'Our Little Sister' a tender study of family and kinship

Sisters greeting an unknown sibling who shares one parent is the subject of Our Little Sister, a Japanese film now in art theaters. Adoption is not part of this story, yet the issues were close enough to the bone I was glad to be sitting in the dark, alone, with no one near me. They would have wondered how this deeply charming and quietly moving film would have elicited deep feelings in me. Some people might simply get misty eyed as the film ends, but I slipped my sunglasses on as I left to hide the outright tears.

Let's get on with the story: Three sisters, now grown and working, were left by their father 15 years earlier when he had an affair that produced a daughter, Suzu, now an adolescent. Suzu was living with the father, and a new wife in a distant village when he died. The three sisters travel by train to funeral, and Suzu, the little sister, meets them at the station, walks them to their hotel, and quietly says goodbye.

Contacting siblings when a woman denies she is 'the' first mother

Diving in the unknown....                      photo by Ken Robbins

What do you do when a first mother denies she is your mother, but the proof that she is seems irrefutable? What do you do about siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, other family members? Do you contact them?

The question comes up often because it happens all too often. Recently I met a woman in her sixties who believes she found her natural mother, but the woman, now quite elderly, wrote back that she was not the person being sought. However, if the woman is the birth mother--as the records obtained by the adoptee indicate--the adoptee may have full siblings. And she would love to know them.