Akin

Kinsmen

A sister and a brother holding hands,jumping in our in our pool

Brendon adopted us as his grandparents

Shaunette is registered as Zayne's child

What is in a picture you may ask? Millions of words I shall answer. Much more than that,there are untold stories and I am going to tell you one.

I want to start with a friend that was looking for me after not seeing me for thirty years. He did the logical thing he went to our hometown Nigel where we both grew up and he visited my brother in the house he has been living in for the entire period. He asked about my whereabouts and received a curt answer. “We do not know where he is.”

So I am persona non grata. Off course that was a convenient lie and my friend did find me through my wife. What does that have to do with this image? The little boy is the reason his name is Brendon. Brendon like little people do crept into our hearts. He is the son of a woman who used to be involved with my wife’s son Zayne.

Zayne had a child with Onica and subsequently their relationship ended. The little girl in the image is Shaunette our grandchild from that union. The little boy was born after they split up and sometimes we visited Onica or she visited us and we were always surprised by this little boy’s behaviour. He would hug us and kiss us and would be genuinely showing his love and affection for us.

He started calling us Ouma and Oupa (grandmother and grandfather). He would also hug our daughter and recently visiting us she told us he came straight into her room, where she was studying, and jumped onto her lap and gave her a huge hug and a kiss.

Unfortunately Zayne is an irresponsible father with little or no contact with his daughter Shaunette. She however knows and loves us and is always welcome in our home together with her two siblings Jessica and Brendon.

Before Zayne disappeared out of Onica’s life he told all and sunder with great pride that Jessica is also his child. That is patently untrue and having a drug habit not many people took him seriously at all. I placed some photographs of them visiting us on Facebook and quite a few women commented that the little boy resemble Zayne when he was a little boy.

One of them was the ex-wife of my wife’s ex-husband that commented that the boy looks identical to one of her own boys.

I complained to my wife because her sisters with their comments were insensitive as far as I was concerned and had no right claiming the boy as a family member. She mentioned it to Onica and Onica said many told her the same and on being asked about his father she said she honestly does not know.

She went as far as saying she would do a paternity test on Shaunette and Brendon to once and all reveal the truth.

Before all of this I mentioned to my wife on many occasions that this little boy feels completely at home with us and it seems he have claimed us as his grandparents. We still do not know and maybe we shall never know but in the meantime for all practical reasons we treat him as our blood relative and we are very fond of him and his siblings.

I also received a huge surprise when I discovered an ex-girlfriend of mine had a daughter living in America and not with the rest of her family in South Africa. I dated Christina before I started my two years compulsory National Defence Force Service. She unexpectedly stopped communicating with me and I wrote it off due to the fact I was going to be away for long periods of time and she might have found a new boyfriend. After the Army I phoned her and there was a little girl making a noise in the background. She shouted “Quimby shut up I am on the phone.” I asked her, “What did you call that child?”, she got offended and defensive and slammed the phone down.

Truth is before I left for military service we were much in love and decided on names for possible children if we had any. A boy would be Christopher and a girl Quimby. A very unique name and when I Googled it I only found one Quimby and she looked identical to my brother’s daughter Mariska.

No one would blame me for thinking that Quimby might be my child and that Christina married another guy who may have thought it was his child or he accepted her with child and all. Nobody would blame me but my brother did. The same one that did not know where I was when a long lost friend searched for me in our hometown.

This is all true and it is all sad because that is how the dice falls in life. You can however not fool a little boy who instinctively knows his family and likewise if I ever had to meet Quimby’s two little girls I suspect they would instantly recognise me as kin.