No one expected a global pandemic. But for me, that was only the second biggest surprise to happen in 2020.
I found out I had another sister.
The year had started amazingly for me. I spent a week in Europe in January, where it was unseasonably warm, visiting London and Oslo and speaking at a conference in Helsinki. The day after speaking at the conference, I went to the Temppeliaukio (Rock) Church in the center of Helsinki and walked in on an English-language mass. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for what had been one of my most life-changing experiences, a gratitude I would carry throughout all of 2020 through its twists. On my birthday in late February I played an open mic in the city near my house. Friends, relatives, co-workers and fellow musicians showed up. This was the 2020 I had expected. And then covid19 arrived. The quarantine. Sicknesses. The isolation from family and friends. And so went 2020. So much changed. But this was not the biggest surprise for me in 2020.
I’d gotten into the hobby of genealogy ten years ago with my mom and with my dad’s grandmother. At the time, since my father’s parents were both still alive, I collected photos and stories and memorialized them. It was a great way to connect. With my mom, we helped answer some of the questions of her father’s adoption. As an only child, my mother had no close family left other than her children, but we were able to reconnect with cousins and second cousins through some extensive research. In recent years, we had not done as much genealogy, since we had already made so much progress and answered so many questions.
My mother’s grandmother’s photo collection is stored at my house and I’ve digitized many of the photos on genealogy/family websites. From time to time, I received an inquiry with questions about my research and helped distant cousins or researchers with answers. But it was a message I received on March 13, 2020 that set the whole story in motion. March 13, Friday the 13th, for many people that was “the last normal day”. It was my kids’ and wife’s final day in school of the year. That week was the final week I’d work in my office. When I came into the office months later I walked by a co-worker’s desk where her wooden desk calendar still said “March 13”, as if frozen in time.
To be honest, I didn’t answer the message on March 13. My sister would have to wait another day. We’d find out from her later that she’d been searching for her father for over 20 years. Since his name was not on her birth certificate and her birth mother, Gloria, had died many years before, there was no way for my sister to find my dad. A DNA test was really the only hope left, that someone would match. Years ago she’d posted a DNA result on a DNA forum that I’d also posted on. I kept my contact info on that site private. All my sister could see was that she had a “very close match”. She knew someone was out there.
And so on March 14, the day “after”, I finally got around to answering the message. Thinking it was just a regular inquiry on some distant relative from the 1800s (as it typically was), I was in no rush to answer and actually answered from my cell phone while on a hiking trail near my house, a trail with very poor cell service.
Her name was Cathy and she was from central Maine. She sent me a message on facebook. We had no mutual friends.
“Which family name was it?” I messaged her after we exchanged pleasantries. I expected “Reed” or “Teel” or one of my mother’s well researched lines.
“King,” she answered. I hadn’t been asked much about that line. It’s my father’s last name and my last name. It’s a small branch of Kings usually from the same small town in Connecticut.
I asked more questions and asked her, “How closely are we related?”
“Siblings” she said.
I figured it was the curse of being Jeff King. I’m not the late former UConn basketball player or the iditarod dog sled champ. I’m just some dude who wrote a book a few years back and lives a pretty unassuming life in Connecticut.
But then she said there was a DNA match on Ancestry.com. Now unfortunately, Ancestry.com did not load very well on my phone and I was still on the hiking trail with limited phone reception. But I also knew from the other names she was listing from the DNA results (my aunt, my father), that I really needed to check this for myself - however the site would not load.
You know that first person you tell everything? It’s my mom. And this was no different. Fortunately she was home and answered and I told her what I’d heard.
“You do have another sister,” my mom told me.
She explained that my father’s girlfriend from his first college had gotten pregnant. My father had offered to marry her but she said no. The child was given up for adoption and that was all my mother or father knew.
My new sister, Cathy, had gotten her DNA results that Wednesday. She sent messages on ancestry.com to my dad, me and my aunt but none of us had logged in and read them. My ancestry.com name is the same as my instagram username so she’d sent me a message on instagram. But since I had no idea how to message on Instagram, I didn’t respond there either. Somehow she was able to find a photo that I’d cross posted on Instagram and Facebook and sent me a message there.
