My brother, Ron, had called to offer birthday greetings. He had a gift for me; that which he'd let slip away from me twenty years earlier, he'd called to give me back.

Our sister Jacqueline had called him. His phone number was in the book. He called to let me know how to reach her if I wanted to.

All my birthday celebration was put aside while I dialed the phone number he had given me. There was a far away, querulous 'hello' on the other end of the line. I said, 'This is Dallie, your brother. Ron just called and gave me your number.' She said, 'How are you?' That, for the most part, is all I remember of the one conversation I had been waiting for for so many years. Abbie happily put her birthday party in the back seat as I revelled in astonished shock!

* * *

I've had ten years since then to get reacquainted with my younger sister.

In our phone conversation, we had managed to arrange our first meeting at the Quail Hollow Inn, a pseudo-posh eatery located halfway between her home in Geneva and mine in Euclid. Neutral territory. She had breakfast, I had coffee. I couldn't eat. Our conversation, between bites, was innocuous for the most part. Finally, I suggested she follow me home to meet Abbie, and she agreed.

When we got home I broke out the scotch bottle and we three proceeded to get bombed. I can't begin to say what we talked about, but we found ourselves, Jacquie and I, taking a brother-sister walk. We ran, she kicked a can. We were playing at trying to relive for just a few minutes some part of a childhood we hadn't had. When we returned home, I found myself sitting at her feet, rubbing her ankles. I had so much emotion in me, a goodly part of it fueled by the scotch. So did Jacquie. Anxiety and discomfort. I don't think she wanted her brother to rub her ankles, especially in front of Abbie. Abbie wasn't sure what was going on. But as Abbie was to tell me later, she felt a bit of irrational jealousy that a new interest seemed to have come into my life.

At one point during our gathering, Abbie and I had a dispute over some minor and since-forgotten issue--we were both in an argumentative mood--we were both tipsy. We were all three smashed. Suddenly, Jacquie lashed out and slapped me several times. At one point she turned to Abbie and asked, 'He doesn't hit back does he?' To which Abbie replied, 'I don't know. He hasn't so far.' Actually, I'm not into hitting women. Although I do have my limits. By the time she decided to stop slapping me, if she hadn't been the sister I'd been trying to find for so long, I might have popped her. With that, we had our first sibling reunion.

* * *

Jacqueline Melissa Corbin was born at 7:38 A.M., 11 May, 1942 at People's Hospital in Akron, Ohio. Melissa was her maternal great grandmother's middle name, and she was Donna Lenora's last child to be born, delivered by Dr. Stephen Greenfield, M.D. of 390 East South Street. Donna and husband Elmer J. Corbin resided at 885-1/2 South Main Street. He was 29; she was 27 years old. Donna became ill and died, and it being 1946, us four children became orphans.

* * *

My sister was adopted by Forrest and JoAnn Beverly-Wooten. Jacquie married William A. Soles of Geneva, son of Edgar C. and Gertrude Zincke-Soles.

Mr. Edgar Soles, retired from Ohio Bell Telephone Company, passed away 8 January, 1985 at age 77 years. Mrs. Gertrude Soles succumbed prior to her husband. Bill has a sister, Marilee Ogden, wife of Clarence Ogden, and a niece Laurea Lee, wife of Barry Peppler.

Jacquie and Bill were wed on 14 September, 1974 by the Reverend C. J. Kitchen in Geneva.

* * *

SIBLING REFLECTIONS

Throughout this book I've sought to illustrate the ravages of a broken family, the terror thrust upon children by bureaucracy. The aching fear and uncertainty of an unknown future. The broken hearts that harden growing youngsters, leaving some suspicious.

None of us are easy to take all the time. We're just people. And that's who Donna's kids are. Just people, who grew up.

* * *

I just this day put Patty Ann on a Greyhound bus to send her back home. She had been here for a six-day Memorial Day, 1990 weekend visit. Back in 1985, we'd both agreed, we had all just met each other, the four of us. We had literally just four hours to get reacquainted, after so many years apart. Probably the only thing we managed to do was to have a look at each other...see what kind of bodies we'd developed over the forty or so years, get a taste of what kind of attitudes we had...toward each other, toward life. Meet one another's spouses...except for Patty's.

