Blood Brothers

Anymore, it seems like every time you turn around, it’s National something-or-another day, which in this day and age is inevitably some sort of ploy to increase traffic to one’s social media portfolio. Wait a minute… hold up! Typing that first sentence out made me realize I’m potentially missing out on some lucrative opportunities! Going to have to get me a National Day of the Year calendar STAT! Anyway, I digress, fittingly enough for this post, May 24th just so happened to be National Brother’s Day.

Now I hate to disappoint you, but no, this isn’t another post about Chris. I mean come on now, some of you all haven’t even got over Library Juicer yet, so it’s going to be a minute before I drop another Chris-caliber post. I will say though, the events of the story I’m about to share are every bit as wondrous as some of my brother’s best.

On the afternoon of Thursday, May 14, I sat down like I always do at our dining room table to write my next blog. I logged into my WordPress site and right away noticed something out of the ordinary. I had a Feedback notification. This is not the same as a Comment, I get those all the time. Feedback is a private message one sends to me when they fill out the form from my Contact Us page, so yes, this is quite the rare occurrence. In fact, the last time I received one was on January 21, 2019 when that insane woman and her theatre troupe bombarded me over the faux-controversy they cooked up about my Ex-Girlfriend post. Needless to say, it’s been a minute, so when I saw that notification off to the side, I couldn’t click on it fast enough! Everything I had in my mind that I was planning on typing out suddenly dissolved and instead I instantly became consumed by the message before me. This is what it read:

Hi Ben, this might seem like a weird question, but I’m trying to get in contact with Wallace DeShon and I’d like to ask if you might be related or know him. I am happy to give you more details if you are open to contacting me. I swear it’s nothing weird or illegal. Best regards, Leslie

Many of you know, but I suppose just as many of you may not, Wallace DeShon is my dad’s name, but it also happens to be my grandpa’s. After initially receiving this message, I wasn’t sure which one of the two she was searching for. My dad of course is alive and well, but unfortunately, my grandpa passed away ten years ago this month. Because of this sad fact, I was very much hoping she was in search of the former and not the latter. I must have read her simple message another ten times after that initial reading. I had so many questions swirling in my mind and couldn’t wait to find out which Wallace she was hoping to get in contact with and why.

As fast as my fingers could text, I asked my dad if he knew who this Leslie might be (she gave me her last name, but I’m omitting it from this story.) He said he hadn’t a clue, so I called my mom and she was just as clueless, so the mystery remained at large. I initially assumed it was my dad she was hoping to reach out to, but given that neither him nor my mom had any idea who she was, I began thinking that perhaps it was grandpa she was trying to get in contact with. After all, Grandpa DeShon would certainly never have had any social media presence.

I then wasted no time in replying to her with the aforementioned fact that Wallace DeShon happens to be both my dad and grandpa’s names (obviously Junior and Senior respectively) and that sadly my grandpa was no longer with us. I told her that I would be happy to reach out to my dad on her behalf or pass him her contact information, so that he can directly contact her should she prefer, if he was in fact the Wallace she was looking for. I also couldn’t send my message without finding out something for myself, how in the world did she find my blog!?!

It wasn’t till late in the evening the next day that Leslie replied. Needless to say, my mom and I were dying to know what she was going to share with me. I’m sure my dad was curious too, but he was working twelve hour days at a power plant at the time that this was all transpiring, so he didn’t really have a lot of excess time to wonder about this like my furloughed ass did.

In her reply, she informed me that it was my dad she was searching for and that she had found my Facebook Author’s Page, Benjamin T. DeShon, and accessed my blog from there. She went on to say that she had actually found my dad on Facebook, but because they weren’t friends she was fearful he would never see her message, so she was hoping that by contacting me, I’d be willing to communicate. Well, I think we can all agree that she DEFINITELY found the right DeShon for her purposes!

She then proceeded to inform me that her husband, Tom, is adopted and after an extensive search of his ancestry, she was able to discover who his biological parents were. It was from this search that she came across an intriguing legal notice from a newspaper in 1960 that was for a petition of adoption. It listed Tom’s biological mom as the birth mother and said her son was set to be adopted by a Wallace and Wilma DeShon. Given that Wallace and Wilma DeShon are my grandparents and my dad was born and adopted in 1960, Leslie was unknowingly informing me that there is a 99.9% chance that her husband is my dad’s biological brother!

Needless to say, this revelation was quite the surprise! I knew my dad was adopted, so of course there was always that possibility he could’ve had biological siblings, but given that he just celebrated his sixtieth birthday in February, I can’t say it was anything I’d ever once given any thought to.

Now Leslie most definitely did her research and provided me with a wealth of information in her email about the extreme likelihood that her husband and my dad were biological brothers. Despite all these official reports and ancestral DNA findings, there were a couple things she mentioned about Tom that totally solidified my belief that all this was the real deal.

Tom is a retired union carpenter and a United States history enthusiast. My dad still works for the carpenters union and he’s OBSESSED with American history! Honestly, Leslie could’ve left everything else out of her email and just put that sentence in there about Tom and I’d be like, yeah, she’s definitely right, these two are totally blood brothers.

Without hesitation, I fired off a round of screenshots I’d taken from her email to both my mom and dad. This was a lot to take in for me, so I couldn’t imagine what my dad would think given that he was at the epicenter of all this. My dad isn’t really much for texting as is, so given that at the time I sent him those screenshots he was several hours into his twelve hour shift, I wasn’t sure he’d even see them, much less respond. Well, surprisingly enough, it wasn’t too much later that he did respond in the absolute most Wally DeShon way he could have:

Wild! I’ll bet he’s a handsome son-of-a-gun. Please give her my contact info.

With his blessing, I sent Leslie my dad’s contact information and everyone has been in constant contact since! Turns out that my dad (and Tom) also have a biological sister who lives in Florida! How wild is all this!?! Suffice it to say, 2020 has been full of unparalleled moments and my dad discovering at the age of sixty he has a biological brother and sister all because of his son’s blog certainly takes the cake in our family.

Well, as always, THANK YOU for reading! Please feel free to leave a comment below as I’m sure there’s no shortage of surprised reactions to all this! I’ll be back next week with another brand new post, so until then, I hope each of you has THE BEST week ever!