Oh, Brother!, Part 3

(My father isn’t very tech-savvy, so occasionally he’ll ask me to look up old friends of his on Facebook and the like. One day, he calls me down from my room to do so, and points out a friend request from a youngish-looking guy whose name I don’t recognize.)

Dad: “Guess who that is.”

Me: “One of your work buddies’ kids?”

Dad: “Nope.”

Me: “Uh… I give up.”

Dad: *grinning* “He’s your older brother!”

(I’m caught pretty off-guard by this, because, one: I only have two brothers, both younger, two: this guy and I don’t have the same last name, and three: my father is also a notorious jokester. After double-checking that it isn’t April Fool’s, I stare at him, waiting for him to start laughing. Instead, he hugs me.)

Dad: “Surprise!”

(It turns out my mother and father had a baby when they were teenagers. Since they couldn’t support him, they agreed in advance to give him up for adoption, and he was apparently born with some pretty severe health problems, so they tried lessening the pain by telling themselves he wouldn’t have been around long, anyway. But he actually recovered, grew up in another state, and then came back here to buy a house when he and his wife were expecting their first child. The cherry on top? He worked in tree service like my father and ended up being sent to a job at one of my mother’s sister’s houses! His resemblance to my mother was uncanny, which my aunt remarked on, and since his adoptive parents had told him about his roots, that ended up leading him to us. Unfortunately, he never got to meet my mother, as she’d passed away a few years earlier, but he was still welcomed warmly by the rest of our huge family. On top of that, I’m great friends with my sister-in-law, and I’ve got a niece and baby nephew I absolutely adore… and who have their big, gruff-looking new Grandpa utterly wrapped around their little fingers!)

Related:
Oh, Brother! – Part 2
Oh, Brother!