First Sight

It was late December 1981, at LAX.

My sister Cecilia just emerged from the disembarking tunnel. It was the first time I'd ever seen her in the flesh. She has the dark hair, but we both have the curls.

Four months earlier, I'd found her mother Irene, my birth mother, in Santa Ana, California, some ten miles from my home in Huntington Beach.  She was in a convalescent home home getting over something I can't remember. She told me I had a sister.  Cecilia was her name. I'd never had a sister. I was the only girl in a family with two brothers.

I remember smiling at the thought that my original name almost rhymed with my sister's. Priscilla and Cecilia. And so continued my journey.

I would go on to find meet members of my birth mother's family. The feeling of no longer being alone, dropped from the sky, didn't really evaporate, but it eased significantly.

I cannot express how ground-rattling it was for me to discover that there really were others just like me. My gene code.

You see, I was a liberal person raised in a conservative home. To fend for myself, I hung out with other liberal people because we tended to value similar things.

When I found my birth family, I discovered a whole clan of liberal people. It was like I'd found the nest I'd fallen out of.

I would go on to find my birth father's family. I've only met my brothers, because they thought it best the rest of their family not know what a scamp their very-married dad had been by siring several children out of wedlock.

Alas. The secrets.

Unraveling the secrets is a necessary part of the journey.