Our adventures in Maine
One day in 2006 just out of curiosity I Googled the name of my late mother. I wasn't expecting to find anything in particular, but I came up with a listing from some adopted guy looking for his family. It turns out that guy was my lost brother that I never knew existed. Not a half-brother, but a full blooded brother with the exact same parents as me! Gosh, they say you can find anything using Google, but this was ridiculous!
Solving the mystery of this lost sibling would mean unearthing the secrets of decades in a manner that would tear my family apart. Yet in the end it would bring my family together as never before. Now my long lost brother is visiting Massachusetts for the first time. That has meant going to the graves of the parents he hadn't seen since he was a newborn. It meant walking the streets of Springfield's ol' Pine Point and seeing the house in which he might have spent his childhood. It meant spending time meeting relatives that just a short time ago he didn't even know existed.
Part of our getting to know each other was taking a trip up to Maine together and spending some time staying in a house a friend of my late mother's let us use.
My brother (below) really enjoyed the luxurious setting, as did we all!
For a guy on welfare, I don't do half-bad!
Here is my sister Beverly.
Everywhere I go I must check out the local media. Notice that there is an equal number of Boston papers available to Maine papers, which gives you some idea of where most of the tourists come from.
Busses made to look like trollys will take you anywhere you want to go.
Everywhere you go everything has something to do with lobsters. In this restaurant they had this poster on the wall showing all the seafood in its natural state, which was not exactly appetizing.
We even went for a ride on a lobster boat. There were three lobsters captured in the trap!
Goofing on the lobstermania, this hot dog vendor boasts of having "the lobster of hot dogs."
For most of his life, my brother John had no idea what his ethnic background was. Now that he knows that he belongs to a big Irish family, he happily celebrates his ethnic heritage by wearing an Irish Red Sox cap.
When we went to the beach of course I had to ham it up.
The oceanfront real estate, among the most expensive in New England, is developed right up to the very edge of the cliffs.
Beautiful seaside sights are to be seen everywhere.
The sea, the mother of us all, still appears as it did in the dawning and as it always will be.
The brother I found on Google had a wonderful time exploring New England with his brothers and sisters. Tomorrow he must return to Nevada. It is impossible to make up for the lost decades when we did not know of each others existence, but the future can and will be different.
To read the whole lost brother saga click here.
Here is a video Mary Carey from About Amherst made of me last week.
3 comments:
Some of those photos look like Ogunquit. I grew up spending summers there. Back before it became such a tourist trap. Still, it is a beautiful place by the sea.
The lobster of hot dogs is a great expression. I bet whoever came up with it was (justly) proud of him- or herself. Great photos.
I LOVE Maine; Perkins Cove is beautiful.
Your "lost brother" story kept me glued to it, to the very end.
I am about the same age as your Mom would have been; my husband knew your Dad quite well. He has a lot of respect for him.
You are so right about the times. I knew a family whose 17 year old daughter got pregnant. The girl was sent away, and the mother wore clothing to appear as if she was gaining weight. When the baby was born, everyone was led to believe that it was the mother's child! She raised it as if it WAS her own child. Imagine the consequences of that "arrangement". I've heard of that happening to others.
My own sister had a baby out of wedlock after she was divorced. Out of shame and because she knew what the affect would be on our family, she hid herself away from the family until she gave birth and placed her daughter for adoption. She had two young children at the time. No one in the family ever knew of that. Just before she died, she told me. How sad to think of her going through that on her own and giving up her daughter. After her death, my neices found their half-sister.
Those were different times, indeed. What happened to your Mom and Dad happened to many other young couples during those years, I'm sure.
Great storytelling!
I hope your brother will beat the odds!
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