My mother passed away in 1968 when I was a year old, my father passing away 39 years later. After he died, I was given a large amount of personal papers and such from their time together in the 1950’s and 1960’s, including the only picture I have ever seen of my four siblings and mother and father together.
So I’m reading their wedding album more closely and I notice that there’s an extended section of her writing about the time she met my father, including her original observations, etc.
So I guess it’s true, that scene in Mamma Mia! about the “dot dot dot’s”. And this was a double-triple-dot, I guess for added emphasis.
It’s very sweet and all, but still… this was the first date, mom! :eek:
I had an aunt whose first baby came - gasp! - NINE MONTHS AND FOUR DAYS after her wedding! The whole family was SHOCKED! (Also the whole family obviously had nothing better to do than count on their fingers, but I digress). This happened before I was born but I heard about it many times.
This isn’t going to be a first date / count the months thread, is it? On account of, you
can be with somebody for hours and the conversation never turns to his wedding tackle.
Perhaps they parked and … y’know, talked about themselves, got to know the other better. (I’m speaking from experience, here).
If you are going to hint that your mother was the type to provide juicy gosippy tales for us to enjoy, you need to back that up with some detail, eh?
Nah, my parents married in 57 and my mother was diagnosed as being barren (I know no more than that), so they adopted my sisters in '60 and '62. They were shocked when she became pregnant with my brother in '65, and less so when I came along in '67. And it’s not a revelation that my mother didn’t go to her wedding bed with an unknowing hesitation, not with how her mom would go on at length about how she was completely boy-crazy from the age of 13-onward, which is buttressed by the fact her high school scrapbooks seem to focus on the sporting exploits certain male football stars of the Charleston, West Virginia area.
I guess if you want a theme to the thread, how about discussing finding similar references (the “…”) in your parents/grandparents writings.
But really, it’s just a MPS I thought I would share. That’s all.
The really awful thing is that both of my parents were buried on my oldest sister’s birthday, 39 years apart. I don’t know why the people in charge allowed that to happen, it seems rather monstrous to me, especially my father’s funeral. It bothered me so much that I put it in my wills (living and estate) that I’m not to be buried on any direct family-members birthday.
When my grandmother died, we found some letters written to and from my grandfather, who was in England during WW2. They were not yet married at the time. We started reading them, and the ones we read from my grandfather were full of shame and apologies; wording along the lines of “I can’t believe what I did to you”, “I hope you can forgive me”, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make it up to you”, etc.
My aunt took the papers home to read that evening to see if she could find out what horrible crime he had committed. We all assumed he must have cheated on my grandmother.
Turns out they had pre-marital sex. Never underestimate the power of the Catholic church in the 40s in Québec!
For my wife and myself, a similarly structured sentence would be…
“John went to work at Domino’s and when he came back to my dorm room he brought some pizza. We ate, talked a lot …he didn’t leave until the next morning… Fortunately, it was Saturday, so no classes!”
Have you ever played that shower game where everyone gets, say, 5 toothpicks and you go around the circle saying “I have never (whatever)…” and anyone who has done (whatever) has to give up a toothpick until only one person is left with a toothpick? I had one great-aunt who always used to say “smoked a cigarette” and be all high-and-mighty when the other ladies had to give up their toothpicks.
One day when I was in my teens, my prim-and-proper grandmother (who had to give up her smoking toothpick every time) said in the car on the way home “Just ONCE, I would LOVE to say I have never had a baby less than 9 months after I was married,” because then my great-aunt would have had to give up her toothpick.
My dad used to say of his extended family “It’s odd that so many first babies are premature. All the other ones take 9 months.” So I think there was quite a bit of … going on in those days, too.
It’s only slightly over 9 months and babys often come early. I’d have given them the benefit of the doubt.
My friend’s cousin who gave birth almost 3 months “premature” to a 9lb baby after a very rushed marriage that few people were invited to, that I’m more skeptical about…
They’re now due their second and my friend said she hopes it’s not premature again like the last one. Give it up already, no-one cares! :rolleyes:
I have a friend who taught her daughter that she was a year younger than she was to cover it up. Granted, she’s Catholic and was in a very conservative community, and she let her daughter in on it as she got older, but still.
My parents were married on March 10 and my brother was born on November 17. My mom was due to start her period on their wedding day … but didn’t! She eventually told her mom a few years later, and Grandma had a fit.
