demanding. And the emotional exhaustion I felt upon learning I have a brother and sister had me flat on my back on my sofa. 

I did no wood toting and stacking yesterday. I was too busy. I will do some today as the day has dawned bright and sunny. But I did get some tidying done in the backyard that is now looking rather wonderful. I’m getting more Primulas today to bring more Spring colour to a yard that is looking rather magnificent to my eyes I have to say.  I’m seriously looking forward to socializing with neighbours on my deck as soon as the weather warms a little more. Come Sunday, Daylight Savings starts, one of my favourite days of the year, and a week after that: Spring!

NEWS FLASH: I’ve just heard from Lee, who addresses me, as does Paul Robertson, another nephew, as Uncle Chris. I am weeping. Lee has been as welcoming and warm as Tara (his ex) and cousin Paul. He has given me contact information to my half-brother, another Paul—Paul Gordon. I’m in! I will be soon in touch with a brother.

Of course, I had a mild seizure when I read Lee’s email, and many tears. God is my guardian angel.

My Father: Douglas Haig Gordon

Saturday was a remarkable day!

First of all, this email from Paul Robertson who Ancestry.com suggested might be a first cousin, capped a series of emails back and forth between us:

OMG Chris, you have to be my dad’s half-brother for sure... I think I now know who your father was: Douglas Haig Gordon... Has to be... We should meet somehow; my mother is beside herself... any chance of getting a picture of you?

Thank you for replying back and forth... this Ancestry been the best gift I have ever received.
Cheers uncle, Paul

I called Leslie, researcher extraordinaire who’s spent all day for the past week seeking out data from her many resources and using her incredible sleuthing skills and read it to her.

“Yes,” she said, Douglas Haig Gordon (DHG) is your father,” and she explained how two people’s names on the list of possible relatives that Ancestry provided to us in response to the posting of my DNA on their site had served as reference points allowing her to be certain of my paternity.

Then she told me about a sister, unnamed, who lived only thirteen days and died in 1938, and a brother, Allan Douglas Gordon, born in 1940, and deceased in the 1970s. They were the children of my father’s first marriage to a woman named Joyce. They divorce in 1942. I was born in 1947 to Françoise and after that, DHG marries a woman names Pearl and has two more children, Paul and heather, about whom, so far, Leslie knows nothing. But we have more researching to go through Paul.

I never thought I’d know about either of my parents, now I know who both of them are and every time Paul writes and calls me Uncle Chris, I swoon. I can hardly wait to see if we can track down half-siblings Paul and Heather.

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It was glorious and sunny all morning yesterday, and so I got my courtyard fountain going, took Sheba for a lovely walk and bound the hair from her grooming on Thursday into light netting with large holes in it to a plank by my bird feeders so that the little lovelies could use it in their nests. Then I got down to toting and stacking the last two cords of wood.

As clouds rolled in, I kept at it. I had not a care in the world because I had my tarpaulins ready to cover the wood and I was more than willing to stop and get back into reading Bill Bulford’s memoire, Dirt. It’s a fabulous book that Marsha has given me, about his five-year residency in France doing apprenticeships in various French bakeries and restaurants. I could not love reading more than I am reading this book.

The weather over the next while looks decent, so I have lots of time for wood stacking. Hence, I’m taking it easy and taking breaks to do small chores in the gardens because it’s positively thrilling to see Pinecone Park coming back to life after our mild Winter. My plants are roaring back into life.

I bought some Helleborus and Primula plants at the nursery and put them into planters on my deck and did fifteen loads of wood. I could have done more loads, but I chose to stop after fifteen and have a spa and do some reading before heading off to Jay’s for dinner with him, Eoin and François. I also video chatted with Dwight and Steve about Leslie’s research. They’ve been at my side for decades and all through the reunion with Françoise, my birth mother, when the government reunited me with her.

Dinner was delicious and being with my three friends was glorious. It felt so good to be with friends in Jay’s spectacular grand room by a roaring fire—it felt so normal and it was wonderful to be together as though Covid didn’t exist.

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Today I Zoom with my stuttering group in the morning and again with theatre friends in the afternoon. I’ll read Dirt and stack wood, weather permitting. This morning, it’s very warm and raining, but it’s predicted to be sunny in the afternoon and so that’s when I will tote and stack. Or not. 

