Nervous by proxy. Empathy nervousness?

(Without background details - if you've read my other journal, then the characters will be familiar.)

I just got a call from M. It seems our soon to be sis-in-law A. has been busy putting together a surprise for D. for their wedding. She is, at this very moment, gone to meet and talk to SD., M.'s son from his first marriage. M. hasn't seen or heard from SD for close to twenty years. (Not going to get into the details of that, either - suffice it to say that M.'s ex was (is?) a bitch.)

M. is entirely anxious. Will SD. come to the wedding? Will he want to meet M. and me and the kids? And yes, my kids are well aware they have an older step-brother. They know his name and his age and what he was like when he was a baby and have seen early photographs of him. Them knowing he exists is something I insisted upon - I have always firmly believed he'd enter our lives and

1] I didn't want the kids to be confused, and

2] I want SD to know that we think about him and talk about him.. that he IS a member of our family.

So yes. It's been about twenty years. I've never met him.

Does he resemble M., do you think? What does he do? Is he in college or university?

I'm fearful, too. I'm so afraid that M. is going to be hurt by this somehow. As far as we can tell, SD. wasn't even aware that the man who raised him wasn't his birth father. Or if he did know, word in the Russian community was that the ex had never had anything nice to say about M., so perhaps SD. felt no inclination to meet with us.

Will M. have to prove himself? That not seeing SD. was never his decision and was out of his hands?

And I keep going back, over and over again, to one of the last arguments M. had with his own father, Y.

"You have to let him come to you! And have something to show that you didn't forget about him! Put some money in a bank account for him." Those are Y.'s words.

We don't have money for him, and all the toys and gifts that were always sent back unopened at Christmas and birthdays were long since given, played with and abondoned by his step-brother and -sister. But maybe that's it, right? We have the kids to show him and we have family portraits drawn in crayon that were tacked to the fridge door for months on end: the tallest is always M., I'm the one with yellow hair, D. and J. (depending on which particular hand drew it) are either flying or crying and no one knows who the 3-legged dog belongs to. But with us, sometimes flying with the other or standing beside his dad, is SD.

In those portraits, they look a lot alike.

I hope it's enough.

It's been 6 months since M. lost his father. Maybe within the next few he can gain a little piece of family back.