Wait, what? He told you that his son had committed suicide, even though his son was still living? And this was because he didn’t want to admit that he had a gay son?
I love this! My husband has “one of those faces.” You know - people are always asking if they know him from somewhere or “doesn’t he look like cousin Bob?” It’s kind of fun, in its own weird way. I need to give him this response - this’ll be fun.
I like that and am going to use it myself.
Nava that’s at least a year’s worth of plot line for a soap opera! 
A wedding and a funeral? What a country.
It was because it wasn’t considered appropriate for a pregnant woman to teach class – a college professor of mine told me that when she was a young newlywed back in the '50s, she became pregnant and was called into her principal’s office, where she was told it was time for her to be let go. “But I’m married,” she said.
It doesn’t matter, they told her. We don’t want your students seeing you obviously in a family way.
“But I’m married,” she repeated in amazement.
Even today, some people still don’t think its appropriate for pregnant women to be too visible – I remember having a surreal conversation with my aunt, who was scandalized that the Dixie Chicks made a music video while two of them were heavily pregnant. The fact they were married didn’t matter. It just wasn’t quite right for them to let themselves be seen so shamelessly pregnant.
One of my ancestors served on a ship where the Captain had one wife in the U.K. and one in Australia.
Years ago one of my daydream type fantasies was to charter an unmarked helicopter and arrange for it to pick me up in the field behind where I worked after I had recieved a text message and had a suitably alarmed look on my face.
Then return to work a week later and behave as if nothing had happened.
Helicopter? What helicopter?
Ever try to charter an unmarked helicopter? Problematic to say the least. 
Wow, this exact same thing happened to the father of a friend of mine. He was the sheriff of the town I (mostly) grew up in.
Though I don’t know that everyone thought he had a stellar reputation. When his son brought me over to meet him, and later asked what he thought of 16-year-old me, his response to his son was, ‘‘I’d bone her.’’
Dad met mom when he was on the rebound. His first love’s parents didn’t like him so she was persuaded to marry someone else (this was in the early 40s, mind you)
Dad loved Mom, but differently than he loved TheOtherOne (henceforth TOO) Dad & Mom got married and Mom got pregnant almost immediately. Sis was born while Dad was in Europe during WWII.
When he came back, he got a job as a contractor/developer (housing developments, neighborhoods, etc - post war building boom) and eventually started his own company with his good friend and coworker. Coworker had come back from the Asian theater with a Japanese wife. His first wife had died in an accident before the war. His Italian family was not pleased.
Anyway (and I didn’t learn any of this until 1995) so Dad and friend are getting a lot of jobs - many of them in different states. Unbeknownst to Mom, Sis, or (by this time, 1948) Bro, Dad arranged to meet up (hook up) with TOO every chance he got.
Fast forward to 1958. Mom became pregnant with me. Unaware of that fact, Dad went off on another out of state job. He returned, having spent time with TOO, ready to end his marriage, until he learns I’m on my way.
Needless to say, he resented being tied to Mom when he yearned for TOO. He still loved Mom, but she was not a passionate or sexual woman; TOO was. This resentment affected his relationship with me for years. Do not misunderstand, when he first saw me (this is what he told me when we talked about it) he softened dramatically, but as I grew up, we fought, tried to out-stubborn each other, etc etc. :shrug:
In the early 60s, Dad had a lot of jobs in Florida. We would fly back and forth, spend months at a time there with him until I started grade school, then only on school breaks. Sis and Bro stayed home with Grandma. It turns out, TOO spent a lot of time in Florida, too. :dubious: By the mid 1970s, when Dad got into local politics, that whole affair (no other word for it) had fizzled out. I learned that TOO had gone through four husbands because (her words here, according to Dad) none of them measured up.
Fast forward to 1989. Mom is diagnosed with colon cancer. Dad was unwavering in taking care of her. At this point, they’d been married 47 years. She passed away in November 1991 and he was broken. in 1992 I checked him into a facility to deal with his severely disabling depression. Meanwhile I took care of his house and my apartment. The doctors released him, but he wasn’t much better. In early '94, My brother and I packed Dad up, including some of his furniture, and moved him in to the apartment in Bro’s house for a few months, so I could clean up, clean out, and sell the house. In December '94, I bought this house, and Dad moved in to the downstairs apartment. In early '95, after a major heart attack, Dad decides he wants to come back to life. So we find him a therapist he can relate to (turned out he liked the one I was seeing :eek: )
After a few months of talk therapy, Dad and I were getting along very well. So I told him I’d read the letter he’d written to Mom while an inpatient (the doctor thought it would help Dad if he let go of his guilt).
After several silent minutes, Dad said “I’m glad you know. Bro knows now, too (Sis passed away in '81, and never knew). Do you have any questions about TOO?”
“Just one. Do I have any half siblings out there anywhere?”
“No. We were always very careful about that. But I’m glad for another reason. It turns my health aide knows her health aide and we’ve gotten together for coffee a few times already.”
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
“She’s coming over for lunch next week. Can you come home for lunch that day?”
'GOOD GOD NO! And please don’t ever ask me again. I understand why you kept her in your life. But I am not quite ready to forgive you - I will be one day, but I never want to meet her. Ever. You want to see her? fine. But please. not in this house."
