Blast from the past...

All I intended to do was take my car in for service--an oil change, easy enough. While waiting for the service techs to be finished with my car, I noticed a man in the waiting area with us. He had a familiar face but I quickly put the idea aside.

A few minutes later, he approached me, asked if I could tell him my name. I gave him my first and he replied with my first and last name--it was him, I knew his face was familiar. He was a former step-brother from marriage number 3, man number 2 of my mother's. It had been 12 years since I had seen him last--when our parents split ways and never spoke again without asking if we felt otherwise. They severed ties, we severed ties out of loyality and obligation.

I was devasted. Yet today, I was face to face with my former step-brother, it was as if I had stepped out of a time capsule. He resembled his father but with his own sweet smile--I've never forgotten his smile. We exchanged abbreviated tales of our lifes and stumbled over our words because we were so completely dumbstruck that we were meeting after all of this time.

I was moved and still am. It has opened something inside of myself and it makes me a bit sad, as if mourning the loss of my would-be step-brother--where could we have been in all this time. What might our relationship have been like? He would have been uncle to my children...

So many feelings have surfaced for me today.