My summers were spent on vacations, in camp, or my least favorite--at home alone. As a true latch-key kid, representing precisely fifty percent of my household, I had to be quite creative when it came to keeping myself occupied.

My parents divorced when I was four, and my mother made sure I knew I was not my fathers only child. Mother informed me of my “half” brother and sister in Houston, somewhere, who were quite a bit older than me. She did not tell me that they had absolutely no idea I existed.

I vowed to someday find my siblings, halves though they be, and during my sixteenth summer, my mother gave me their uncle’s name and phone number during a visit to Houston.

Their uncle, Frank, a flamboyant business owner, was intrigued by my pleas to add to my small family. He promised to give my half-brother, Don my hotel number. With my first step completed, and bursting with new dreams and visions of future holidays split three-ways, I awaited Don’s call.

Don must have been as anxious and intrigued as I, because he phoned that very evening. We spent over two hours chatting about our common link: Dad, and the heretofore unknown circumstances of his entrances and exits into our lives. I listened with amazement and an open mind and discovered my father was something of a monster to his former wife. The children knew nothing of me, and wanted nothing to do with our patriarch.

Unfazed, I quizzed Don about my sister. He told me she was not well thought of by her mother, and was something of the family’s dark horse--marrying during her freshman year of college, and virtually squandering a small fortune left by a great aunt. Keep in mind I was after my prize, a sister, and no amount of family politics would assuage my quest.

As our marathon of memories closed, my brother promised to write, and promised to give my sister, Jane, my phone number. Barely able to stand the next few days away from my home phone, I wrote Don the longest letter of my life, and sent a picture as if he were my new Japanese pen pal. Unbeknownst to me, that would be the last letter from me he would ever accept.

After two days, ten hours, and forty-two minutes, I received my first call from my sister, Mary. Don had apparently known her so little, despite his portrayal to the contrary, he did not even know which of her names she was using (her name was Mary Jane).

Mary and I spoke even longer than I had with Don. Instantly connecting, she confessed problems with her family that she never understood. Apparently, they had always shared a secret disregard for her value as a member in their presence, and did everything to undermine her confidence and connection to the family unit. Reading between the lines, I sensed a deep longing for family, familiarity, and belonging in her voice as she told her solemn tale. She also introduced me to her husband, a wise-cracking, hilarious man whom I instantly adored. Tallying my new family members, I felt three new additions were even more welcome than two.

Mary and I were unbelievably similar in our humor, politics, attitudes, emotions, and as I would later learn, our physical appearances. A meeting was of the utmost priority. I was home schooling, she working from the home. Arrangements would be painless. Something told me as I replaced the phone’s receiver, that Mary was the sister I had been waiting and dreaming for all my life.

The next Wednesday, THE day, I paced about the apartment, setting up a slide projector while simultaneously ambling through my closet to find every photo album and memento possible to prove to Mary she was my sister, and no one else’s. I was terribly excited to show her older photos and slides of our father, as she had stated she was never allowed to see any during her childhood. Her mother, Nona had accused Dad of physical and emotional abuse, and wanted no memories of him in her home. The children had been told very little, and most of it negative about our father and his past. Determined to right this wrong, or at least educate Mary as to our lineage and ethnicity, I mentally rehearsed how I would show her the first picture.

As our doorbell rang I promptly forgot everything I had rehearsed, and traded my thoughts instead for the wonderment of the two figures I could see through the peephole. Mary was tall, strong, and a virtual female doppelganger of our Dad. Her husband, Dan, was equally tall, and the picture of humor. As I opened the door, I was immediately in the arms of my dream-MY SISTER! At last! For an eternity we embraced, and sixteen years of loneliness melted into security, connection, love, and sisterhood. Both in tears, we smiled and exchanged, “Oh my God!” Then, not to be excluded, Dan gave me an equally fulfilling embrace. They embraced my Mother with the same warmth and love, and we all sat down in our living room to catch our breaths.

