Now one foot, now the other

Bobby was named after his grandfather, Bob. Bob was the one who helped Bobby learn to walk. “Hold on to my hands, Bobby,”his grandfather said. “Now one foot, now the other.”

One of the best things Bob and Bobby did was to play with the old wooden blocks that were kept on a shelf, in the small sewing room under the front stairs. The blocks had pictures of animals on them. Bob and Bobby would put the blocks one on top of the other very slowly, building a tall tower. Sometimes the tower would be almost finished. “Just one more block,” Bob would say.“And that’s the elephant block.” And they would carefully put the elephant block on the very top. But Bob would sneeze and the tower would fall down. Bobby would laugh and laugh. Then Bob would sit Bobby on his knee and tell him stories.“Bob, tell me the story about how you taught me to walk,” Bobby would say. And his grandfather would tell Bobby how he held Bobby's hands and said, “Now one foot, now the other. And before you knew it ...”

Then one day Bobby came home from school and his grandfather wasn’t there. “Bob is in the hospital,” Dad told Bobby,“He’s had a stroke (中风) and he is too sick to see anyone.” Months later, his father told him that Bob was coming home.

“Now, Bobby,” Dad said, “Bob is still very sick. He can’t move or talk. And he can’t remember us.”Bobby just nodded and didn’t say anything.

One day, Bob tried to say something to Bobby, but the sound that came out was awful. Bobby ran out of the room.“Bob sounded like a monster!” Bobby cried. “He can’t help it, Bobby,”Mom said. So, Bobby went back to the room where Bob was sitting.

“I didn’t mean to run away, Bob. I’m sorry,” Bobby said. “Do you know who I am?” Bobby thought he saw Bob blink (眨眼睛) his eyes.

“Mom,” Bobby called. “Bob knows who I am.”

“Oh Bobby,” Mom said. “Your grandfather doesn’t recognize any of us.”

Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane have been friends for 60 years. Born in Hawaii 15 months apart, they met in the sixth grade and played football together at a Honolulu prep school.

Macfarlane never knew his father, and Robinson was adopted. Separately, they sought answers about their ancestry (n.祖先，血统). Macfarlane turned to family history and DNA-matching websites to learn more about it after unsuccessful searches on the internet and social media. “So then we started digging into all the matches (n.匹配) he started getting,” said his daughter, Cindy Macfarlane-Flores.

A top match - someone with identical X chromosomes (n.X染色体)- had the username Robi737.Robison’s nickname was Robi and he flew 737s for Aloha Airlines, Macfarlane-Flores said.

It tuned out Robinson used the same website to find answers about his family. They later learned they have the same birth mother.

“It was a shock,” Macfarlane said.

Then came the big evening.

I love my family and I will remember the happy day forever!