I don’t know my Mum’s religious beliefs. I suspect she’s agnostic bordering on Atheist, but I fear to ask her, in case I create a rift.
I am not sure if she knows I am an Atheist, though I suspect she does.
Come to think of it, I don’t know the religiosity of most of the people close to me. I do know that my Brother’s wife is religious, and that my nieces all unquestioningly believe there is a God. (I like to think that they are intelligent enough to see the light when they get older)
I know that my mother’s parents eloped, but none of us have any idea why.
I don’t know if my sister-in-law had cancer or a hysterectomy a few years back. But she seems to think I know all about whatever happened. I don’t know if nobody told me when I was living out of state, and they all assume I know, or if it happened when I was going through my divorce and I just didn’t have the energy nor brain cells to pay attention. But something happened, and it’s too late to ask now, since I always act like I know what they are alluding to…
I’m still not entirely sure when my sister’s birthday is…it’s in March…or May…whichever month has “Pices” for the sign because I do know she’s a Pices.
I really,* really*, hope that my Dad cheated on my Mom.
There’s got to be a story behind this one. Could you share it with us?
I don’t know my biological grandmother’s (mother’s mother) name. My mother’s biological mom committed suicide when my mother was a toddler. For whatever reason, there was no contact between my biological grandmother’s family and my mom or my grandfather after that. When my mother was 7 or 8, my grandfather remarried, and the woman I consider my grandma adopted my mom soon afterwards. I don’t know anything about my biological grandmother’s family.
I’ve no idea if the reason my aunty has no children is because she doesn’t want them, or because she and her husband can’t have them.
I don’t know how my father managed to conquer what was by all accounts a pretty serious drinking problem some 35 years ago. As far as anyone can tell he has never had a drink since.
I don’t understand (and almost no knowledge of) my husband’s worldview. Impossible, you say, but no. He will not talk about religion or ethics etc with me. He doesn’t talk about that kind of thing at all (not that we all sit around doing so, but eventually friends do talk about God and the golden rule and stuff like that). He never told me who he voted for for years. One could say he demonstrates his ethics by his life etc, but really (like most people) he is inconsistent and at times (as I am myself) capricious. No idea.
My good friend also had some kind of “female” surgery before she moved here (10 years ago). She mentions it upon occasion, but she’s never filled me in, so I’m in the same boat as kittenblue.
I have more stuff along the lines of stories I was told and am left not knowing if they are true or not. Like my sister telling me that our dad had an affair with our mom’s sister. My aunt and my sister are both now dead. Do I ask my dad? Do I ask my mom? I haven’t, but sometimes I wonder. It seems so implausible, but then again, why would someone make that up? I have lots of things like that. Was my mother mentally ill at one point? Did one twin really steal the identity of the other twin (twins are now dead)? This sounds like plot lines for a soap opera. It’s not–I am just left with these story fragments, questions, suspicions that I was perhaps manipulated etc. Who knows? 
My grandmother has been married several times. I don’t know who all of her husbands were. Supposedly there was one before my grandfather (who was either #1 or #2, depending on whether or not that’s true). I think there were five after, but I’m not sure.
My grandfather had a very long relationship in his later years with a woman half his age. She was married, and had a child that could have been my grandfather’s or her husband’s. Nobody knows the answer to that one. My grandfather didn’t include her in the will, so I assume he figured the kid wasn’t his, but she very well could have been.
My older and younger sisters are convinced that my father’s job as career foreign service officer was a cover from his real job as a CIA operative. I think they are full of it, but he died when I was 18 of cancer, and never had a chance to ask him.
My mother had an abortion when she was a teenager. I did not find out about this until after she died.
I think my younger sister did a lot more drugs than I ever realized.
I think my father may have had a mistress based on a strange phone call my mother got right after he died where some woman was asking “Who’s going to take care of my kids”. But my mother was an functioning alcoholic, and sometimes she would say off the wall stuff. But she wasn’t drunk when she told me this. I’ll never know.
I never realized my ex would start a secret bank account to accumulate a stash of money for herself. I’m not all that naive, I always gave her my paychecks to deposit, and I never imagined she’d play me like that.
I’ve heard this a few times before; along with the claim that it’s a popular scam when a relatively young man dies and leaves a widow; you call or show up at the funeral and claim to be his mistress, hoping for money. How often it works, or if it’s even really all that common, I don’t know.
I don’t know why my brother stopped his seminary studies and went to work for the phone company. He is still very devout.
I don’t know why my dad and some others on his side of the family have been the “black sheep.”
My grandparents were deliberately vague about their lives in the old country. All we know for sure is that my grandfather changed his name when he came to the U.S. From what, or why, we have no idea.
The only person who knows that I’ve had suicidal ideation with this last bout of depression is my mother.
Only her sisters and brothers know for sure if their mom is actually her mom, or if one of her sisters is actually her mom. (Mom has brown eyes. Grandpa and Grandma were both blue eyed. While a genetic mutation is possible, it’s highly unlikely.)
Not as unlikely as you might think- that’s generally a myth.
Missed the edit window- here is a not-too-dense article about blue-eyed parents having brown-eyed children.
My family has a thousand year history of treachery, obfuscation, deceit, and allegedly murdering each other where convenient.
I’m still not sure what my parents were up to when they were in their twenties but it was something. What twenty year old starving (and I mean starving) student paid cash for a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser in 1960? Nobody’s Talking.
One thing I didn’t know about my grandfather until he died (when I was 19) was that he was illiterate. He was a agricultural foreman, so he really didn’t need to know how to read. Although I would see him do things like have my grandmother read the paper to him, I didn’t put two and two together. I guess reading was so fundamental to me that the idea people I knew couldn’t read blew my mind.
I was doing a little speech-story-thing for a class in high school when I phoned up my grandmother for a story from her childhood. I still don’t know a lot about her early life, and I wish I did.
There’s a couple of relatives I haven’t met; I don’t know a lot about our family history from about four generations back.