When I came out to my mom, she told me that my grandfather (her dad) used to spend the weekends away from his wife, hanging out in San Francisco gay bars. Then she told me that in college, she had slept with another woman. I felt like Joan Cusack in In & Out: “Is everybody gay?!”
Yes, but maybe the milkman had brown eyes. 
Thanks for reminding me. I’m 1/16 Cherokee or Lumbee from dad’s side. I don’t know which because of the reason you mention. It is still “impolite” to mention that someone has native American in their family tree in the small NC town dad is from.
My…Dad’s…Birthday. :eek:
Filing this away under things I wish I could scrub out of my brain…
Hmm… I just thought of another example, one a little closer to home:
My maternal grandmother’s maiden name is exactly the same as my father’s last name. It’s a rather rare misspelling of the name, which I’ve only seen in my family. In other words, it’s pretty darn likely that my mother and father were somehow related, especially since their respective families reside in roughly the same part of Texas. :eek:
That’s totally inappropriate. And not a nice thing to say about the milkman, or “Other Dad”, as we liked to call him.
Despite Dad’s Norweigan/German heritage, he looks almost Greek, which makes me wonder if there’s some interesting bit of family heritage that our extensively researched family tree has failed to uncover. One of his brothers has similar dark, curly hair, though his hair and complexion isn’t quite as dark as Dad’s, so it seems unlikely that Dad is a product of a scandalous affair. Mom’s side is the “interesting” one, though. Rural, insular Mennonite family, with at least three generations of serious abuse. My great-aunt (maternal grandfather’s sister) ran away from home when she was in her late teens, I think, and lived with a man in New York. Her father dragged her back home somehow and planned to have her surgically sterilized, ostensibly because of her loose morals, though there’s little doubt that he sexually abused her and wanted her sterilized for his own purposes shudder. My grandfather said he didn’t remember whether she had the surgery or not. She killed herself when she was 22, by drinking lye out of the medicine cabinet.
Several years ago, Mom found out that she was actually fathered by her father’s cousin. It’s no secret at all that Grandma and Grandpa had a miserable marriage. Grandpa’s cousin lived with them for a while, and Grandma got pregnant. Apparently it was an open secret among the cousin’s family, who all refered to her as “Tom’s girl,” but it was hushed up in mom’s family.
Incidently, although I’m basically a Western European mutt, I never had any Irish heritage that I was aware of. Until it came to light that Mom is technically a McK-----, not a R---------. Suddenly I had a reason to celebrate St. Patty’s Day! 
Oh, I also have a gay uncle and a gay cousin and two wiccan cousins (the gay cousin and her sister) on Mom’s side. Possible a gay cousin on my Dad’s side, too, but he’s born-again-Christian, so I don’t expect him to come out anytime soon.
Oh, and the parents of the gay, wiccan cousin, who for thirteen years thought she was “going through a phase”? During the Vietnam war, her father tore up his draft card and mailed it back to the government, along with a two-page list of all the drugs he’d taken that made him inelligible for service. Before he was arrested, he and his girlfriend got married and she got pregnant so she could collect government money (welfare or somesuch) while he was in jail. Then she moved to a hippy commune in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she gave birth to the girl who would eventual become a gay wiccan. Why her parents were so scandalized by her behavior is beyond me. :rolleyes:
Actually there is one big family secret that I still don’t know.
When my maternal grandmother (the one who married my Jewish grandfather) was 3 her mother died from TB. Her paternal grandfather sent her to a convent with the intention that she grow up there and become a nun. Her stepmother had to pay the nuns to get her out 5 years later- this was between 1918 and 1923 in South Africa, if you want some context.
My great-great-grandfather sending her to the convent (at the age of 3!) is weird for several reasons.
- Her father was still living
- Her father re-married and he and her stepmother never had children
- Her father died when she was 8, and her stepmother rescued (her word, not mine) her from the convent and sent her to live with her maternal aunt…who apparently wasn’t aware that her only neice had been sent to become a nun, and was horrified.
- Neither my grandmother, nor her parents, nor her grandparents were Catholic (my grandmother is now, but that’s another story).
Now, I have no idea why she was sent there, but my great-great-grandfather sounds like a real piece of work. Apparently he burned ALL my great grandmother’s belongings and refused to let my grandmother keep even a photo of her mother.
The truth will hopefully come out one day. The only person who knows apart from my grandmother is my aunt and she rightly feels it is up to my grandmother to tell everyone. My grandmother doesn’t talk about what happened in the convent…EVER… so it can’t have been good, but as she “refuses to speak ill of the dead” she’s won’t talk about her grandfather or say why she was sent there.
