Month: March 2016

Here goes nothing.

I’m on the plane to Ireland to go meet my father and brother who I have seen or spoken to in thirty years. I’m having a lot of mixed feelings. Excited, nervous, bewildered. I don’t know anything about them and vice versa, so this will be interesting. I love talking to strangers, but those conversations are typically not this emotionally heavy. I’m still just going into it with the mindset that they aren’t long lost family, but just some strangers who happen to look like me. That should help a little. If not, there’s always vodka. Also, strangely I keep thinking “What should I wear when I meet them?” Seriously, “What should I wear?” Get your shit together, Paul.

It’s true. It’s all true.

You know those sappy, sentimental family reunion stories that show up once in a while on your Facebook news feed that you simultaneously love and hate?  You click on them, read it and think “that’s cute,” or “how sweet,” or if you are like me you just roll your eyes as far back as they will go. Then you wonder, “Does this stuff really happen to people? This shit can’t be real.” Well guess what?!? It does. I now find myself in the midst of my very own Hallmark moment. I am reuniting this month with my father who I haven’t seen or spoken to in thirty years and my brother who I last saw twenty years ago. All of this has strangely been orchestrated by a secret half-brother that I never knew existed. Making it even more surreal, this will all go down in a small coastal town in Ireland. I know right?  “This shit can’t be real.”