(oh! I'm also grateful that blogger seems to be working again, because last night i seriously tried to reload it for over an hour before giving up and just not blogging)
anyway.
reunions.
Today my brother and I had a reunion with someone we had not seen in over 11 years. My biological father's ex-wife.
I suppose that statement warrants a little back story.
When I was five, my biological father re-married a woman named Mickey. and she proceeded to be my step-mother for the next 8 years or so. from the time i was in kindergarden until my freshman year in high school. she was a huge part of my life for all of my formative years and she's really the only reason I ever had much of a relationship with my biological father in the first place. heck, half of the time i went to visit him, it just ended up being the two of us hanging out anyway. and on more than one occasion it was more like my brother and i went to visit Mickey because my biological father wasn't around anyway. working or something.
and then they got divorced. and I'll go ahead and say it was more than a little messy. and suddenly this woman who had spent the better part of a decade being a second mom to Jordan (brother) and I was no longer apart of our life anymore. and not only did we lose her, but her parents, and her niece and nephew, and her cousins. people that my brother and i had grown up with and considered family. poof! gone. thanks for playing. it was fun, but now it's over.
and as we all know...time goes on.
and as time went on and social media began to take over...i began to wonder. where was Mickey? was she okay? did she miss us? On facebook my brother and i had actually managed to friend some of the kids that we grew up with and eventually Mickey's mom friended us too. and at that point I had to ask her..."do you know how I can get in touch with Mickey?" and so she ended up helping me get in touch with her. actually, unbeknownst to me, my brother was actually already in touch with her, but he hadn't said anything to me in case it wasn't something i wanted to pursue. but we all managed to get in touch again and I tried to catch her up on everything that had happened in my life over the years through various emails.
that was back in 2009.
and we kept talking about the idea of getting together, but life just happens you know? around that time Georgiana was just a baby, and Brey not much more than that. The Marsh and I were getting ready to try and buy a house. We found out Bob had pulmonary fibrosis. we moved into said house. the babes keep life so busy and there were trips to plan and places to go. I was training all last summer for my half marathon. and then we found out Bob had cancer.
life's been crazy, right?
finally though, we managed to get together.
this morning Mickey drove up from her house a couple hours away and met my brother and i to get some breakfast at the local diner. and sure, i was nervous. and so was my brother. i mean, this was someone we hadn't seen in 11 years. that's bound to be a little awkward, right? well, it actually really wasn't. she talked to us a bit about the divorce and how the whole thing went down. and she got a good laugh when we told her some of the silly/horrible stories about life since her. honestly, if felt like we hadn't seen her in a couple months rather than 11 years. talking to her was so much like talking to her growing up. she's fundamentally the same person. and that was just an amazing thing to discover.
so today I am grateful that we finally all managed to get together.
I'm grateful that we all took a chance and weren't too scared instead to just say "well it's been too long, there is no point in seeing each other now"
and I'm grateful that there is now this potential to have a relationship with someone who meant so much to me once upon a time and who still does.
it's a thing to be grateful for indeed.
Thanks for reading!
Lana
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