In tandem, Dan and my Mother exclaimed how much I and Mary looked alike, even down to our deep brown eyes. Mary had a good three inches on me, but our hair and skin were exactly alike, our shoe sizes were the same, our complexions were equally blemished, and our voices were even on the same pitch. For all our feelings of finally meeting as sisters, it must have been equally amazing for Dan and Mom to witness the scene.

“Well,” I began, “I’d like to show you something.”

“Okay,” Mary said, as I turned on the slide projector. As our heads turned to the bright light, a photo of our Dad appeared from his twenties, sitting on a German hill with a bushel of apples he’d placed in the shape of the word, “MOM.”

Mary stared at the photo with what I would learn was disbelief. She later told me it was the first time she had ever seen a picture of Dad, and the first the she had ever realized why her family pushed her away. She looked exactly like him, more so than me. If any of us was his child, she certainly had physical bragging rights to the DNA.

After she recovered, and Dan had finished his, “Wow, Oh my God. Mary you look just like him,” she pulled out pictures of her wedding. She was beautiful, here, mine, family, and wanted us to be as close as humanly possible.

By the end of the day, we felt as if we’d been raised side by side, despite our fourteen year age difference, and as I would later learn, completely opposite mothers. Neither of us wanted her to drive back to Houston that evening, but her job beckoned. We exchanged pictures and made some plans for Christmas. Even though the month was August, we knew we had to see each other as often as possible. Upon discovering her birthday was in October, I promised to take the next leg of the trip and go see her in Houston.

By chance, Mom had been in line for a job offer in Missouri, and decided to take it that very next month. Mary and I were able to meet on her birthday as planned, and despite our disappointment with our new distance, stayed remarkably close during Mom’s year and a half stint out of state.

During this time, Mom suffered a heart attack, and Mary was right by my side reassuring us that I had a home, “just in case.” Mary and Dan even called Mom, “Mom,” and sent her Mother’s day cards. Mom recovered well, but her dislike of northern winters increased. When I was eighteen, she transferred back to Texas.

Mary and I were now allotted even more time together, and we did not waste it. I was set to begin college, and part of my time would be in Houston during my senior year of study. We were already planning to be together most weekends, and Dan vowed to walk me down the aisle when the time came.

While in my Freshman year of college, away from immediate family by four hours, and feeling pressure to succeed, I had my worst bout with longstanding anorexia nervosa. When I returned home for the holidays, Mary, Dan, and Mom were concerned and offered much support. At the time, I was unable to accept it, but our bonds were not lessened. I was the pride of the family, getting into a prestigious health careers program and making a solid path for my future.

Mary was getting her health on track. When she was born, she was diagnosed with an enlarged spleen that needed immediate surgery. She once again had to have excess tissue removed when she was twelve. Finally, at the age of thirty-four, her doctor wanted the spleen out. Mary was thrilled as she described the procedure to me on the phone in my Denton dorm room. She had never been able to fight colds or viruses properly, and was always anemic. These ailments affected her ability to hold down steady work outside the house, and she was just beginning a new career as a traveling restaurant critic. She wanted to be able to devote herself fully to the job without fear of her health holding her back.

The next evening, as I sat watching the movie of the week, the phone rang. I answered. “Mary didn’t make it.” Mom was crying and saying how sorry she was over and over again. Blunted by starvation, I cried, but was mostly numb throughout the funeral and afterward. Even as I stood across from my brother for the first time at the cemetery, my eating disorder kept me from fully realizing what I had lost.

In the years to come, I would recover from anorexia, lose Dan as a brother in law (he confessed his romantic love for me, most likely hoping to have some form of Mary in his life, not knowing how unable to cope with such an invasion I was), and learn just how lonely life could be once again when my Mother also died unexpectedly.

I had a sister. We shared our Daddy’s eyes. Her memory shares my heart. I love you, Mary. Copyright 1997