Our paths could have crossed many times before in life and we’d never known in. She’d been through Connecticut many times for business deliveries. I’d been to Maine on vacation with my wife a handful of times. We both saw Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway, Wednesday night shows, exactly a week apart. She’d always wondered where her love of music and theater came from since her adoptive parents weren’t as into it.
I called my wife who urged me to call my father right away and I told Cathy I would get back to her with information about our father. Once I returned home I called my father and we talked for five minutes before I finally brought up the conversation with Cathy. He confirmed that it was true. I wondered if he’d ever planned to meet Cathy and how he’d explain it to me or my sister or half brother and sister if he did. I called my sister Jen with her boyfriend on the line and explained everything. She was probably more surprised than me, at least initially.
For me, I was now finding out about a sister for the first time. I’d never expected it. The only time I had ever given it thought was when Cathy first contacted me. But I thought about how this was something that Cathy and my father had probably been thinking about for most of their lives. I can’t imagine the emotions they went through. I know if I was hiding or searching for something like this in my life, it would consume so much of every day in my head. They talked the next day and both told me it was a “very nice conversation”. Cathy met her other siblings through messaging and phone calls and we all looked forward to meeting.
Back to the pandemic again. My father is in Florida. My sister in Arizona. Both were in places that became virus hotspots. My half brother was planning a wedding. My half sister in Massachusetts was scrambling to take care of three young kids with her and her husband both working full time. We couldn’t meet right away. It wasn’t, in fact, until August that we’d all meet. Jen returned from Arizona and quarantined for two weeks. Ryan moved his wedding up for a small family service. My dad and stepmom spent a month-plus in Massachusetts and Connecticut visiting family. My father visited Cathy first, making a couple of trips to Kittery, Maine. A very pleasant meeting, photos with genuine smiles. It made me happy to see. Then, the following week, all five of my siblings were in a room together for the first time.
My half-sister hosted us at her house in Massachusetts. Cathy arrived first and one-by-one the other siblings arrived. It was also a small enough gathering that we could all spend time talking amongst each other. It was completely improbable and natural at the same time, despite how strange and unexpected the entire thing would have seemed, it was a beautiful day. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t the “first-born”, something I’d always prided myself on and thought it explained much of my personality. Cathy helped me fidget my camera to get it working (the first real common sibling-type interaction we had) and my wife took a bunch of photos of the five of us, which we also sent to my father who had returned to Florida. Weeks later, Cathy would send us all a copy of the photo with a note which was signed “Your sister, Cathy”. While it took us so many years to finally be connected, I’m so happy for all the time we can spend catching up together and making new memories as brothers and sisters.
2020 has been a memorable year, defined by some really sad and awful events, not just around the world and the country, but personally as well. I’ve had close family and friends get very sick. I’ve seen the results of isolation on my family. We all had major upheavals with our jobs and school. But it also had some memorable days, speaking at an international conference, one of the best birthdays ever, a whirlwind trip through London on the Thames River, my brother’s wedding day. However, the most memorable day will be the days that I found out I had another sister and the day that my four siblings and I all got together for the first time. It doesn’t take much effort to have gratitude for that.
I used to think the worst thing about life was that it was chronological, starting life without wisdom but full of potential and then having all the wisdom you’ll ever have and no need for it when you end - always progressing that way rather than fluctuating back and forth in a struggle. Time is always moving forward and this includes changes in the important relationships in life. There is always nostalgia for other times and it’s perfectly acceptable to feel that way as long as there is an acceptance that life will always change. It’s the perception of these changes which is optimism or pessimism. And despite what it may seem in the Western view, relationships and family also are moving with time and changing. Rather than look at the time missed with my other sister, not knowing she existed, not having her in childhood, I can reflect on the future going forward. This is just a beginning on a timeline.
