Fireup2025 said:
I wish you the best of luck...Jen, an adoptee who "found" her biological people as an adult - was very important to me - and all turned out well
thank you. and thanx for sharing that.
Laurence said:
and the cynical part of me thinks he may just be showing up now to wheedle his way into an inheritance.
i'm not so sure that's all that cynical. but between this and your other inheritance post i suspect it might be more oedipal.
After a few contacts, I just conlcuded we are strangers. I will respond to his emails, and keep the peace for my parents' sake, because they very much feel their prodigal son has returned. Everyone is hoping I'll get us through this rocky ride since I'm always the peacemaker etc. but I just don't want to play.
you might not want to write him off so fast. try not to just think of how he made you feel in the past, or even how he might make you feel now. try to consider how you might feel in the future, after your parents have passed on. it might be nice to have a brother in the world with you, and to have an uncle in life for your children.
I think you have multiple levels of emotions for your father like I do for my brother. Part angry, part abandonment wanting redemption. I guess I've come to a similar conclusion to others on this thread. Family is those who earned it. Both my step-parents worked very earnestly to be good parents, and I thank them every chance I get. Blood doesn't mean a whole lot to me by itself.
i think this is true in part. and certainly i consider my stepfather to be my family. it was interesting for me to see him appear in so many of my dreams at night, while mom was dying and after she died. even 13 years after burying my stepfather, he was foremost in my mind and those dreams helped me understand much and helped me deal with my ordeal. that man was always there for me. he really was a great guy.
Just be careful. If you are ready to make contact whatever the response, and you want to, do it. But don't be more inclined to bail him out financially than you would any other relative. Keep shields up! Man, I'll stop typing now, I'm getting angry just thinking about this guy.
i doubt dad would need my help. really just running a worst case possibility here. he hasn't sought my help ever. hell, he hasn't even sought me out just to say hi. as to helping other relatives, actually i'm already prepared to help set up a cousins' commune later in life. one option in consideration is building a compound in some third world country so that we can be there for each other in our older age. for me, blood is thicker than money.
Joss said:
You are fifty now and, since college, there has been a thirty year gap in his contact with you. The converse of this is that here has been a thirty year gap in your contact with him too. You became an adult about then and have been since then. Contact, or the lack of it, between adults, is a two way street. He doesn't call. You don't call. Now it's thirty years later.
as i originally said, i kept in periodic contact up until 13 years ago. whenever i was in jersey i stopped in to say hi. still, he never initiated any contact with me, never, not once. when i was about in early 20s, on vacation in jersey where many of my relatives and friends still lived, before calling dad i called my grandmother (his mother who also never not once called me). i asked her: "what's wrong with dad; how come he never calls me?" she could be kind of scarey. she just got angry with me and said in such a mean voice: "just call your father." i'll never forget how that sounded to me. well i did call my father as i was going to anyway. and i continued trying to keep in contact for many years after that.
then 13 years ago when i was in jersey burying the ol'man, i stopped in to see dad like i normally do when i'm in town. only this time he told me he had been to florida, looking for a place to live in retirement. it wasn't enough that he never called me from jersey, but he had been here and didn't bother to call. i was so hurt. anyway, i had not been to jersey again until 5 years ago but i was taking care of my alzheimer's mom and only had strength to deal with that. then 3 or 4 years ago, when my nephew was getting barmitzva'd, i thought it would be nice if i could get my father to meet his grandchildren for the first time in his life. (he and my brother hadn't spoken since my brother was 18.) but dad was no where to be found. someone else had his old telephone number. he never bothered even to say goodbye.
Yet, though there is hardly a day goes by that I don't think of them, I still don't call all that much. I'll look at the phone and stop. The year's ago divorce and new stepdad put me on the outside, psycologically. Sounds strange, but I just hesitate to be an interruption...My point is that, as a dad, I can see how easily one comes to feel like he's looking at the "new family" from the outside and is not just unnecessary but irrelevent.
ya, i think that is all at work there. but ya know what, the guy's got 29 or 30 years more life experience than me. so he just needs to just get over it.
You maybe own a piece of that thirty years too.
sorry, no, i did more than my part of this dance. but as to you, i'm just going to say something my grandmother should have said to her son "just call your children."
