Someone dearer than dear to me celebrated her 69th birthday Tuesday – the sister I didn’t know I had until June 2005, when I was 44 and she was 50. Teresa (Terry) Ann Workman Zoubovitch has been a loving, understanding, patient, giving, funny, accepting and all-around wonderful Big Sis to me for 18-plus years since I found my birth family – specifically, my three much older full siblings.
Tuesday night, Terry, our oldest brother Crys and I shared a bonding Zoom call (see photo) to celebrate her birthday and do some catching up (I last saw them when I traveled to Colorado in July).
While our teen brothers Crys and Robin (who left us in 2009) knew our divorced mother Betty was pregnant with a fourth child in 1960 and early 1961 in Huntington, West Virginia, Terry was just a little girl, oblivious to that fateful part of Betty’s trying life. So when I found the three of them (our parents had passed away long before), while our brothers happily realized I hadn’t died in childbirth as they’d been led to believe, Sis was joyously shocked to learn she had a third brother six years her junior. When we confirmed with a DNA test several weeks later that their father Bob was also mine – meaning I’d been conceived about a year after our parents’ divorce – so many things I was learning and feeling began to make sense.
The next birthdays in my birth family will fall on Feb. 28, when both Crys and I will turn a year older – among the many cool twists to this remarkable journey. Crys, who turned 17 the day I was born, will arrive at 80 and I’ll reach 63. Kay and I are hoping to fly to the Denver area for a couple of days so we can all celebrate the brothers’ double birthdays together.
Happy birthday, dear Sister Teresa! We love you and feel blessed that we are all in one another’s lives after being apart for so long. 
A Life of Words 