The Family Secret

When I was in the hospital, recovering from my stroke, my parents dropped a bombshell. My cousin Michael, was really my half-brother.

My mother gave birth to him before me, and my aunt and uncle adopted him straight out of the hospital and raised him as their own.

Suddenly, a lot of things from my childhood started to make more sense. My mother in tears because of a paper Mike had written when he was seven that said, I was adopted but that's okay because Superman was adopted, too, comes to mind.

After they told me this, I was still semi-verbal, but I had no "filter" on what I could say or not say. The very next time I was alone with Robin, I told her, "I have a brother."

"Yes you do," she explained. "John is your brother."

"No," I answered. "Michael is my brother."

"No, Michael is my brother," she said. "Your brother is John."

She has an older brother named Michael, too.

"No," I explained. "Michael is my half brother."

Again she responded that Michael was her half brother. Which he is. She does have a half brother named Michael that for various reasons we ignore, but somehow or another, and with much effort and comedic misunderstanding, I finally conveyed to her that my mother had another child, and that child was my cousin Michael.

"What I don't understand," she said, "is why they chose to tell you now?"

I don't know exactly, but over the next few weeks, my brain kept thinking about it. I'd wake up at three in the morning and tell Robin things like, "That's why Mike named his kids Holt!"

The next family dinner was awkward because I knew that Mike was my brother and he knew he was my brother but neither of us knew the other one knew that we knew.

I wrote in my blog about how awkward it was to know family secrets and not be able to say them out loud.

Mike's younger sister Kate emailed me, "Was that about Mike being adopted?" which sent me into a whole new frenzy of random thoughts. She had guessed it first thing, which I guess means either I wasn't being as vague as I thought or there aren't a whole lot of Holt family secrets. I'm assuming both.

Kate told Mike and she seemed horrified that John didn't know, so I told him. Neither of us told Elinor.

Kate said that Mike had been trying to get my mother to tell us for years, but that she wouldn't.

The first time Robin met Michael she told me, "You told me he was adopted, but you didn't tell me he was adopted from within the family."

This was years before I knew the truth, so this caught me off guard.

I'm pretty sure I said something along the lines of, "W-w-what?"

We decided he had been Aunt Carol's son, and that she had him out of wedlock.

The first time Glenna, John's wife met him, she told John he looked like Papa, our grandfather.

So now, Glenna, John, Robin, Kate, Michael and I all knew and it was starting to feel like a conspiracy. When we went to Berea to have pictures taken with the extended family my mother took us out to Cracker Barrel for lunch, had Robin take the kids to the car and gave the announcement that Mike was our brother. Robin, Glenna, John and I already knew this, so really Elinor the only person surprised.

She didn't take it well. Her boyfriend broke up with her after meeting another girl online and ahe posted, "Does anyone else have any secrets they want to dump on me?"

My mother was oblivious that one of those secrets was the news about Michael.

We moved in with my parents for the summer, because we had nowhere else to go. It was awkward. I couldn't trust them, and they couldn't figure out why not.

One day, when my mother, Robin and Christian were riding in the car together one day, and my mother and Robin were talking back and forth about "the situation" in veiled terms, after my mother left Robin asked Christian if he knew what they were talking about.

"Elinor is pregnant?" he guessed, so Robin had to include him in the conspiracy and now he knows.

John and I have bumped Noah and Calla up to full niece and nephew status as far as Christmas presents and birthdays go.

After Christmas, Mike and I had a brief conversation about it. We both acknowledged that he was my half brother and then I told him, "I was surprised to find out I had another brother, but I'm glad it was someone I knew my whole life."