In 1975 I was ten years old and my family lived just outside Atlanta, Georgia. We moved there when I was a toddler and my younger brother was born there. Our first couple of years were in an apartment but then my parents built a house in Forest Park and that’s where we were in 1975.

I couldn’t say exactly when, but my mom’s sister came to live with us from Pennsylvania that year. She was ten years younger than my mom and her father was grandma’s second husband. There’s another sister who was still in high school at the time and is only six years older than me. Anyway, Aunt D had married and had had a baby just out of high school and was now either separated or divorced. Anyway she was again pregnant when she arrived that year.

I won’t say I remember too much of that time except that we shared a bed and I apparently used to kick her quite a bit in the early days. I’d been the only girl and never had to share sleeping space before so I was a bit greedy with my double bed. :) Otherwise I think my aunt and I got along just fine. I was rather excited about her new baby and looked forward to my cousin being born soon.

It was the middle of summer and we reached the end of June. Aunt D was still there and heavily pregnant. My brother played little league baseball and we used to sit and watch the games in the hot summer sun. I have a very strong memory of sitting there with my aunt one day. In front of us was the baseball field and behind us was farmland, I think…Well something not developed in any major way at the least. Some dark clouds had rolled in and we could see the rain coming from behind us and it was such a neat experience. Any time I see the rain from afar, I think of that first time experiencing it. I don’t actually remember getting wet that day although I’m sure we must have since it was headed towards us.

My grandfather (father’s father) used to fly from Pennsylvania sometimes to visit us. I don’t know how regular this was but he did it a number of times while we lived there. This year, he came down with my aunt and her family. I can’t recall whether they flew down or drove although it seems likely driving was more cost effective. There were three cousins in that family. One, a girl, who was three years older than me. The other two were boys, one a couple years older and one a year younger.

Anyway, this was the first time my cousins had visited. I remember having the best time with my cousin K. That summer “Love Will Keep Us Together” was big and we used to sing along to that and we played it often. We started writing letters after that summer and that song was regularly mentioned. I don’t recall all that we did during the visit but there were some highlights. My brothers had a pup tent set up in the backyard and my cousin and I crawled into the tent one day and she somehow crawled over an open nail which went into her knee or maybe below it. She was taken off to be treated and came back with a bandage on her knee/leg.

One of these days, my aunt went into labor and my parents went away with her to the hospital while my grandfather, aunt and uncle took us to Stone Mountain state park. I still remember us having our photo taken that day. There’s a photo we have with us standing together and my cousin’s bandage is obvious. I know we went on the railroad there but don’t recall much else of the visit. In the evening we went home. At some time, my parents returned from the hospital and told us my aunt’s baby had died at birth. I was very sad about it at the time and often recalled it over the years. I don’t remember much else from that week but I know our visitors left some time after the 4th of July and that was that. Life went on. My aunt continued to live with us for a time and I recall we took a trip to Savannah, probably later that summer as it was definitely during our vacation time. Aunt D started dating someone and eventually moved in with him. That was another relationship that didn’t last for too long.

Eventually Aunt D moved back to Pennsylvania. She had a string of relationships and eventually married a second time and had a son in the 1980s. She went on to divorce that husband and later married a third time. In 1992, I think, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and after a long battle she died on December 23 the following year. I remember the day partly due to being two days before Christmas but also since Lego Lover was born five years later on the anniversary.

I moved to Australia the next year while pregnant with Game Fanatic. Then I became pregnant again in 1997 and had a fetal demise in the early second trimester. It was a very distressing time. Back then to call home cost a small fortune but I did end up calling many times after the loss. I think it was one of the first times I called and talked to my mom that I expressed the idea that I had an idea of how my aunt had felt when her baby died even though my pregnancy had not lasted so long. My mother told me at the time that in fact, my aunt’s baby had not actually died but she had given it up for adoption. I was fairly devastated when this was added to my experience. I don’t recall having that many clear feelings about that baby loss but I do know that I thought of it through the years and had mourned it in my way. This had been a horrible deception and I really felt betrayed when I found out. Not something that helped me deal with my own loss at all. I don’t know that I thought of it at that much at the time but I knew I had a cousin out there somewhere that I’d never met and possibly never would meet.

Fast forwarding many years…

Just after Christmas I got a message via Ancestry dna from someone who said she was a match. I went to have a look and it showed she was either a first or second cousin, most likely second. It showed she was born in 1975 and was from Georgia. I immediately thought this could be that lost cousin but I needed more information. I had a bit of a conversation back and forth with this person and she had found her biological father who thought the mother was named Dxx Mxxxxx and he seemed to think she had passed away. Well the D was right but the surname was wrong although her married name at the time did start with an M. So it seemed a bit closer. He also seemed to know she had an older sister. I’d been hesitant to share much before but with this information I felt it only right to fill in a few blanks. I felt sure this was the cousin who had been adopted. I contacted my mom and we talked and she felt this could be that child too, although she was still a bit wary.

My new cousin wanted to make contact with her half siblings but I honestly had no idea what they might know of a sibling. I asked her to hold off on making contact until I knew what has been shared before,. I talked to my mom and she didn’t know either. It was at this point I learned that it wasn’t just us kids who were told the baby had died but any who knew she was pregnant. Apparently only my parents, my grandma and aunt knew about it at the time and the rest of us were in the dark. My mom said this was the way they handled it at the time because they felt it would be easiest for all. I guess this made me feel a bit better knowing this but it does still bother me.

I was going to call my cousin to tell her about this but then my mom said she could ask her younger sister about it. Mom messaged me later and said younger aunt was aware but not until long after the fact. She didn’t think my cousins knew about the sister though. In fact she’d been under the impression it was a boy my aunt had had which really surprises me because I knew even back in 1975 it had been a girl that she’d been carrying. My aunt was going to call my cousin to share this news but was going to wait for the weekend. My newly found cousin was in a hurry and trying to push things along so I was keen to get the information out there sooner even though I wasn’t sure how it would be received.

Eventually I made a call and talked to my cousin. I was highly anxious about it. While I didn’t think it would be a shock, surely it would be a surprise. I just wanted to give her a heads up. My cousin did actually know of this. Seems my aunt’s third husband had shared this with my cousin some time after her mom died. So not a shock for her. She didn’t know what her brother might know. She was okay for contact and she was going to share with her brother. This mostly took place late at night for me and by the time I got up the next day, my cousins were both friends with their newly found sister on Facebook so I assumed it was going well. More information was shared from other family members and I guess it’s all good now.

One other tidbit is interesting and that’s that my older cousin’s middle name was after my mom. It turns out the younger sister also has this middle name with a slight difference in spelling. A neat coincidence.