April. The very month speaks my mother’s name.
I can see her, a giggly teenager in a poodle skirt and cardigan, a junior at West Seattle High. It’s April 1962. And she starts to suspect something’s wrong. Paul and she… you know, things got carried away and now she’s in tears, pregnant. The storm begins. Her parents, ashamed, pull her out of school. Their disappointment turns into withdrawal, and they send her to Uncle Denver and Auntie Vi in Portland. Thanksgiving is lonely, without father or mother or brother.
18 days later she lay in a hospital in a storm of pain. Then sweetness came, held briefly, kissed, and cried over as the little baby boy was taken away. It was December 10, 1962. Lawrence of Arabia premiered in London. The Mona Lisa arrived in New York for a tour of the USA. And JFK celebrated his last Christmas, never seeing the space program he inspired.
Meanwhile, a little boy was chosen, loved, and taken home in Oregon. He would be named William. His middle name by which he would be always known was Storm.
My mother returned to Seattle, finished high school, but in a way she never returned to her family. The pain of her path had been complicated by her parents’ conditional love and support. They tried to contain the storm, to deny it, but my mom whirled around in a tornado of dreams and desires that left her empty, place after place. She had two more sons. Yet she always wondered about her first little baby. Where was he? Was he okay?
My mom’s first attempt to find him was after he turned 18. It was the early 80’s and difficult. The adoption privacy laws did not make it easy to find him. My mom put it aside for a while. Her own personal storms continued, but she tried to settle down.
Several more times in the 1990’s, Mom tried to contact people who could help her. I remember her telling me about my brother in 1995 when I graduated from college. I was stunned but also deeply interested. Who was he? Where was he? Unless her son, whom I nicknamed “December”, added himself to a public registry, it seemed hopeless.
Fast forward to April 2, 2019. Five years ago. I had given my mom a DNA test for Christmas, not even thinking of December; it was selfish on my part. I wanted to prove if we had French Canadian ancestry. That day I logged into Mom’s account to see her ethnicity again, and I noticed a section called “DNA Matches”. I casually clicked on it and waited for it to populate. Within a minute there were lots of distant cousins, closer relatives, and whoa… who was this?
Sometimes the truth stares you in the face, and you don’t realize it. This was one of those times. As it dawned on me who I was seeing at 10 pm that April 2nd, I texted my other brother and said, “Uhh… I think I may have found our adopted brother.” The next 2 hours my mind was blown as we started to put the pieces together. He was born the right year, grew up near Portland, shared our male-pattern baldness inherited from our grandfather.
We made contact the next day on the phone after sending messages on Ancestry. What clinched it was that he said he was born on December 10, 1962. I ventured that I would be visiting my aunt and uncle in southern California in a week. Would he be interested in meeting up? Yes, he was. We chose a halfway point along the coast: the Santa Monica Pier.
We came early because I was nervous and because it was a chance for the kids to enjoy a nice beach. True, it was a little chilly, but at least they could put their toes in the surf. Ironically, I had visited here in 1982, before part of the Pier was destroyed by a storm the next year. But the Storm I was meeting brought healing to our family.
We chose to meet Storm and his family at a beachfront cafe. We made introductions… I met my nephew and his wife, they met my wife and kids. It was awkward at first as we tried to find a place to sit, but thankfully the bartender showed us a beer garden out back where we could have some peace and quiet to talk. It was an amazing experience to talk to a truly long-lost brother. He never grew up with any brothers, so this was new to him too. Although 11 years separated us, it was easy to connect and he I learned what a wonderful man he is. His biggest concern was for Mom to know that he was okay, after worrying all these years.
That summer, Storm came up to visit Mom. And so a story that began in the spring of 1962 came full circle, as they finally got to hug each other again after 57 years. So much had changed in the world since then. But this was a moment of wonder and silence and laughter and joy.
It turned out to be the nick of time. 3 years later, Mom passed away from complications arising from COPD, Covid-19 and pneumonia which weakened her lungs, and finally took her in 2022. We three brothers came together again to say our farewells. But it’s a wonderful story of April’s Storm: a storm redeemed, a storm regained, a storm restored. And with that, a part of us restored as well.
POSTSCRIPT
It may come as a surprise that while one generation avoids the gospel, the next may accept it. We all loved our mother. She was a deeply caring person. But she was never able to give us a living faith in Jesus Christ. And yet these three sons, fathered by different men, all believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the key to eternal life and happiness on earth. It’s unlikely. But so is God’s love, rightly understood. That’s what makes it a miracle. Happy Easter!
Wow, a fantastic read! As the other, middle brother it turns out, I was completely shocked when Brian found Storm. We are truly blessed as brothers and that our mother had that time with Storm. Love the post bro! 😎
Thank you for this beautiful story which I remember more in bits and pieces as it was unfolding. But wonderful to read it here as a unified whole. God was and is the Father of all three brothers with different earthly fathers! His plans and purposes are usually untraceable to us in the present or even an entire lifetime, but how kind of Him to let you trace His work in all these family members! And the comfort April must have had to meet her beloved firstborn!