3168. Family stories © Bruce Goodman 7 April 2025

I’m not at all surprised I’m a mess. It’s been a frightful week. I was meant to celebrate my twenty-second birthday. Instead my mother called me to her house – I thought for a present – and told me that Aunt Claudia, her much younger sister, was in fact my half-sister. When she was merely thirteen my mother had given birth to Aunt Claudia. Aunt Claudia is now thirty-six and I always thought she was my mother’s sister. In fact, my mother went on, she wasn’t exactly my half-sister, because I had been adopted. What a mess. I feel like I’m living in gar-gar land. I asked if she knew who my biological parents were and she said she knew the mother, but she wasn’t prepared to tell me. I tried to do some research but where does one begin to look? So I went to see Aunt Claudia to tell her that I knew she was not my Aunt, and when I told her and asked her if she knew anything she broke down in tears and told me that my mother had been very kind to take me. Contact Author Back to Index Next Story Previous Story