Another dimension had been added to the plan. I had to include a visit to Oxford, or Banbury, to be precise, in order to meet up with my newly-found sister and her family. Yes, folks, I had discovered a whole family of people I had never met before and was dying to spend some time with them. I had been searching for my natural father for many years and had given up in the end. Then one day, late in 2008, my daughter was doing family tree research and decided to put out a request for information on the Trip Advisor notice board, of all places! She had seen there was a forum in the area in which I was born. Within two weeks she had emails asking why she was looking for the writer's father! This turned out to be only surviving daughter of my real father. The other two sisters had died, as had my Dad. It turned out my sister was living in the USA, along with 3 of her adult children, but has a son living in Banbury, Oxfordshire. There was also a niece and nephew from a deceased sister to meet with in Nottingham, which is the town where I was born.
After much shock, excitement, etc., my new sister agreed to travel to her son's home so we could meet up on my trip. This was now a huge priority for me and was really going to be perfect, as all my kids and grandkids would be in England at the same time, so we could have a full reunion. As she is now 72, I was worried about anything happening to my sister before we could meet and had decided that if she couldn't in fact make the journey I would do a side trip to Ohio to see here in her own home.
Life throws some biggies at you sometimes, and I now had a sister, brother-in-law, several nieces and nephews and their children to fit into my itinerary. This really was turning out to be the trip of a lifetime in more ways than one.
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