After both my parents died I found letters my father had written to my mother before they were married. He was clearly a very depressed person at that time. I myself spent many years with undiagnosed depression and I wish I had known that we shared this problem while he was still alive.
This is really minor, but I can’t believe I didn’t know this:
For years my mother has told the harrowing tale about how she and I had lots of trouble getting home during the blizzard of 78 because they were closing the streets towards where we lived rapidly. In the end she pleaded with a cop to let her up a road that was supposed to be closed but was the only option for getting home. I was only 10 months old at the time, so I of course have no memory of this, and I always had the impression that she was on the way home from work after picking me up from daycare.
Nope.
I finally learned during this January’s big storm she had just gotten bored and decided to take me for a drive after it had already begun to snow heavily!
I’ve always known that my dad had cheated on wife #1 with wife #2(my mom) and that he had cheated on my mom with wife #3. I had NOT realized that while he was with wife #2 he had cheated on her with wife #1.
After my mom let this slip, she then proceeded to tell me of other times he had cheated on her. I knew she had always tried hard to not bad mouth my dad, but dear lord, she went over board on that one.
On the upside my dad can’t blame her for the fact that my brothers and I consider him an asshole…
My dad told a mutual friend of my mom’s that he was thinking about asking her out. Said mutual friend promptly told my mom. Two weeks later he still hadn’t called, so mom told friend, friend nudged dad and he called her. When she said she already had a date that night he told her “Break it.” She did, and said by the end of the date she knew he was the guy for her.
I backtracked nine months from my birthdate, and added two more weeks, because I was a couple of weeks late…
To my father’s 35th birthday.
shudder
One of my older sisters is the result of marital rape. They had two babies right in a row, following a miscarriage and my mother was exhausted. On time when she was sick, my father demanded his “right,” she refused and he forced her anyway.
That sister was a fussy baby and my mother just couldn’t lover her. I’m sure that the love came later, but it explained a lot.
Two items that came out about my dad after he developed Alzheimers. One, he used to play bingo a lot. Two, he had very curly hair. The second one is interesting because we knew his nickname in high school had been “Curly” but we thought that was because he started going bald in 10th grade. He had a buzz cut for years and when he grew it out in the late 60’s as the era of hair dryers began, it always appeared quite straight. Always. But once in the nursing home and unable to care for his own grooming, his remaining hair fringe was all little pencil curls. Ahh, so that’s where my curl came from.
Mom’s next. She had gone through nurse training (something she constantly told us about) but never actually took a nursing job. She told us a story of getting sick and never returning to graduate. Finally, a couple years before her death, I asked her what the backstory was and told her I didn’t think it was her mono. It turns out that she became the fall guy for some wealthy clients who accused her of stealing their mother’s false teeth. Rather than turn around and accuse the cheap clients of trying to get a free set of better-fitting false teeth for their mother, the hospital admin blamed Mom and tried to expel her. My grandfather came down to collect Mom and give the admin a piece of his mind. He successfully got my mother’s graduation on record, but the price was that she had to promise she wouldn’t nurse and wouldn’t talk about the issue. And she didn’t.
Just recently, while having a bad spell and going a bit looney, my dad’s mother started going on about how her daddy had been stepping out on her mother, and even had an engagement ring to give to the floozy, though somehow her mother got ahold of the ring instead, and I don’t know the rest. Her parents were dead long before I came to be, but it was still weird to hear (even 2nd hand, it was my parents she was telling this to).
Or never married: Around 12, the daughter of a friend started asking where the wedding pictures were… that’s how SHE found out. And a work colleague was told by his grandfather that there would be a surprise when the grandfather died… that’s when HE found out.
I learned two things once I became an adult… First, that my father’s last name growing up was German and he changed it to his mother’s maiden name when World War II broke out…
As a kid I could never figure out why he had a strange German middle name - it turned out it was his father’s first name… who had immigrated from Germany in the 1920’s.
