Shivers

The phone rang this morning and when I answered, a woman said, “Is this the Stewarts?” and I said, “Yes.” “Well,” she said, “this is a little strange, but I’m looking for Cliff Stewart.” I told her she had, indeed, reached Cliff Stewart. When she referred to him as “Kippy,” his childhood nickname, and named his sisters, I knew she was legit. To make a long story short, the woman calling was Cliff’s first cousin once removed from Houston, TX, who had found him using an online family search. Even though she’s eight years younger than he, and the only contact he ever had with her family was a trip to Houston 50 years ago, they talked like old friends for over two hours, and it looks like we’ll be making a trip to Houston in July for a reunion.

What makes this even more interesting is that yesterday I was the guest of a friend at the (get this) Naples Wellesley Club to hear the authors of Identical Strangers speak. They are two identical twins who were given up for adoption, separated at birth because some nutcase psychologist wanted to do a study on the effects of separating identical twins and, through a series of strange twists, met some 30-odd years later.

And, even more interesting, as Benders are wont to do, just a couple weeks ago I got into a conversation about families with the meat manager at Publix who had just found all kinds of relatives using an online search. When I told her that Cliff knew absolutely nothing about any of his family, other than his siblings, she offered to help me since she has a one-year subscription to Ancestry.com. I just emailed her and she’s ecstatic!

Shivers.