So, he had some companionship for a few months until TOO passed away of age and illnesses.
Dad passed away in 1997; five years later, I forgave him.
Christ, Rose.
Oh, my olives. All I can say to that one is ewwwwwwwwwwwww.
My grandfather managed to have two children with my grandmother’s first cousin. His little secret(s) apparently came out after his funeral because they required continued financial support (grandpa died intestate, so that was fun, I’m sure; this all happened in the late '40s). And then everyone shut up about it for about 50 years.
One of my cousins came across our secret aunt and uncle about 15 years ago. My youngest uncle is very friendly to them and includes them in family events. The older sibs are appalled (mostly, I think, because my “new” aunt and uncle destroy their rosy image of their dad).
I know someone who was aware that her parents were not legally married. What she didn’t know (although her mother did, iirc) until a year or so ago, was that her father is still married to another woman with whom he has several children. The father and the legal wife are separated, but it must have been a shock. Neither set of half-siblings knew about each other. They have since met.
Apparently her parents informed her of this a week before finals her 1st semester in grad school.
I don’t know the details of this because it all happened before I was born, but my aunt’s first husband was a Vietnam vet and apparently a charming guy with all kinds of stories about things he’d seen and people he’d met in 'Nam.
You can probably guess where this is going.
He actually had been in the military during the Vietnam War and had even been overseas, but he never saw combat and was never even in the country of Vietnam. He would have been, if he hadn’t managed to “accidentally” shoot himself in the foot while cleaning his gun. He wound up in some non-combat position at a base in Japan.
All this didn’t come out until he’d been married to my aunt for a couple of years. I don’t know what finally brought the truth to light, because even his own parents had believed he was in Vietnam. I’m given to understand that a number of other lies were revealed as well, and although I don’t know the specifics this all resulted in the end of the marriage.
Good Lord.
When I was studying for my orals in grad school, I unplugged the phone and had on the answering machine, “Unless the house is on fire, go away.”
Here’s two stories from my large, eccentric, and tragic family.
My mother’s eldest sister was killed by a drunk driver while her husband was overseas with the military. Years and years later, my other aunt ran across her sister’s widower and discovered that he had remarried and had children – but that neither his wife nor his children even knew he had been married before and lost his wife. I will never understand why he never spoke her name for decades, why he didn’t tell his new wife and their children about her. Did he even keep a photo of her? Their wedding ring? Did he even miss her? I’ll never know. I never knew this aunt who died so young, but I know her memory deserved better than that.
My maternal grandfather, the father of my mother and her aforementioned sisters, turned out to have a secret, illegitimate half-black daughter twenty years younger than any of his daughters by his wife, my grandmother. He’d had a long-time affair with her mother and supported them secretly. We only found out by chance – my cousin was talking to some guys he worked with, and mentioned our grandfather’s name. One guy blurted out, “That’s Peaches’ daddy!” and my cousin was like, “Peaches?” Turns out Peaches is her nickname. She talks to my mother and her other half-sisters from time to time, and is well-accepted into our family.
Yeap. I could not believe it.
Miss Manners gets letters asking if it’s appropriate for an obviously pregnant woman to participate in some event. Her standard answer is that only the conception and birth are required to take place in relative privacy. Other than those two events a pregnant woman can participate in society.
Story 1:
I found out a year or two back that my mom had taken flying lessons when I was a teenager. I was living in the same house with her then, and never knew a thing about it! She never finished, though, because they were expensive even then in the '70s.
Story 2:
We had a guy who worked in another department who was just another guy. Had a family, did a good job, never made waves.
Until he got stopped by the police one night driving through a strange neighborhood. Seems there had been a string of rapes, and the perp always wore an orange ski mask. This guy had a mask just like that in his possession that night. The day before he was due to go in and give a DNA sample, he committed suicide.
Wow, some of the stories here are extraordinary.
I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised considering how interesting the people here have turned out to be, but nevertheless some of these tales deserve to be expanded into short stories.
My own ‘unexpected revelation’ came when I first read my birth certificate (or the certified copy thereof). I was a freshman in college and needed a passport for my first overseas adventure. I discovered that I was not as I had always thought my mother’s first child. It turns out I had an older brother who had been delivered stillborn. Since I knew I was conceived just a few months after my parents marriage, I asked how this could have happened. It turns out that not only was there was an unknown dead sibling, but also that my father was my mother’s second husband. Apparently, her first husband was an abusive piece of dog dung, and the stillborn baby was sired by him. The implications were amazing to me, since not only had my parents always been truthful to me about everything, the ‘sin’ of lying was the one thing that neither of them would tolerate from me. In retrospect, they didn’t actually lie to me, because I was their first child, just not my mother’s first child.
It took a few weeks for me to get over the shock and it didn’t damage me too badly (I was 17 at the time, after all).
It isn’t as cool of a story as some of the others but it is mine, so there. heh heh heh
My wife’s friend’s father was in the Army, and her mother had been a nurse. What she didn’t know was that her father had been married before and had a whole additional family. She only got told before she went to college, since a step-sister had gone to the same college and there was a plaque somewhere with her name on it, and they were worried that my wife’s friend would start asking questions.
Our families are terribly boring, alas.