Memoir 4: “…to Me, You Always Will Be.”

"...to me, you always will be."

            Brenda. That is her name. She was born in the Bay Area of California in 1967. Dad was twenty years old. His on-again, off-again girlfriend Nancy gave birth to Brenda sometime in the middle of that year. Nancy never told Dad she was pregnant with his child, nor did she want to.

When Nancy learned she was pregnant, she was in love with another man named Alan. Nancy worried Alan would leave her if he knew the baby wasn’t his. After a few months of pregnancy with Brenda, Nancy told Alan she was having his baby. The details between Brenda’s birth in 1967 and the announcement that I had an older sister in November of 1991 was unknown to me, with one exception: ten months earlier, Alan died. This hardship led to Nancy calling Dad with the news of Brenda’s existence.

As I learned the background leading to Nancy's revelation, I had internal questions about Alan: What was he like as a dad? Was he a good husband? At any point, did he suspect Brenda wasn't his daughter? I think about these things all these years later; I think of them because Alan was younger than I am when he died. I don’t precisely know what he died from, but I do know that it was a lengthy illness.

I know that the people he loved said goodbye to him. Nancy never told Alan that Brenda wasn’t his biological daughter. He died thinking that the young woman at his bedside, the one he raised, was his biological daughter. I am comforted by that. Brenda educated me about these things during two lengthy phone calls within days of learning about her. As she shared her story, I enlightened her about our Dad.

Due to Alan’s death, Brenda’s grief was deep and painful. Nancy tried to comfort her daughter with the news that she had a biological father. I can’t comprehend how Brenda received that: the father she thought was hers was not, and the father that was hers did not know who she was. I don’t know what Nancy expected from Dad, or Brenda, or Mom, for that matter. In the beginning, I’m sure we all said things that sounded unintentionally insensitive. Reflecting, we were all doing our best to understand and learn. No maps guided us around the complex valleys and forests of emotions we were navigating. Our steps to the peak of understanding were precarious.

Along the way, I feared my place in the world I knew, as I understood Brenda had the same anxiety. We were experiencing this ambiguity from different perspectives. Yet, as curious as I was about her standpoint, it wasn’t enough to distract me from my fears. In our household, I was the older brother, the example, the leader of my two younger brothers. They looked to me for guidance, mentoring, and protection; this was an important responsibility, a call to action, a mantle of honor. I didn't know what that meant anymore. I intended to fully embrace Brenda as a sibling, as I hoped Sam and Will would, but I felt anxious about becoming lost and forgotten.

I continued to go to work at the gas station mini-mart with tumbling thoughts rolling around my head. I missed a few nights calling Julie due to my phone calls with Brenda. When I finally did call my cousin Julie, I unfolded the layers of our new familial complexity in long, rambling sentences, only pausing to take deep breaths. I silenced myself long enough for Julie to respond. She quietly said, "It's a lot."

“I know,” I responded, feeling guilty for unloading this drama onto my patient cousin.

It was quiet on the phone. I broke the silence, “Say something. I feel scared right now.”

"I guess," Julie’s voice wavered a bit, "I guess I always thought of myself as your big sister."

I could feel a bit of myself leave my chest. "Julie, to me, you always will be."