BLOOD STRANGERS: A Memoir by Kathy Briccetti

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I grew up with one sibling, a younger brother, and it wasn't until I was 16 that I discovered I had two half-sisters and a half-brother who lived with our father and his second wife -- just a Greyhound bus trip away. Back then, in the late '60s, when couples with children divorced, custody typically went to the mother, and when she remarried, her husband adopted the kids. At least that's what happened to my brother and me. We lost touch with our father for eight years until I got on that Greyhound bus and went to meet him again.

Pictured are the author (lower left), her father and her siblings in 1975.

That visit, my three young siblings and I squeezed together on a backyard swing set seat made for two, danced to the Jackson 5 and played at a sandy turn in the river. My 4-year-old sister followed me everywhere I went, waiting for me outside the bathroom door and climbing into my lap whenever I sat down. My new brother, 7, watched me carefully and wasn't sure about this instant extra big sister. And the eldest, my 9-year-old sister, handled her change in status with aplomb, becoming my pen pal for years.

I sent them stickers, National Geographic books about animals and postcards from everywhere I went. We visited every couple of years for a few days around the holidays. But then I went off to college, eventually moved across the country and they grew up without me.    

Read the rest at AOL News.

Once again, I'm grateful to Gina Misiroglu of Red Room for putting me in touch with the AOL people, which is one of the great ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors.