not exactly happy families
my mother has 7 sisters and 4 brothers. they're loud, opinionated, funny and usually great to be with.
my dad has 4 brothers(one of whom is his twin) and 3 sisters.
or so he thought.
for years, my dad and his twin were treated like dirt by their brothers and sisters. despite living less than a mile from at least 2 aunts, i wouldn't recognise them if i fell over them. none of my dad's side of the family ever bothered with us. this got to my dad's twin so much that he emigrated to new zealand as soon as he hit 18.
for 60 years, my dad didn't know what he had done to deserve this treatment. he had no idea why his siblings seemed to hate him.
then, 3 years ago, he found out.
his mother wasn't his mother. she was his grandmother.
the woman he had believed was his sister was actually his mother. for all those years, she'd kept silent. i can understand not saying anything back in the '40's, being an unmarried teenage mother of twins back then is not exactly something you'd want people to know about. what i don't understand is why she never told them when they were older. single parents are the norm nowadays, there was nothing for her to be ashamed of any more, but she may have been able to spend her last years being a mother to her sons. instead, she refused to see or speak to either of them, finally taking the full truth of their birth to the grave with her last year.
my dad can be a complete and utter prick when he wants to be, my own childhood was often less than rosy, but at least i now understand a little more about what turned him into the man he is and just what he's had to deal with in his own life.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Mon 16 Nov 2009, 1:51, Reply)