Family History

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win." ~ Roger Bannister

Last week a guy I went to high school with messaged me on Facebook to say that he would be visiting his father (who he told me was 93!) where I live (and he grew up) and asked would I like to get together sometime during his stay? 

Now, this is a guy that I knew was in my high school class - because I went to a small high school! - but I can't say that I ever spoke a word to him during our four years of high school together. 

It wasn't that I was a snob - though I will readily admit he was a geek! - but probably due more to the fact that I was shy back then and didn't talk much to anybody outside my "circle." 

But, as you know if you've followed this blog, a couple of years ago I had my 30th high school reunion (remember I was the girl who wanted to gain an extra ten pounds before I went to it!) and at that reunion this guy, P., came to it, and during the later hours, when the number of class members gathering shrunk (read: lightweights!), the smaller group got to hang out and have more quality time together. And this guy, P., was one of the remaining few. 

So, at the reunion I probably had a short conversation with him - enough to know that, even though he was still a geek, he was a way more interesting one than thirty years before! And so he later "friended" me on Facebook and we became "acquaintances;" we ended up having some common interest and points of view, enough that we felt a comrade of sorts with one another. 

But he lives with his wife and two daughter's - probably a thirteen hour's drive away - and came to visit his father for the week, sans the family, thus the inquiry of my availability. 

Anyway, long story short, on Sunday night we did get together at a local pub for drinks, then dinner, and had a nice time. Like I said, I knew virtually nothing about him so it was easy to talk as I could ask him a lot of questions in which to gain more knowledge of him and his life experiences.

And it was after inquiring about his immediate family, the family he grew up in, that I found out he had four older sisters and an older brother, the closest in age to him being six years. And all of them, he said, had relocated to the state of his familial mother. I asked about each of them, as somebody might ask me of my six siblings, and he told me a quick bio of each. But it was the bio of one of his sisters that struck me as being very interesting, and one more answer to the bigger signs which I have been seeking. 

When he explained this sister's life he said that she had started out as a high school science teacher, then went into some medical tech speciality and another thing, and another thing, until finally she went to medical school and now - after what he called her 30-something years of schooling - she was a practicing M.D. He went on to say that she had married late in life (I didn't ask what that age was) and that she had ended up having, through IVF, triplets at age 49, that he said, gave her six kids in total (yes, all after she had married later in life!)! I asked were the triplets her own biological children? Yes, he said, and I didn't feel like I knew P. enough to pry more on the subject (though everything in me was screaming out, tell me everything you can about her!). 

So, I guess the moral of this blog post is that, once again I was minding my own business when, out of the blue, someone tells me another successful, happy story of an older woman getting married later in life AND getting pregnant with her own eggs - and this one just a year younger than me at age 49!!! 

I had earlier (to begin my New Year!) told God, thanks for all the signs you have been sending me, but I need something bigger, and I think with this story I got something a little bigger. Yes, she was still younger than me, but still close enough where I feel I can almost reach out and touch my dream of miracles...