I have a feeling that my great-great-grandfather re-married and had more children with his second wife, and that my grandmother was sent to the convent to prevent her inheriting anything, but I could be wrong, and such a simple explanation doesn’t account for why she’d keep that secret so carefully.
There are other theories in the family (my grandmother wasn’t my great grandfather’s child, my great grandmother wasn’t as white as she claimed to be and my great great gradnfather was ashamed of his mixed race gradnchild) but I suppose we’ll just have to wait and hope my grandmother comes clean.
The sad thing is, no matter what the truth is, no one in the family will blame my grandmother or think worse of her for it, and keeping the secret seems to be this huge burden for her. She’s 90 and in failing health, and it seems like if she could let go of this she could go in peace.
Sorry, this is actually making me cry now.
Aannd I just realized how I’ve dated myself by using the term “milkman”.
I honestly don’t know if we had a milkman or not. I’m sure they existed way back then, but I have no memory of getting milk in anything but cartons.
I suspect that “It was the milkman” will outlive actual milkmen in this country for many decades if not centuries. Think of how many otherwise obscure words, expressions, or concepts are widely used in idioms.
But then, I’m almost 50, so maybe I’m just dated too…
Let’s see…family secrets.
My Great-Grandmother was a full blooded Kaw Indian, never told anyone. Neither of my maternal grandparents knew their fathers, original latch-key kids.
I don’t have an aunt that is gay, but I do have a cousin.
We think my brother fathered a child (we accepted her as his until the mother declined our request for a blood test) No word where she might be, or even what her name is now.
My grandmother has 3 daughters but has had 9 sons-in-law, and counting.
My husbands family suffers from snob-itis, everything is a secret. Real father MIA, step-father-alcoholic, sister-crazier than a shit house rat and makes porn. Mother was cheating on step-father with her professor while they were married. Grandfather’s family was from Spain and americanized his name to do business.
I worked from Noon to midnight New Years Eve, went home and got knocked up. She was originally due sometime between Sept 27 and Oct 6, she got fed up and came out Sept 10, so she will never have to have squicky feelings about New Years, oh, I worked til 1am the day I delivered her and was most likely in labor at work.
My father is a rabid child molester, no one on his side of the family will acknowledge it, nor will the state of georgia prosecute him. They say it was lies I made up (when I was 3) Not sure how they are justifying what he did to my half-sister, who he got custody of after her Mom died (supposedly of MS, although I have read it isn’t fatal) So, big secret, child molesters are safe in the great state of Georgia!
An aside, my brother, a convicted felon, was given custody of my half-sister, although he is not allowed to vote in Florida. Can raise a kid, can’t punch a ballot, makes sense…
Oh, I know, and I know that I probably built up my mother’s antibodies that caused her to have so many problems when my sister was born.
My point is, I was not born two months early. I was right on time, but since they were married in February and I was born in September, I was two months early.
Not.
A friend of mine didn’t find out till after his dad’s funeral that his dad was a full-blooded Cherokee. His family had claimed to be white so they wouldn’t be descriminated against.
Both my gread-grandfathers, fathers of my parents’ fathers, fought in the Civil War. We’ve always thought that since both were NC natives, both fought for the Confederacy. A few years ago my mom did some research and found out her grandpa actually fought for the UNION. He was part of the abolitionist movement in the Appalachians. That’s why there’s a Union county in NC.
Let’s see… The ones I know about are:
A. I was born 6 months after my parents got married. I was about 14 when I put this together. To be fair, my parent’s didn’t hide it once I figured it out, but they never mentioned it.
B. My aunt had 2 children with a man my grandfather hated. She then left him and tried to return home. My Grandfather let them live in his house for 30 days before she had to move out on her own.
C. My cousin decided she wanted a baby, so she slept with her best friend. Told him she wanted the baby, and that he was to have no financial, emotional, or parental responsibilities whatsoever. She now has a beautiful, bright blond 8-year old.
D. My uncle blamed the family, specifically my grandfather, for his PTSD AFTER Vietnam, and committed suicide.
E. My great-great grandmother didn’t believe in the sanctity of marriage, and had several children out of wedlock. Her husband raised all of her offspring, whether they were his or not.
F. I’m 1/16 Seminole Indian, from the same great-great grandmother.
G. My grandmother on my dad’s side ran away from home to marry my grandfather. I’ve been told there were threats to string him up if he ever returned to my great-grandfather’s farm.
Eli
One side
Geat uncle who accidently shot his wife while cleaning his gun.
Great aunt, his sister, who had a child with an Italian PoW who was working on the farm; resultant child had the “usual” sister turns out to be mother up-bringing.