Secondly, I learned that he had a sister who lived in the same town I grew up in… My father stopped talking to her in the 1950’s, and everyone in my nuclear family knew her - except me… and they all pretended she didn’t exist. My father’s other sister and my cousins knew her, but never talked about her around my family…
Growing up, I used to look at a picture of my father and his two sisters sitting on a pony as kids in San Francisco in the 1920’s, and when I would ask who was in the picture, they would point out my father and his other sister, and refused to tell me who the other kid was…
I met my aunt when I was close to 30 and had a close and great relationship with her for around 20 years til she passed away… It was through her that I learned what their last name was when they were growing up… after I found out, my mother acted like I was discussing the weather… “yeah, that was his name… but he changed it… would you like a cup of coffee?”
None of my relatives could ever tell me why my father stopped talking to his sister - they just all went along with the charade for close to 40 years…
About 10 years ago, my siblings and I found out that both of our parents had electro-shock treatments in the early 60s. :eek: At the time, it was accepted treatment and it may even still be accepted for certain things, I’m not sure. Color me shocked to hear that though. LOL Naturally, there are good reasons why parents don’t tell their school-age children those sorts of things!
I was 14 before I learned that my father had been married once before.
Last year when my mother-in-law died, I was trying to keep my father-in law occupied while my husband did a home improvement project at his house. He was going through some papers in the safe when he said, “Here’s the paper for Mom’s name change.” It turned out that while we all knew her as Donna, her given name was Donny. She changed it later in life because Donny sounded too much like a boy’s name. My husband never knew and he’s 59.
My father was deported toGross Rosen. I learned that one month before his death.
Learned that my mother was married before and that my sister was truly my half sister. On the day before my sister’s wedding. I had suspected something like this when I had heard my mom speaking to my grandma in Calabrese dialect, which I don’t know that well (intentionally on the part of my mom and grandma) discussing whether my sister’s father was coming to the wedding or not
Did you ever ask your Aunt?
Technically, if a marriage is annulled, then it has been deemed to have never existed at all due to some irregularity. So it would be correct so say that your father was your mother’s third husband. The guy whose marriage was annulled wasn’t “really” her husband, it just looked like that on paper for a short time until the annulment was processed.
Yeah, okay, fair enough, but it was still a little shocking to find out that my mom had another almost-husband that I knew nothing about!
My mother moved on her own from Minneapolis to southern California when she was 25. This was a remarkable thing to me, because I always knew her as a timid sort who would never do an adventurous thing.
She was never forthcoming about why she moved, but she did once or twice say something about that if she stayed there, she’d become the unpaid servant of her dad and three brothers. Also that her dad was not a very good father.
I like to look at Family Search.org, and when the 1940 census came out, I found her family’s census data. In 1939, she made almost as much money working as a secretary as her dad made as a salesman. That must have chapped his hide! And her three brothers made similar amounts as well. Granddad must have been resentful and angry.
The address of the house the family rented was on that census report, and I looked it up on Street View. The old house is still there, and it’s quite small for a five person household, even in the Depression.
So now I have a clue why she moved out. I always attributed it to the better climate in California, but now I’m getting a picture of a resentful father and a tiny crowded house as well.
My mom was showing me pictures of her and dad’s wedding. The chapel looked like a booth, and there was no wedding party. I asked who one lady was, and she said “That was our witness.” They eloped! No wonder they never observed their anniversary.
My dad had always been tight-lipped about his army days, but had a change of heart when he was in his 70s and all the sudden was making slide shows of all his army pictures. It turns out his was one of three successful missions to run supplies to MacArthur’s base in the Philippines. All the other attempts had been shot down by the Japanese, and he earned a Purple heart for his service.
I asked mom what she did during the war, and it turned out she worked in Louisiana putting together airplanes. She was a Rosie the Riveter! I asked why she never talked about that before, and she said “Nobody ever asked me.”