Lunch With Ralph
A few months ago I wrote about finding out I had a new half-sister. From that encounter (we have been in touch several times via text), one of my other half-sisters found a long lost half-brother in the online world. His name is Ralph and he is two years younger than me. It seems our father spread his seed far and wide across California, Mexico and perhaps even in Venezuela, where he and my mother originally met. I contacted Ralph and let him determine for himself if we shared a common father by giving him enough details to do his research. It didn’t take long for him to confirm enough details for us both to be certain that we were, in fact, half-brothers. I offered to get together and since we seemed to share motorcycling as a common activity, I suggested we ride somewhere for a meet and greet. Apparently, he had some personal issues to wrestle to the mat and I didn’t hear from him for the better part of two months. My thinking was very simple, give him the time and space to decide if he wanted to expand his life network. I was not at all surprised that he needed some time to process all of this. Having gone through the process of being “discovered” by a half-sibling, I know how that feels and I know that curiosity sooner of later wins out over indifference. Sure enough, today Ralph texted me (or, more accurately, Linked-In messaged me) and we have agreed to meet today for lunch about twenty-five miles north of here near where he lives. He offered to meet at a more half-way spot, but I feel its better to go somewhere he is familiar with and his suggested spot sounds just fine. I will stop this story right here and resume it after I have had my lunch with Ralph and can report on it for a real-time story.
So, I rode up to Old Town in Temecula and got to the Swing Inn ahead of Ralph. I secured us a table outdoors, but in the shade on this sunny day. Ralph arrived on time and had the expected eighteen-inch-long beard tied up in rubber bands. We shook hands (something that used to be the norm, but doesn’t happen much during COVID) and sat down to catch up with what’s been going on for the last sixty-five years or so. Ralph was born eighteen months after me in Marin County, north of San Francisco. Somewhere along the way, his mother, a jazz singer of sorts, remarried the drummer of her jazz band and gave Ralph two half-siblings. Apparently, he did not spend a lot of time growing up with them, but is in contact with them (one is an orthopedic surgeon in Boston). He seems to have been raised more by his maternal grandmother than his mother for reasons I didn’t feel privileged enough to explore. I gave him the rundown on his other half-siblings ranging from me and my two sisters (Kathy and Barbara), our two half-sisters (Diane and Sondra/Charlie), our half-sister Marissa and our half-brother, Andre. I also rattled off the next two generations as well, which consists of my three kids and two grandkids and the the dozen nieces and nephews and their respective four or five grand nieces and nephews. I skimmed over some of the details for fear of overwhelming the poor guy with his extended, extended family. The majority of the siblings live in California with one in Vegas and one in Mexico City.
Ralph was pretty unaware of the strong Venezuelan connection as well as the Mexico City chapter. I filled him in as best I could, explaining that we also had Venezuelan cousins which he might find particularly interesting since they, unlike the rest of us, still bear the Prosdocimi last name. It’s a pretty easily identified marker with not so many other Prosdocimi’s out there in the world, especially compared to Marin’s, which seems to be like Smith in Puerto Rico and parts of Spain and France. He seems to have had even more information than I did of the connections on our father’s side back in Europe. He referenced some sort of family Prosdocimi bible that his mother had given him that gave him some of his father’s ancestry (strangely missing the post-war Venezuelan part). He seemed to think that the origin of the Prosdocimi family was in northern Greece in the sort of Macedonian region and that it was fairly well-connected with royalty of some sort. I hated to tell him that if the source of the information was from our father to his mother, there was a fair bit of which to be suspect in that information. What was interesting for me was to imagine what life must have been like as a Prosdocimi, a fate I only avoided by a hair in 1962 when my mother changed our name when her divorced husband changed his from Prosdocimi.
I showed Ralph a picture of our Mexico City brother and commented that he and Andre looked very much alike. I showed him other pictures and he felt there was a lot of family resemblance all over the place. People see what they want to see, but that’s all good. We then shared some life stories. I tried to give him my most humorous “Dad” stories, as they were, in order to give him a sense of the man who sired him. Nothing I said was shocking to him and generally comported with his sense that our father was less than a responsible parent to any of his children (always good to know that you were not singled out for bad treatment). Surprisingly, he did not recall my telling him that he was thirty years or so dead at this point. I told him he was buried at the Mission San Luis Rey and that we could go see it today on a post-prandial ride if he liked. He had to still get over the realization that he was dead.
I pieced together a bit about his life and it seems he has been married twice and has four children, the youngest of which, a girl of sixteen named Sandy, still lives with him. He lives in a condo in Marietta and is retired from a career as a systems programmer. Apparently he had a fairly traumatic divorce from his first wife and though he has stayed close to his older three children, he gave me the sense that he had been taken to the cleaners by his first wife and was just now back on his feet from the trauma of it all. I gave him a sense of my various bumps and grinds of life just to make him feel that he was not so different than any of us. What is a life without a few boo-boos along the way.
The Swing Inn is a regular spot for Ralph and he was known by the wait staff to the point where he just asked for “the usual” in terms of food and drink. It seems he is a vegan and he is partial to an egg-white omelette and a Bloody Mary. I had a good old Patty Melt and a Diet Coke explaining that we all had to pick our own poisons. He seemed to appreciate the thought and got the message that he likes alcohol and shuns meat and I like meat and shun alcohol. I’m not sure how this came up, but it seems he had a bout with cancer last year and after some surgery, he has emerged no worse for wear and said he felt good.
I insisted on paying and explained that it was a big brother thing. He kept trying to pay for something, but I fended off his attempts. We finished up and headed out to our bikes, intending to ride the twenty miles to the Mission San Luis Rey. I had shown Ralph my helmet with the motion-detecting brake light on the back. He thought it was cool. When he pulled up next to me I started to explain the route we would take and he asked to beg off for today, saying that he was a bit tired and should probably not push it today. Given the drink at lunch, that decision pleased me and while it didn’t occur to me at the time, I’m guessing it was a holdover from his health issues from last year.
We have texted since lunch with him telling me how much he appreciated getting to know his brother. For my part I got him to give me his address and I have bought and shipped a helmet brake light to him. When I sent him the receipt and told him to expect the package I explained that it was another big brother thing with me wanting to make sure that now that we had met, I wanted to do what I could to keep him safe. I’ve never been a big brother before except to my half-sisters and once to Andre who felt our sisters were “just women, and we are MEN” (this was how I knew he probably was my father’s son). It felt nice to give him a few bits of wisdom, to listen to his stuff, buy him a lunch and send him a “stay safe” gift. We said we should do it again, and maybe we will, but I feel that in having lunch with Ralph, I have already changed at lest two lives for the better.