Twenty years ago, I learned that I had a half-sister, a daughter from my father’s first marriage that he never told us about.  She was eighty-one when we first met, and I was sixty.  We got along well, and I had the pleasure of hosting her hundredth birthday party.

Her daughter Amy is technically my half-niece, but because she is much closer to me in age, she has become a dear friend, even though she lives half-way across the country.  Tragically, she lost a son to colon cancer two years ago, but her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren live near us so we get to see her when she comes to visit them.

On a recent visit, we joined her and her two grandsons, now five and seven, for ice cream after school.  It was a joy to see the incredible connection between those boys and their grandmother, even in a simple game of “I Spy With My Little Eye”.  Amy hopes that her daughter-in-law will marry again, but she is determined to keep her grandchildren’s memory of their father alive for them. So she’ll be back.