In 2019, I met some of my paternal family members, about a year after they found me on Facebook, two of the aunts. My father had never told the family about me, like my two half siblings of which he never spoke to them. May I say the sisters are closer to my age. As a result the oldest sister was under the impression that she was the oldest child and therefore gawd forbid your’s truly apparently knocked her off the pedestal in a March 2019 post of the reunion; but I had the class to use the hashtag #firstgrandchild because it was a) a fact and b) that sister is the first granddaughter, so WTF, right?
I realized that my paternal grandmother was this close to cheating death with a rare cancer. The family waited to an autistic blow up of yours truly (that if they would be open to say in the first place), that sign #1 was that they don’t see age in the grandchildren. The youngest grandchild is close to 16, while I’m the oldest (35.) The boundaries are, don’t tell the literal “children” about her condition, not even a yea or nay or any one liner at all. Maybe that’s a thing between us – the hierarchal children – and my paternal grandmother. This is the problem, selective boundaries to enhance control.