My New Bro!

My (half) sister who lives in America, has been doing some DNA/family research and has discovered ANOTHER child of my father's! I THINK that makes 11or 12 kids from 5 women, but I can't be sure at this point. If he hadn't left Jamaica who knows how many children he would have had. 

My (half) brother, who is two years older than me and lives in North Carolina asked me to tell him about life with my father. All he had been told was that he had been a policeman. It took a while to come up with three pages which I had to preface with an apology for its grimness. My brother had grown up thinking life would have been better if his father had been in his life. I had to tell him that my mother would have been better off in many ways if she had not had a violent, gambling drunk literally pulling her and her family down. I shared with him the day I came home from school, collected my brothers and found a huge padlock on the front door... It transpired that the Honda 90cc motorscooter my father had 'bought' a year or so before, had been acquired by arranging a loan which used the house my mother had paid for alone, as collateral. -This was after my mother had been saving in a joint account with him to secure a deposit for a mortgage only to discover that my father had taken what she'd paid in on the next day. When she decided to check because she thought even if he had not contributed she had put enough in herself, she discovered that there was just enough to keep the account open: ten shillings!

I encouraged him to contact my other brothers but confessed that I dislike them both and was no longer in contact with them. I put my nephew in contact with his new uncle, my nephew may be able to put his uncle in touch with his father who I know has a much rosier recollection of life with our father- as the oldest, I may have taken the brunt of his bullshit. My youngest brother told me years ago that the other one was drinking heavily- like our father.

My new bro seems like a nice guy. He has a great smile and has been quite chatty on Facebook. Two years my senior he regularly runs half marathons etc which puts me to shame- I can just about manage a walk to the shops before being caught in the grip of intermittent claudication.