Finding Out About My Father

What a day was Friday. 

It started with a dog walk with friends that passed quickly as we had so much fun talking about island life and enjoying the warmth of the day. I came home and dove into Dirt by Bill Bulford, a New Yorker writer, gifted to me by my friend, Marsha. I got comfy cozy on the chaise longue, with Sheba by my side, and loved the book immediately.

Then, at 12:40, the power went out—not that it affected my reading or warmth at all, so I kept reading, unflustered by the first storm and outage of Winter. An hour later, I needed to know about the failure, so I went out and started my generator and hooked up extension cords to the fridge, computer and router. I felt fabulous about the ease with which I handle outages now. 

I have plenty of gas in four containers to keep the generator fed, many extension cords, including one that takes three cords into it making it easy for me to hook up several devices to it, and I have all my devices plugged into power bars, making everything easy peasy for me to get my essentials working in seconds. I felt very good about how nonplussed I am over power failures, thanks to my past experiences and learning. I’ve come a long way since moving here.

It was a major failure. Fifty-three hundred homes affected on Gabriola and Vancouver Island. And Hydo makes it easy for customers to follow their progress in restoring service. It was a massive failure on a brilliantly sunny but windy day.  

At around 1:40, my Internet service went down and, with that service out, my access to Hydro’s website and email was gone, so I could not find out the likely time service would be restored by Hydro, or to call Shaw. I did not know the number to call and could not access their site to see if our Internet outage was reported. And with Shaw down: No television. No cable, no Netflix, so I went to my collection of DVDs and pulled out Lunch With Mussolini to watch in the evening.

Late in the afternoon, I went out to walk Sheba. We went to Rollo Park. The streets were covered in forest fall, sirens were going off everywhere and generators were throbbing in every neighbourhood. 

At about 7:45 pm, the power and Internet came on. A lot of emails came through including one from Leslie that was absolutely astounding to read.

I’m seventy-three years old. The central theme of my entire long life has been that of abandonment by my birth mother and my abusive adoption and that story is the reason for my seizures and poor speech. I have never escaped its fury and it also accounts for what may be the seminal experience of my life: Finding my birth mother and learning that she was an actor and French Canadian.

But that birth mother let me down. She told me and her friends lies about my father and her history. She told me one story of who my father was, recanted it, told me another and that my father was also French Canadian. She also told me that who he was, was none of my business and she refused to tell me his name.

This past Christmas, my friend Leslie, who played a big part in my reunion with my birth mother, gave me a DNA kit to find out about my lineage. Last week I got the results and sent them to Leslie with my thanks, again, for her present. As I wrote here: It said that I was 37% Scottish, 37% French and 24% Irish (plus 2% other). 

Well … in my emails late yesterday I got one about an ancestral link to a first cousin named Paul Robertson and I sent it to Les. She replied that she knew all about him and many others of my birth father’s family. She is a serious researcher. Researching was her job for thirty-five years in television; she’s now a pro with Ancestry.com and has spent the past week studying the links of people with whom I share considerable DNA. She now knows a lot about the family of my birth father—perhaps, even, who my father might be. It now seems certain, he’s Scottish.

A woman I visited at the orphanage I lived in for my first few years, used the term “custodially adopted” to refer to the nature of my adoption when I went to do some research about my past at age twenty-five. She said that some Catholic families helped the orphanage deal with the overpopulation of post-war orphans by agreeing to take a child they actually didn’t want. They did so out of devotion to their faith, not the child, and that they sometimes failed to bond with their adoptee. That was certainly the case with me.

She understood why I felt like an orphan even though I had parents—especially since my mother started living in hospitals part and then full time when I was nine and my father took up with her nurse and was very rarely at home. Can you imagine how I feel, so late in life, finding out about my birth father and/or his family?

I never thought I’d find my birth mother, but I did. When she refused to name my father, I gave that cause up for lost. But DNA analysis has come to my rescue. I am truly mind blown. Sometime soon, Leslie is going to tell me all she knows. The storm and Leslie’s incredible gift of the test and her research made yesterday a day never to forget. There’s more to come…. 

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Today has dawned clear. I fetched my morning wood under a sky full of twinkling stars, so today will likely be about schlepping wood before going to Jay’s for dinner with Eoin and Franois.

"Politicians and diapers should be changed
often and for the same reason." 
~ Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)