Silver Sparrow is the title of a novel by Tayari Jones about two half-sisters, their shared father, and how life unfolds for them and their families*. I went to see her at the Decatur Book Festival and while discussing her book, Tayari Jones asked if there were any Silver Sparrows in the room. I raised my hand. The feeling of pride that accompanied that acknowledgement surprised me.
The story of me and my half-siblings has always been shrouded in shame. I never took on the shame directly, but some people look at me as the shame – I was a catalyst for change in my parents’ lives. But I never even remotely accepted the blame for my parents’ decisions.
My father was married with children at the time he met my mother, and she was divorced with children. They began their relationship while my father was still legally married. I have 3 half-brothers and 4 half-sisters. I shared one half-brother and one half-sister with our mother. I shared two half-brothers and three half-sisters with our father. I’m the only and last child between my parents and all my siblings are “half”. No one in my immediate family used the term “half” so I’ll be dropping that now.
It was easy to share my mother with my brother and sister because they lived at home with me and neither of their fathers were involved in their lives. It was a little more complicated with sharing my father. His oldest children were close to my mother’s age, so he wasn’t co-parenting young children but adults. They were married and having their own children – I have three nieces and a nephew who are older than I am. So, while I was technically sharing my father with his older children, what was happening day to day was that I had a father (and in some respects my mother’s children had him as a father), and his older children were abandoned. With young children, fathers typically make some legal arrangement to share custody with mothers and all the children manage to grow up together in some manner. With adult children, what happened in our circumstances, is that I became a secret.
I didn’t realize I was supposed to be a secret, mainly because I knew the truth about my family structure and we never treated it like a secret. But when I spent time with my father’s children and I met people from their everyday lives, I had to be explained. “Who is this small child with you – too young to be friends with your own children?” people would ask. “This is my baby sister. Yep, there was one more who came much later.” Or if my nieces were asked then it was often, “This is my baby Auntie.”
And I almost got pleasure that we’d shocked someone because our family was a little unexpected. As a teenager and young adult I started to feel more sensitive to other people’s reactions.
The moment I felt for certain that I had been a kept secret was at my niece’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid and was approached at the rehearsal by two ladies I didn’t know. They asked who I was, and I told them the bride was my niece. They assumed I’d sort of adopted my way into the family – not that she was my biological niece. I explained – no, her father is my older brother – and the look on their faces, the sudden silence to me, and the whispering behind my back but in front of my face felt shameful. That is what I felt.
I feel compelled to provide some disclaimers. First, I do not know those ladies and if they were standing in my face this minute, I wouldn’t know they were the ones with whom I spoke and couldn’t tell you what the significance was of them being at the wedding rehearsal. Second, there could have been any number of reasons they weren’t privy to details about our family that had nothing to do with feelings or opinions on how I came to be – I have no idea what the relationship with these ladies is between my family. And third, though it’s no secret that this brother had a difficult time with our father and his choices, neither he, his wife, or his daughter ever made me feel anything less than precious when I was with them. This is just a recollection of a moment in my life where I felt shame and realized I was a secret – not a factual account of anything done to me by anyone. I was old enough that I could understand that my existence and the circumstances around my conception was not necessarily something to boast about and not necessarily information that just anyone needed to know. Yes, I am very aware that the compulsion to offer that disclaimer speaks rivers and yes, you likely will hear more about that later – I’m trying to keep these entries brief.
The first time I noticed how easy (and benign) it was for me to have become a secret was the first time I realized my siblings had become my secret. Years ago, an associate at work was leading a professional development workshop and as part of his intro and opening comments he would ask if anyone in the room had older brothers. This was much more about a segue into an anecdote about him having older brothers and less to do with getting a census of the participants. Though I had been in the room when he did this presentation several times, this was the first time I was a participant in the workshop, and so this was the first time I raised my hand. He was so startled that I felt a little embarrassed. He was silent for just a beat too long before he said that he had no idea that I had brothers. I said something to try and explain that there was no reason for me to have mentioned my brothers in our previous interactions – we had a professional relationship that was also relatively friendly – and before it became too awkward, he moved on. This would be true for most of the people I interact with on a daily basis. Just because I see or speak to someone everyday doesn’t mean that I’ve had any interactions with them that require them to know anything about my family structure. This has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about any member of my family and everything to do with the point of whatever I am trying to say at that moment.
So since that revelation, I look back on my memories with a different lens and with much less sensitivity than I used to. If you call me Regina, you do not know the whole story, trust me (even if you already knew everything I just shared). And there are no secrets – just rooms to the house you haven’t been invited to enter, so to speak. If you know me well (likely you call me Gina) you probably get the explanation of my family structure because you probably need it – anecdotes can get complicated if you don’t know the key players. But if you were introduced to me as Regina, and now call me Gina, (or vice-versa) you are missing some details – they aren’t secrets but you find out things on a need-to-know basis. And I determine when you need to know.
The pride in raising my hand at the book festival to identify myself as a Silver Sparrow was because it was a pretty name for something complex that I now find beautiful. My parents made the choices they thought were best at the time. I say that they weren’t always the right choices. Maya Angelou said “Just do right. Right may not be expedient, it may not be profitable, but it will satisfy your soul.” Some of their choices were expedient at the cost of being right. Some of their choices were profitable at the cost of being right. And some of their choices were easy and comfortable at the cost of being right. I know my parents sometimes didn’t consider – and at times didn’t understand – the impact that their decisions would have on the generations to come after them. And there is a lot of pain associated with all of us who suffered consequences of their choices. But, the day I raised my hand proudly declaring myself a Silver Sparrow was the day I saw the beauty of what they gave me. I was exposed to many different philosophies of life – all my siblings were adults and I was often in a position to be taught by them as parents to children. The brother who I mentioned earlier in the wedding story taught me how women should be treated by what I saw in how he treated his wife and daughter. All my sisters wanted me to look and behave ladylike, even though they all had slightly different ideas of what that meant and different deliveries of the message. Everyone expected me to be studious and ambitious and encouraged me to be the best they thought I could be – whether they really knew what that was or not. If I had not been a Silver Sparrow, I wouldn’t have had the siblings I have, and we wouldn’t have had the life experiences that have made us all more intentional about our life choices and aware of what we are contributing to the following generations. And while my life experiences range from horrible enough to repress to so joyous it is heartwarming, it’s that spectrum that gives me pride.
I have 3 brothers. I have 5 sisters (fictive kin included). I am Regina Lynette, and I am a Silver Sparrow.
*Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones is one of the books that I hugged after I finished reading it. I have read all her books and have recommended all of them at one time or another to friends and family – and now to you.
Pictured from left to right – An American Marriage, Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow.
I am Regina Lynette 