When the 'sleeping dogs' grow restless

Unsplash.com: Michael Mroczek

When you grow up knowing your mother's partner, your air-quotes dad, isn't actually your father,

It's kind of like being adopted.

But not really.

Because growing up with your mother and siblings

Is not like being adopted.

When you finally meet the paternal side of your DNA, at age 14,

It's like a birth parent reunion.

Except, you've known who he was all along.

You went to school with your cousins.

And you knew it.

And they knew it.

When trauma enters that newfound parent-child relationship,

It's like death of a family.

Especially when the book finally closes shut for decades on that brief chapter.

Except, when social media allows you to look them up, see pictures of your then-toddler brothers all grown up and pushing 30,

You know.

It's not really like they're dead.

They are quite alive.

Without you.

Are you dead to them?

Do they remember?

Wondering what half of your medical history is can be,

Like being adopted.

So much unknown.

But you know.

Exactly how to reach them,

Should you have the desire.

But that's the question,

Do you desire to know and be known,

More than you are comforted by the insulating comfort distance affords?

Is the wondering insufferable to the point you must act?

Or is the bliss of ignorance prized enough that these passing fancies of curiosity will be sated with a glimpse of your child's bone structure staring back at you through a screen?

Almost 25 years ago, I met them.

Nearly 17 years ago, the book of our relationship closed, both covers gradually moving a mutual direction toward the closure.

And yet, a niggling curiosity will awaken.

I don't always know why, but sometimes it isn't very easy to let the sleeping dogs lie.