Family Surprises

Remember my uncle who was in the hospital back in September? Well, he's traveling to Anchorage tomorrow for a check-up/follow-up with some doctors up there. He's fine, just being careful.

Anyway, he's my mom's older brother. My mom also had a younger brother. I never really knew him because I was a baby when he was hit by a car and killed in Oregon. I've heard stories, though, about how he'd spend his lunch hours not eating but playing with me when he was home for Summer breaks. I've been told that on the day of his funeral, I quietly cried at the exact time he would normally walk through my door which also happened to be the time the funeral started. I was a baby so I don't know...but that's what I've been told.

So anyway, I had this other uncle I didn't get the chance to know. Apparently, nobody in the family knew him as well as they thought. A couple months ago, a girl who grew up here in our village met a man in Anchorage through work. He found out where she was from somehow and asked her if she knew of a certain family from here. She said she'd look into it. She went home and called her mother who is also from here but lives in Bethel. She called my uncle. She told him there was a man looking for our family and asked him what she should do about it. Uncle told her to go ahead and give his contact information to him and he'd see what he had to say.

Turns out that my uncle had a girlfriend while in Oregon. Before his last Summer home, he broke up with her and got back together with a former girlfriend he ended up proposing to. When the girl found out she was pregnant and that my uncle was engaged to another, she decided to put the baby up for adoption.

He was adopted by a doctor in Anchorage. He's a doctor now, too. He's 37 years old and tried to contact his birth mother but she would not respond. She has made it clear that she doesn't want any contact with him whatsoever.

My uncle leaves tomorrow. While he's up there, he's going to meet a nephew (my cousin) that he never knew he had. If this man is really who he says he is, I hope that he finds his way down here. I've only seen pictures of his father. It would be so neat to be able to meet his son.