You wake up in the morning after a night of incredibly horrible dreams. You brush the dreams off and answer some long over-due emails.
You do something else you don’t usually do. Put a comment in The New York Times. It gets an amazing amount of “likes” though you have told nobody about this.
It doesn’t make “highlights,” just “reader’s recommendations.”
You’re not sure if you like that better.
A person of the people.
That’s you.
Right.
Not.
A few hours later you get a response to one email you wrote.
Info that you have been searching for most of your life.
Actually you didn’t even know you were looking for the info contained in the response.
Maybe you were.
You’re the same person you were a few hours ago.
But you’re not.
You just googled and found your birth-brother.
Using the info you were just given, your absolutely amazing research skills, and $40 to Intellius, a site that finds everything quickly. Tries to rip you off but you won’t let it.
You wonder if he knows about you.
You’re not sure you want to intrude in his life.
You surmise that he’s a super at a school for kids with learning disabilities.
Ironic considering your former obsession with building employees, and your own learning disabilities.
He was born four days and thirty five years after your father; four days after your first love.
Seventeen months, almost to the day, older than you.
This must be meaningful but you can’t figure out the higher meaning.
You don’t know if he has siblings.
Your birth mother told you that there were three kids.
For every one truth your birth mother told you, she told you a few not true things. For some reason this endears her to you. She was protecting her great love and his family.
You don’t know, you just don’t know what to do.
You think about taking a walk wearing your new LED-wrap-around-your-forehead-light. One of eight flashlights, and lanterns you now own.
You would look stupid but have light–and red flashing lights in case of danger.
You could play with moving the light up and down.
Stop it Pia.
You don’t want the four people left who read this blog to think you’re totally immature.
But they know…
Your house survived the hurricane with nary a scratch–after it totally screwed up your vacation.
All those calls, messages, texts, even emails.
You couldn’t muster strength the whole time you were in Cambridge.
You needed the strength for the twelve hours it took you to get home, and the real hurricane prep.
Then the hurricane hit everywhere but here. You know the lesson in that.
You’re so tired. Just so tired.
You wish you could hire somebody to do your thinking for you. But you can’t.
You have birth-brothers address and phone number.
Searching is so easy since the Internet it almost feels like cheating.
You’re not sure that it’s moral or ethical or just wrong to intrude in his life.
Maybe it’s right.
The rulebook hasn’t been written yet.
Your whole life has been about uncharted lands, mountains, bodies of water.
All places nobody ever thought to explore until you did.
Now you have the LED-wrap-around-forehead-flashlight to expedite all the searches.
Or will it make the searches more difficult?
You’ll actually see what you pass.
Are you ready for that?
You have never believed in secrecy.
This story is one of the reasons why.
Secrets lead nowhere good.
Nowhere.
Except for comments in The Times.
