The Record

Set Straight.

I was thinking about my grandfather this morning when I was stuck in annoying traffic. He and I share the same birthday. He has long since passed, back in 1990, he was on his 9th decade. My mom's parents split when she was in nursing school back in the 60's. He remained in Oklahoma, grandma moved to California where she eventually died in 1978.

They adopted my mom when she was 9 years old. They were fairly well off and so offered my mother everything she could ever desire. She had been from an extremely poor background, and lived most of her life up to that point in an orphanage. They owned property in several different states, and had several businesses over the years. Grandpa was a builder, grandma helped him by cleaning the homes before they were to be sold. They owned many different homes.

Grandpa liked the women. Grandma was a good Christian. One particular woman was my grandmother's friend, she was married to an abusive drunk who did odd jobs for my grandpa. Grandma befriended the woman and being the Christian she was, she took her to church with them.

Grandma found out about gramps and this woman and their affair. I believe that was the final straw. After all the years of cheating, she decided she could no longer tolerate it. She divorced grandpa. He married the woman, and at the ripe age of 65 fathered a child with her. She was much younger than him, he was older than her mother even.

So, he had his first biological child. My mother had my older sister only a year later than his. His daughter was a fiery redhead, and spoiled rotten. He retained most of the wealth from the years of marriage with my grandmother, and so was pretty much a rich old man with a younger wife.

Mom tried to put the past aside. She loved both of her parents, and so she kept contact with him and his new family despite her own feelings about the whole thing. We would go and visit. My sister and I spent most of our time playing with his daughter who was practically the same age.

Gramps and his wife pretty much kept the kid in the dark about their past, but they lived in a small town, and every one knew the story. Everyone except the kid. She began to get a clue as she got older, and whenever we would visit she would ask us, particularly me, questions about our grandmother, and the past.

As a child I had a sort of untempered honesty about me. I pretty much told the truth no matter what it was. I knew the story, and so I told her. I don't think she believed me, but she kept asking me every time we went to visit she would corner me and ask me questions about it all. Every time I told her what I knew. Her parents tried to keep her completely in the dark.

After grandpa died, she stopped talking to us. We visited a few times, but it was never the same. She got really snotty with my sister, and said a bunch of bad things about my grandmother, and my mother. Her mother on the other hand, for some reason adored me. I could never figure this one out, I was the big blabber mouth who kept telling all of the family secrets, but she did. And for years we kept contact, but as I got older, I decided I didn't want that relationship with her.

It was a combination of things, but mostly because she seemed to pretend like my daughter did not exist because she did not agree with the fact that my husband and I are a mixed couple. It was bizarre, but I knew when I made the choice to marry the man I loved some people would not agree with it.

She called me last year on my birthday, on his birthday. I did not take the call. I just don't want to go there. I think after my grandfather died and I saw the way that they treated my mother, I just couldn't. They wouldn't allow my mother to see him before he died. It was extremely cruel. Of course, all of the wealth he had is theirs now, so my mother will have no inheritance. She has accepted that.

It may seem tacky to speak of inheritance, but it is a part of life. I have actually thought a lot about this as a parent myself. My husband and I have agreed that we have some responsibility to see to our daughter's future. We fully intend to see to that. That doesn't mean we will hand her our livelihood on a silver platter, but that we will try to put something away for her if we can. That is our duty.

Anyway, I was just thinking about them.