The four of us had gotten together, four strangers amidst the family atmosphere...the Hensleys, the Stulls, and so forth. And strangers we were, back in 1985. Somehow, God graced us. When Patty Ann went back out west, she didn't much know where she was going, much less did any of the rest of us have any notion. Jacquie went back to Geneva, and Ronnie went back to Ellet. I came back to Euclid with my wife, Abbie. And...we just kind of each of us went our own way again.

I suppose the shock of seeing each other was so damned much...39 years. We didn't know how to love each other. God blessed me with... curiosity and patience, and most of all, with that sense in my gut...that I'd waited 39 years to meet my sister again, and I don't care how I felt, or what my reaction was in Tiffin in '85, I wasn't going to lose her again. At least, not until I had a chance to get to know who she was, and give her a chance to know who I am.

We stayed in touch through writing. There were a couple of times I'd thought she had quit writing, and there were a few times when she must have thought that I'd quit writing. In nearly each one of her letters she would say to me that she hadn't heard from Ronnie, or that she hadn't heard from Jacquie. And Jacquie was disappointed with her. And Ronnie was disappointed with her.

God also gave me the ability to look beyond such disappointment and to see some people as they are, and to hell with the image they put forth.

Patty Ann was just the most lost of the four of us. Just a hurting girl, afraid. And a hard shell around her. Made of steel. But she was just that lost little girl. And she came up here on Memorial Day, and she spent six days here with Abbie and me. And we had six days to get acquainted. Six days to talk. And talk we did, sifting through what became one hundred and twenty-nine pages of disjointed and interrupted monologue...her life story.

And it was important to Patty Ann that she know...that I know that she was sincere. That she was telling me the truth, her truth. That she was begging, not vocally, but with her essence, was begging to be loved and accepted. And for her family to take her back. I could doubt a good deal of the things that Patty told me about her past life. Just as Ronnie doubted it. I could believe that she was unreliable, just as Jacquie believed...as of this writing. But that's not the little sister that I saw. And I would rather that, if she were to have been that sort of person, that she stole my entire house out from under me, and that I'd have the chance to get to know her to be that way, than I would to doubt her at the start of it. I don't know about my other siblings, but, for me, 39 years is too damned long!

We spent six days trying to make up for our childhood. And I watched this "hard as nails" woman melt down to the soft core of the little girl that she really was...and is. I saw a lot of self doubts coming out of her, a lot of inside fear, fear of rejection. She couldn't thank Abbie enough...and all Abbie did was to treat her like my sister. Such a small thing to give her, and she valued it so much.

When I put her on the bus to send her back, it was the first time since I put my son Chris on the bus in California in the mid-70's and sent him back to his mother in Ohio, that I cried hard tears when somebody left. The little girl that I'd tried so hard for so many years to find, and I was sending her away again. And all my ghosts are coming out of the closet and going away. And I see Donna Lenora lying in her grave with a smile on her face. Because all her kiddies...didn't get lost to each other after all. They managed to stay together even after all this time. And Patty goes away to Fort Worth,, but she doesn't go away anymore. I know where she's at, and she knows where I am. And she's not mumbling around like a gypsy lost soul anymore. She has plans and goals. Just because at least one of her siblings loved her. Just as surely as I know that her other brother loves her and her sister loves her...or want to.

So, if I've been hard on my brother, Patty, in her little-girl-lost way, has really served to bring all four of us back together again. Because one of the last things that Patty Ann said when she got on the bus was she would try to keep in touch with Ronnie. And after all...the hurt she felt. And I believe her. Patty brought us back together..." (...author's diary...)

* * *

The reflections of a brother at once joyous and sad...and mystified. At the plight of four separated siblings and their view of the past. One indifferent to it; one fearing it; one rebellious to it; and one trying to understand it.

* * *