Reconnecting with my DNA, after 20 years

We begin to share stories

-----Original Message-----
From: Uncle Randy
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 11:50 AM
To: Patty
Cc: Lisa
Subject: Good Morning!

Good morning Patty. Its seven-ish on a Thursday. I've had about three hours sleep and watched Debbie leave for her <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=job&v=55">job</a> as a general labourer for the city of Port Coquitlam, a suburb about a half hour east of downtown Vancouver, ten minutes west of Maple Ridge where we live. She wears those flourescent orange bib overalls the <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=traffic&v=55">traffic</a> flaggers wear on the roads. In
15 minutes or so my three children will all be up and around making lunches and dressing for <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=school&v=55">school</a>. All except Larry. He's prone to sleeping in untill the very last moment...or longer...and then rushing off to <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=school&v=55">school</a> forgetting lunch, homework and any number of other things he's supposed to take with him. As I told you before I have a long letter in my knapsack
which <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=covers&v=55">covers</a> many things including naming my youngest son after our Larry, and while I still haven't ruled out mailing it, there's something very intrigueing about actually using this new technology for something
truthfully meaningful.

It never once entered my mind...( and so I'd never discussed it with Debbie)...that I would ever name the last one after my brother...but within moments after he was born and in my hands I was thinking of the older
brother whose roll of the life-dice just came up snake-eyes. My little <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=baby&v=55">baby</a> boy was blond and curly-haired and through tears out of the blue I just asked Debbie if we could name him after Larry. I think the name she had favored at the <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=time&v=55">time</a> was Riley ( ..."he'd be an RR too!" I remember her saying. ) and the one I had wanted was Tryon Pierce, the first after Dad's
dad, the second after my mom's Dad. I guess you might remember that those moments after birth are a pretty vulnerable <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=time&v=55">time</a> so she probably would have agreed to anything. I often feel I missed a great opportunity to get her to agree to something REALLY important...he's a great kid though so if his name
is a part of that somehow...as the young adults I work with say...its all
good.

I married a girl a lot like the you I remember. Dark straight <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=hair&v=55">hair</a> that captured most of the light and reflected only those hues that highlighted your sparkling eyes, genuine smile...body angular and lean in just the right places...the first <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=time&v=55">time</a> I slept with her I thought it was a place I could lay forever. We've been together 18 years last December though both of us have nearly left a few times. I guess we really just thought it would be harder to split than to just stay together. Three kids, a <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=house&v=55">house</a>, a big old
black lab. I suppose forever is possible...a prediction I might not have made 10 years ago.

She's a tough girl too which you must be if any of the stories I've heard about you are true...she has taken the fallout from mom's special brand of emotional wreckage pretty much the whole <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=time&v=55">time</a> we've been married, not always lightly but I'm thinking she's come to understand that someone or something
broke young Thelma in some way and she's never really to be together again. I call her weekly now and her moods and <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=health&v=55">health</a> are different from week to
week. As a friend of mine once said "...you can pick your <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=friends&v=55">friends</a> but you can't pick your <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=family&v=55">family</a>."

This <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=family&v=55">family</a> out of the past is really not all that new to me. About 14 years ago cousin Richard Faylor showed up in Vancouver and phoned. He was
Mom's sister's oldest of two children and he came during a <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=search&v=55">search</a> to uncover the truth behind his Dad's abuse of he and his sister. It was pretty
intense but rewarding still and we are still in touch. He is a focussed, highly creative intellectual with who has travelled the world extensively
and is always a pleasure. He's over 50, looks 30, lives in the North End in Boise and when we <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=travel&v=55">travel</a> there we always meet for a visit. He pretty
much avoids Mom. She says his father killed her sister. He was the Nampa High <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=basketball&v=55">basketball</a> player that Dad always took me to see play. This early
exposure to <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=Basketball&v=55">Basketball</a> has great meaning in my life these days between October and March as the whole life of my <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=family&v=55">family</a> seems to revolve around the
game of <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=basketball&v=55">basketball</a>. More on that later.

Then a few years ago Mom reports that Eugene has discovered he had a daughter he never knew about. Not only that but the daughter grew up to be
a stunning, outrageously beautiful woman who he'd actually ridden with in a rodeo! With children of her own from a couple different marriages!! Mom
and sis embraced them all immediately and Eugene, by this <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=time&v=55">time</a> married to a rich younger woman with a son and a log-home on the river, did what he does,
ran off into the mountains to be alone...well thats not true really...but Eugene does kind of manage all his relationships as if everyone is a <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=horse&v=55">horse</a> so it took him a while to open up the barn and go give em rub-downs. I'm not sure how thats all going with him because he doesn't come down out of the mountains all that often.

I met her and her children and they were blood right from the get go...<a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=horse&v=55">horse</a> <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=people&v=55">people</a> from Weiser or somewhere like that. Angie's her name and her kids
are great, beautiful, well mannered. We had a great picnic. She's a wanderer too and her latest marriage just broke up last year. I think she was hoping her Dad would fill a void or help her or step into some role she longed for him to play but Brother Bill...he's Bill now by the way...well
he's <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=family&v=55">family</a> and like my friend said, she didn't get to pick him. Truly though I do hope everything works out. If there's one or two mantra's in my
life that I find myself muttering over and over both to myself and to others I talk to concerning the paths our lives lead us down, one would be,
"Everything's just something we're going through." ...and... "Everything
will be alright as long as it works out ok and luckily for most of us...usually...everything works out ok." I can see such is the case for you and Lisa.

I must close for now but I would like to know, how'd you get from Austin Texas, <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=home&v=55">home</a> of ( among others ) Lance Armstrong, to Belize?

Till next <a href="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=time&v=55">time</a>, I am always

Very Truly Yours

Randy


Creativity is the willingness to express emotion and the ability to explore it without perfection.