On discovering and meeting new family

Ah, the long awaited recap on last weekend when I met my 33 year old sister, for the first time. A testament to the powers of the internet, as we found each other through Ancestry.com, and have been communicating via email and Facebook since October ’09.

I have come to realize I do not posses the vocabulary or intelligence to properly describe to others what meeting my sister was like. The best analogy I can conjure is that it was like visiting with an old close friend… but without having ever known or met that friend previously; a very odd, yet comforting sensation.

Kallasandra (Kally) arrived Thursday night at PDX around 8.45pm, though it took quite a while for her to actually make it off the plane due to being stuck behind a long line of other travellers. All the while, Jean and I were waiting just outside security wondering if we’d really recognize her when she made it out. Suffice to say our fears were unfounded, though we did have a few moments of near mistaken identity as we waited and then felt absolutely silly for thinking we may not recognize her when we finally met!

Yes, the resemblance is a bit ‘uncanny’ as a few friends have noted. Though I wouldn’t say it is uncanny, I mean after all we are genetically tied, it kind of is -expected- is it not? In either case I am indeed still marveling over the similarities we share. In fact that really was the underlying theme of the weekend: similarities and determining which were genetic, and which were environmental. Suffice to say, genetics are much more powerful than any of us may actually realize.

For fear of making a play-by-play recap, I can tell you this: We went Sake tasting at SakeOne, and wine tasting at Montinore, David Hill, and Oak Knoll,  before a fabulous meal at DeCarli in Beaverton. We ended up at Voodoo Doughnuts, Saturday Market, Powell’s, Radish Underground, and a few other stores on NW 23 before enjoying a quiet birthday dinner at 23 Hoyt. We relaxed at home, went out to Helvetia Winery, and ate a great home cooked meal of Daube Provencale made with the Helvetia Chardonnay we had just picked up. For those of you who have visited Jean and I previously, this should all feel very familiar, even if some of the location names change slightly 🙂

We all had a great time running around the city and out in wine country. Even in moments of what some may see as uncomfortable silence, we weren’t uncomfortable; truly another sign to me that we are from the same cloth. I was content to simply enjoy the company of not only my half sister, but of what I consider to also be a new found friend. Our histories tie us together as family, and there is a deeply rooted familiarity which comes from that, but beyond that familial tie there is also a good person whom I am honoured to call sister and friend:

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