........

When i was twelve years old, my dad told me his secret......i was not his first child...there was a boy...nearly four years older. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, they were in love....she hid her pregnancy...they wanted to keep the baby...she was too young...they were forced apart...the three of them. I cried...i longed for my big brother.

As the years passed i wondered where he was, at that exact same moment, who was he with, what was he doing.....he will be driving soon....he will be graduating high school soon...he could be in college....is he married?....does he have children?...did i pass him on the street?...does he know?.....I know....

Every now and then we would begin searching again...propelled forward by the feeling that we would find him...talking to the birth mother...putting together another piece....searching another adoption board....another dead end. Taking a break until someone would bring him up in a conversation, or someone would have a dream about him...the search would resume.

What does he look like?.... Is he tall?.... Does he have curly hair?..Does he laugh like us, smile like us, does he have our blue eyes?......

And then out of the blue a thought a feeling...."Keep looking." So i went to my computer and i searched again...this time...i looked in a new place...i asked a new person...pieces i didn't remember others knew...and by the evening we had a birthday...then a name....then a face.

All of those years...came down to one face....and then a number...and then a voice. A voice that sounded so eerily similiar to my brother Jason...the same pauses, the same tone, the same laugh... Twenty years of looking, and waiting and hoping...would be over once the test would confirm...what i knew from the first moment i saw.....my brother John.