And then there are my half sister and brother, Christy Vinnedge Geyer and David Willis Vinnedge. It is about them that my guts were tied in a knot. I've always hated the venerable genealogical terms, half brother and half sister. Too much the literalist, I can't decide which half of them is related to me, so just claim the whole person. As long as memory serves I've been unsettled whenever someone uses the divisive term.
Step is no better.
What abominable terms. And in-law terminology is even worse. Genealogy isn't about dividing families, it is about uniting them. Yet, when I got down to my generation and the places to which it has dispersed, the problem of halves had me in a full nelson, shoving my face into the hard biological facts of families. I had to accept defeat with what little dignity remained.