I grew up with my mom, and my mom had six kids, and I was the youngest, but I had a different father than my brothers and sisters, and I only met him when I was ten years old. Then he introduced me to his other children.
He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression... I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent. I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.
My brother and I have never been that close. We have different mothers and never lived in the same house. As kids, my sister, Samantha, and I lived in San Diego and Brad in Brooklyn. The only time I saw him was in the summer when our visitations with our father overlapped.
He's not my step brother technically, so I think it's okay that I kissed him once.
I was an only child, but then my parents resettled with different partners, and I am now one of six.
I have three older brothers, and we all have different combinations of parents. My father was the best man at my mom's first wedding! And my brother's mother - my dad's first wife - is the sister to my mom's first husband's second wife. So my brothers are both stepcousins and stepbrothers. It's very '70s rock.
We're fortunate in my family because we really have three families: my brother, David, and me; the two boys, Cooper and Marston, from my dad's second marriage; and my dad's wife, Crystal.
My degree of closeness to my step-siblings varies among the seven, but I have a great sense of loyalty to all of them, especially the four from my childhood. If those people needed my help, I would be there for them.
When everything kind of hit the fan, my dad married Jo Anne, and suddenly there were five kids from the Ripleys and five kids from the Doughertys. Then my dad and Joanne had a baby. I usually have to make a diagram.
My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs, I have half-sibs, and for a time I had step-sibs.
We were very lucky. My mother and stepmothers were on very, very good terms, and so we, the children, grew up as brothers and sisters.
Step-parenting and being a step-sibling presents a lot of exciting opportunities. When families break up and re-form, there may be less order, less certainty, and a bit more trauma involved, but kids can end up having half-a-dozen parent figures.
The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.
I have six brothers and sisters. My mother has six kids from two different marriages. And we would just sit around making fun of each other's dad, and all our dads had real problems.
I don't have a regular happy family like most people. My parents are separated; my dad married someone else and so did my mom. All my siblings are from my parents' other marriages. So yes, it is complicated, and I don't like talking about it or explaining this to everybody. But all this doesn't stop us from being close to each other.
