Half v. Full

It is obvious; we don’t look the same, we didn’t have the same last name and he always called another person on that one specific day in June. I never knew we were only half siblings. Keagan is my older brother, my only brother and my only sibling. It took me until recently to figure out that we are only half siblings. It should have been obvious. We have two different colors of skin. I am white and he is colored. He has coily, kinky hair and I have long, wavy, straight hair. Nobody in my family looks like him, but he is still the oldest grand kid and cousin. Nobody ever thought anything that Keagan looked different from everyone else. Out in public people looked, people stared, and asked questions. How could two white parents have a little colored boy and another white child. My innocent, little head never thought anything of it because he is just my older brother. I always looked up to him and wanted to be just like my “big brown brother”. I saw he was different and used to ask my parents when I was going to changed colors to match what my brother looked like. We obviously are not full blooded siblings. Biologically we have different parents, but legally they are the same.I never fully understood what a half sibling was or what a step-sibling was growing up. Some of my friends would say things like “Oh my half-brother did this” or “My step sister said that”and I could never fully understand what that meant. Aren’t all brother just brothers? Aren’t all sisters just sisters? I think I never understood this because nobody else in my family that has a different dynamic like others may have. The extended family never made a big stink that my family was different. Certain things made me question our relationship. We had different names. That boggled my mind. Being a younger child I always thought that all families have the same name with the mom, dad, and children. We didn’t. When Keagan was born in 1996 my parents were not married and Keagan was not my fathers child. The name on his birth certificate was my mother’s maiden name at the time. That being said his name was Chasse while everyone else’s name was Deslauriers. My name is Deslauriers. My dad’s name is Deslauriers. My mom’s name is Deslauriers. Keagans name was Chasse. Key word was.When I was a mere second grader my brother went from my half-brother” to my “full brother”. After this one day in November we would all have the same last name of Deslauriers. In the fall of 2008 my brother was legally adopted by my dad and he became our dad. He has always been “our” dad, but now it was official and legal. On this day in November nothing about the family dynamic changed. Keagan was still the oldest grandchild, oldest cousin, and my oldest brother. The only thing that happened was a legal document got signed and we all finally had the same last name. In November of 2008 my family was apart of a transracial adoption, and ever since then it has sparked me.We don’t look the same, but he is my brother. The good, the bad and the ugly, he is still my brother. I want to adopt children when I am older. I want to teach them that it doesn’t matter where they come from they are still family. Keagan is not blood with anybody on the Deslauriers side (my dads side) but he is still loved and treated the same as everybody else that is blood related. We don’t look the same, we didn’t have the same last name and he always called another person dad that looked like Keagan. There has never been a time when I did not look at him and see someone who was my “half-brother”. Biologically we are only half, legally he was adopted and we became full but mentally he is just my big brother. Always has been and always will be. Learning this about my family has changed the way I view a family. So many people have very diverse families but none of that matters. Love is what makes a family a family not blood.

Photo on Foter.com