I have an extra something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day. I’m going to meet the older sister I never knew I had.

How could this be? I thought I was the oldest kid in the family with two younger brothers. My mother never told me otherwise. Our father disappeared before (I entered elementary school and no one else in the family ever offered a clue that another sibling existed.

But this past Spring, my brother submitted a DNA sample to a genealogy company. To his surprise, the results came back with “you have a sister match.”

It seems that our mother and father got pregnant when she was fifteen. I suspect there was family pressure on the father’s side to put the baby up for adoption. And so, the child was parented by a loving couple in eastern Washington. My mother never said anything about this to her subsequent sons.

Her name is Judee and by the sound of her voice in recent Zoom calls, she’s quite a pleasant person. My nieces say she looks a lot like their grandmother, who passed away years ago. Admittedly, I’m a bit bewildered by this sibling surprise, but I’m boarding a plane with my Benicia family on thanksgiving morning and by evening, I’ll have a face to face meeting with my long lost sister and a hug that has been waiting to happen for many, many years.

Add this to so many other things I am grateful for and this holiday is proving to be quite memorable.

May you have all the joy and blessings that thanksgiving can bring and let’s each do our best to help others enjoy the holiday.

Tio Stib aka Uncle Steve