So I’m in Ann Arbor.

Today my mom and I both met her biological half-brother, his wife their two kids (I guess they’re my half-cousins) for the first time. I’d only just heard of them—also for the first time—a little under a year ago. Apparently my mom had only learned of her biological little brother herself not too long before that, though she hadn’t gotten around to telling her own family about it for an unusually long while, when I happened to casually ask her about a couple photos my Grandma included in a letter.

Now, my Grandma has this tendency to collect and/or adopt things: dolls; miniatures; garden plants; cats; raccoons, yes, raccoons; other people’s families, etc. I figured these photos of my would-be half-uncle and his kids were just another one of these sorts of things, but in reality it was something more like the other way around–sort of; it’s a strange story, one in which my Grandma keeps an incredibly difficult and no-doubt painful secret from her family and closest friends for over four decades. Frankly, it’s amazing my mom didn’t know about any of this until just recently, but then she couldn’t have been much more than ten years old when this particular story took place.

In fact, my mom only mentioned we were going to meet these people last evening after dinner, when she said I wouldn’t be able to sleep in for too long. Needless to say, it was an unusual experience.

I think it was the long eyelashes that got me. I’m looking at these hyperactive eight and five year-old kids bouncing up and down, hanging on their parents, drawing ninja turtles with crayons, and I’m wondering, “just how many genes do we share?” They have no clue what I’m thinking or what that even means or probably even who I am, and in the grand scheme of things perhaps it doesn’t matter all that much. As far as personalities and world views go, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that we were literally and figuratively coming from different places—which ironically made them align more closely with my Grandma politically than my mom and I. I guess I’ve tended to assume that in the nature/nurture debate as it pertains to raising children, “nurture” plays the lead role. It might follow then that this meeting had little significance beyond distant groups of people simply re-discovering lost (or unknown) connections with one other, I guess, simply for the sake of a kind of “hey how about that?” curiosity. But not surprisingly that doesn’t feel right. As I’ve said, my Grandma likes to passively assimilate other families into her own, but it was pretty weird hearing this stranger call her “mom,” and probably more so for my own mother.

My mom seemed uncomfortable and kind of weirded out the whole time they were there, and when my Grandma suggested that we take a group picture, I found myself standing behind my Grandma and my mom, half-filling the small but noticeable gap my mom seemed to keep between them. Granted, I was also the tallest one in the photo—a relatively rare opportunity for me—but the unspoken whiff of awkwardness reminded me of the last “professional portrait” taken of my immediate nuclear family at my aunt’s (dad’s side) wedding, a couple years after my folks had gotten separated.

The photographer was taking shots of the individual family units in attendance, as well as the liberty of posing these families however he saw fit. For some reason, he decided our ideal pose involved my mom sitting on my dad’s lap. Unable to get a decent shot through the haze of uneasiness, the artist tried to tease the shot out of us, innocently joking, “Aw, c’mon. Pretend like you like her.” I never saw the shot but I know I, for one, was wearing a grimace. I haven’t heard anyone speak of it again.

I think they (my parents) are still separated and not technically or I guess “legally” divorced, but as strange as it probably sounds it really doesn’t matter that much. I took their separation pretty hard at the time, and for the eight years since then it’s kind of been “don’t ask don’t tell” or whatever. My junior year of high school I got pretty pissed when I learned my dad was seeing someone else, and equally upset that my mom and sisters more or less went out of their way not to say anything about it to me. I don’t know if my mom’s ever tried dating since then—it wouldn’t surprise me if she has once or twice, but it seems like that not something she’s interested in. But the don’t ask don’t tell has kind of extended into that territory, and I’ve more or less reciprocated the policy in regard to my love life, or lack thereof; it’s easy not to ask when there’s not much to tell.

I should state, for the record, that my parent get along very well despite not living together–much better than some other parents I’ve seen who stick it out for the wrong reasons. We have meals as a family three or more times a week, hang out and watch movies, do yard work sometimes—I dunno, it’s a lot more functional than it seems on the surface. Still, it makes me sad to think of them both living alone in two years after my youngest sister graduates. Who knows how they’ll change their lives after that, jointly or as individuals? Maybe my mom will sell the house and go live in a commune.

I guess it’s just one of those things you can choose to do in life, get through a certain period, and eventually more or less forget about, though nothing ever goes away entirely—which for better or worse, as I’m told, gives character to our lives and the people we meet in them. But I’ll never be able to ask my Grandma how she carried to term, gave birth to, and put her son up for adoption, all in secret; I can’t even begin to imagine it and will never be able to.

Another digression: I’m never more appreciative that my mom raised me to eat healthily than when I’m at my Grandma’s. Earlier today, my Grandma declared that she and her current husband (her third, a sweet man but one who doesn’t think twice about downing a couple chocolate shakes after surviving multiple heart-attacks and subsequent bypass surgeries and good lord I really wish I weren’t exaggerating here) were down to eating eggs sometimes as infrequently as only three times a week! They took us to lunch at the Ann Arbor “Big Boy,” and when my mom was away filling her buffet plate with watermelon and pineapple, my Grandma leaned over and asked me what I thought about all this as I waited for the sandwich I’d ordered. “Eggs are really good for you, you know,” she asserted. I love my Grandma, but like eggs, dining with her is more healthy in smaller, perhaps less frequent doses.

After they left, my mom mumbled something about needing to get some exercise and fresh air, y’know, to burn off the excess calories my Grandma always seems bent on stuffing us with. My mom declared she was going to take a walk in the kind of way that seemed to beg me to join her, so of course I did. After walking a few blocks in silence, I asked her was everything alright? She seemed to sniffle (allergies, you know) and asked “why?” in a tone of almost-pure surprise, which I’m not very good at authenticating or taking at face value. I asked her was she sure? “No, really, nothing’s wrong,” and she changed the subject. Unlike my dad, she doesn’t usually very much about her childhood, her family, or her biological father who died when she was ten. This is just another example of how little I seem to know about my mom’s side of the family, and another instance of how absurdly strange life can be.