My four year old received a letter today in the mail. It was a letter from her little brother, who is too tiny to write himself (he is only 6 mons old) but he thankfully had a bit of help from his great grandma. It was very sweet. He was in essence saying thank you for an outfit she had picked out for him, and also that the new teethers she sent were really making his sore gums feel better. I had one tickled little girl who went to bed happy and tucking her little letter under her pillow.

This letter was a real boost to me as well because my daughter’s birth great grandma and I have been having a bit of a falling out lately. The letter was at least telling me that great grandma is willing to try and keep the love and communication between these separated siblings open and on going. Honestly for awhile I was not so sure she wanted that anymore. In spite of our disagreements on how things are done and who lives with whom, we need to be thinking about what is best for both of these kids. No matter how we may not agree I wanted our adult stuff to stay out of the children’s relationship, not always so easy to do.

It is not that I do not have any empathy for what is going on with my daughter’s birthfamily right now, I certainly do. I feel sorry that things are not going as they might like, it’s not fair I know. I have often wondered how some divorced parents manage when one of the children lives with mom, and the other with dad, but now I have an inkling because this situation is so similar. To me the urgency of keeping both these kids connected takes on a new meaning when you know that each of them also has another sibling out there, one they will probably never know or see growing up, perhaps not ever. While I can’t do anything about those lost siblings for each of them, I certainly feel the need to fight to keep my daughter and her one birth sibling I know of connected.

So for now it is kind of funny how we the adults, great grandma, my husband and I are really are making all the bridges, building all the links that these two will hopefully later assume and continue into adulthood. I send packages from big sister to the baby, great grandma sends little letters dictated by a tiny little brother to his big sister. Hopefully no matter how we come to feel about each other we will be able to over look that in favor of what is right for these siblings. They say that sibling relationships are the ones we take with us through our lives the longest. You might marry, divorce, or become a widow, you may bury your parents, your friends may move away and lose touch but your siblings will be there with you through it all. From the time you are small till you are old and grey no one will understand and love you longer in your life.

A long and loving connection, hey who would not want that for their kids?