Great aunt (unmarried) who lived in a “home”, “mental health” problems … probably syphilis. I only know this 'cos I expressed concern about my mental outlook when the great aunt featured next started to go senile.
Great aunt, her sister, suffered domestic abuse, cigarette burns on the arms is all I was told about, (age less than 10 - thanks gran !) & was disuaded from hitting her old man over the head with an iron as he slept by her father. Don’t think my dad knows and my brother certainly doesn’t.
T’other side
Grandfather who claimed to have “gypsy blood” - he was a Victorian (and a snob) so his pride in this doesn’t sit quite right unless it was the “noble savage” aspect which attracted him. Pre-WW1 he added to his surname to make it “less Jewish” sounding and thus avoid the risk of anti-Semitism.
Grandmother & great-aunt rumoured to be the illegitimate offspring of an influential newspapper magnet (a rumour given credence, at least with regard to the great-aunt, by her brther-in-law, the gypsy grandfather). Their poor mother was a “bolter” (most likely due to post natal depression, no one knows the end of her story) and they were brought up by their maiden aunt who was the magnet’s live-in secretary.
Said great aunt didn’t have any wedding photos or presents, “they were stolen while the couple were on honeymoon” … actually as she was somewhat, ahem, “round” when she married it was best there were no photos and well, she didn’t deserve any presents. This only came out after her death, her granddaughter also married in “full bloom” but history repeating itself was more of a joke than a concern as my cousin was surrounded by well-wishers.
Uncle who fled his over-bearing dad, moved to the States, married and had kids, divorced, was out MIA in for at least five years during which time another marriage came and went, luckily wife #3 helped him build the bridges and renew contact before he died.
Although bizarre at the moment (& incomprehensible to some family members) I’m sure the fact that my nephew is two weeks old and still no sign of a name will become a humourous part of family history one day …
My great-grandmother had an affair many years ago. Why she would cheat on her husband, who was and is the Nicest Man on Earth, is beyond me.
Their children, my grandmother and great-uncle, each married very young. My grandmother married my grandfather when she was 15 and he was 17. They didn’t tell her parents, and she went home to her parents like everything was normal after the wedding. My great-grandparents didn’t find out about the marriage for about six weeks, and my grandmother found she was pregnant with my mother soon after. My grandfather apparently didn’t realize you were supposed to stop dating other girls when you get married. I believe my grandmother was already a divorced single mother by the time she graduated high school.
Her brother, my great-uncle, had to get married after he got his girlfriend Jenny pregnant in college.
Meanwhile, my grandmother went on to marry: an alcoholic, a closeted gay man (it was the early 1960s by then), and a guy by the name of Frank. While she was married to Frank, she got pregnant with my aunt. Frank was my aunt’s legal father, even though in reality she was either the product of rape or an affair, depending on which version of the story you hear. Frank knew my aunt wasn’t his, but even after their very nasty divorce he insisted on exercising his “parental” rights in order to hurt my grandmother. Oh, the divorce? That happened when Frank decided to run off with the aforementioned Jenny, my great-uncle’s wife and the mother of their daughter.
Someday I could write a very soapy Southern gothic novel based on my mother’s family’s exploits.
Oh, and my father has two male cousins who are in their 50s and are “confirmed bachelors” that the family doesn’t seem to talk to very much. The gay streak in my father’s family is only slightly more pronouced than that in my mother’s. I have quite a few gay or bisexual relatives, but very few have officially come out.
A friend of mine was born 7 and a half months after the wedding. This led to a lot of snickers from the women at her father’s village about “that big city gal who looked so strait an’ narrow, HAH!”.
My friend’s mom gets quite angry about it and says “apparently those morons have never heard of 7-monthers!” Friend’s mom and friend’s dad swear she was a virgin bride.
On the other hand, one of my father’s cousins got married when his bride had “a four-month hepatitis”. The cousin wasn’t the greatest catch in the world, but the four-month hepatitis is one of my nicest relatives and his IQ seems to be the sum of his parents’…
Are you my sister? 
My dad went on to marry five more times, seven in all.
I thought my mom and stepdad were married long before they were. I think cohabitation was frowned on in small towns in the early 50’s.
I still wonder why he changed his entire name when he emigrated from England. I’ll never know, so that family secret will remain a secret.
Other family secrets – a cousin died at 12 from – supposedly – syphilis. How could this be? Mean-spirited aunt said “she got it from her father.” :dubious:
My goodness, our ancestors certainly kicked up the dickens, didn’t they?
Doesn’t sound like things have changed much, except for the “sweeping it under the rug” and “carrying the secret until her dying day.”