Don't you just hate it when someone is always right? Well, surprisingly, this time it was me. If you read my last blog entry, I was talking about how it'd been such a good day, and in general...life seemed to be going eerily well for me and how I was having a hard time just sitting back and enjoying it rather than waiting for the other shoe to fall. Life has never seemed to go smoothly enough to allow me to relax completely if things went uncomplicated for more than a single day, otherwise I'd suspect I was living in some parallel life instead of my own.
My goal had, however, become to strive to change all that. I wanted to put forth serious effort in learning to kick back more, to be able to be like those people that could stop and smell the roses, to just be able and kick back and take life slow and easy and believe that I was entitled to good times, to take deep slow full breaths. Sounded good, right?
Cut to the very next morning, to the wake up call I get from my mother, who is terribly upset over a series of phone calls she has been receiving, first from a woman who claims to have gone away with my late father almost 50 years ago, and after having an affair with him, in the fall after my parents had just married, saying she'd conceived a daughter during that time. Then my mother tells me she's been receiving phone calls from the alleged daughter.
Welcome to my world.
Needless to say, after that wake up call, my day started with a bang. It took many phone calls that day, to my poor mother, who's been through so very much already, to our attorney (to find out what I should or shouldn't do - should or shouldn't say....funny, it almost felt like if I were to ever be arrested for something and just making sure you didn't do the wrong thing, you know?). And I made calls to the girl..well, not really a "girl" I don't guess...she's older than I am and 48 years of age after all, anyway she tells me her story and I take it all off my mother's shoulders.
By early afternoon, I sit with my husband, recounting all of it over to him and feeling pretty much blasé about the whole thing. And you know, THAT hit me as strange. I mean, I kept thinking, I think I should be feeling something here...I don't know, either excitement over the prospect of a long lost sister, or rage that our whole family unit has been disrupted and that my mother's world is turned upside down (again), or distrust....SOMETHING! But I just felt nothing. Numb with shock perhaps? I don't know. Confused? Certainly. That was what I was feeling. Well, at least it was something. I could go with that. But for some odd reason, stranger to myself and stranger to explain, I found myself totally believing the possibility, no the probability that this was all true, and that was even without one shred of evidence. I say that because let's face it...it isn't like my father was still around to ask, he passed away in 1985, and all I have to go on for the past few hours is the story some stranger has given me over the phone. Weird, huh?
As the day went on and turned into night, I found myself feeling more strange about the entire set of circumstances. I also had memories come flooding back, both good and bad and found myself having to deal with all of that again. There was some resentment that crept in as a result of that but I fought it off. I've tried so hard to unpack the useless baggage in my life that I never want to have to deal with any of it again, no matter what comes up in my future.
What a weird ass day!
Want the highlights of all this? Okay, now stay with me here.
Keep in mind that my parents met July 22, 1958 when my dad, who'd been divorced for a few years, was living in New Mexico and was traveling to Mississippi to pick up his very young son (aged 5or 6 at the time, I think), for a weekend visit. He could only have him for the weekend and had to work that Friday so he was driving like crazy. My dad stopped in Shreveport, Louisiana to pick up his youngest sister to help with the driving so he could get some sleep on the rest of the drive to Mississippi and she asked if a friend of hers could come along and help with the night driving since she wasn't too good at it. He agreed. The friend turned out to be my mother. He was immediately taken with her and after he'd picked his son up and returned to Louisiana with him for the weekend, he asked my mother out. She agreed and joined him and his son for dinner and a movie. After he had to drop his son off at the end of the weekend, he made plans to return to Shreveport every weekend from New Mexico to court my mother. He'd get off work on Fridays, drive in, get up Sunday mornings and drive back to New Mexico, and go to work on Mondays. By the end of August, he told her she'd have to marry him or kill him because the driving was doing him in and he was head over heels in love with her. They married September 15, 1958. My father died from cancer in 1985.
Now not too long after he died is when the woman that claims to have gone away with him for a weekend contacted my mother. That was 21 years ago. I remember my mother telling me about the woman calling her. She was very upset, as you can imagine. We had just buried my father, and now some strange woman is calling, telling my mother that she'd had an affair with her husband, AND had a child out of wedlock with him.
There were a few problems with her story though. It wasn't that she'd waited until after he had died to make contact, because even though she never said it, I could have given her credit that maybe...just maybe she was a decent human being that didn't want to take a chance on upsetting his home life or possibly ruining his marriage or something. I mean, it was possible, right? Once he was dead, she didn't owe anything to his widow or his children by his widow, but maybe thought only for her child. I could see that as a possibility. M-a-y-b-e. I was giving a LOT of room for doubt there, but no, that is not where the problems with her story were, but when she said they went away in the fall of 1958...my mother said it was impossible because my parents were together every weekend from July 22nd on that year and my father went back to Louisiana with my mother for Christmas to see her parents that year, so there was never a weekend that she and my father could have gone away together that fall. That was problem #1.
When she told the woman that, she said then the woman told her "Well, it was '57 or '58." She didn't know which one?!! I think if I'd had a child from a guy...especially a married one, I'd damn sure know which year I got pregnant! Problem #2.
It just didn't make any sense to me, so when my mother told me about the call, I told her not to worry about it. People read names in the obituaries and sometimes try to scam people - especially if they think there is any money to be had. It is sad that they try to profit on someone's grief and at their most vulnerable and hurting times, and it was just lucky that I couldn't find the woman at that time for causing my mother so much more pain. That was 21 years ago that she got that call.
My father's birthday would've been on the 6th of this month. He would've been 80 years old. My parents' 48th wedding anniversary would've been on the 15th. September has always been an emotional toughie for my mother an me. Add to it the fact that 7 years after my father passed away, my mother remarried to an angel of a man, and after about 10 years of marriage, he unexpectedly died on September 1st....well, we almost hate to see the month even appear.
Earlier this week, she got the 1st in a series of phone calls from a woman that calls herself my father's illegitimate daughter, who says she was born exactly one month before my parents got married.
When she and I spoke, she explained she wasn't raised by her mother for most of her life. she was 11 when a hateful grandparent (her words) told her the man she thought was her father wasn't. She wasn't sure if it was true or said to be hurtful but that the grandparent added she had "an older sister that looks exactly like you that lives in Hobbs...and we are the same age for one month and then she turns a year older on Sept 15th" (so I guess they are 11 months apart). so then there are TWO?!! She says as she got older, she noticed she didn't really look like her siblings or other family members and when her mother came around again, she started asking questions. At first, she says her mother neither confirmed nor denied, but later only gave her a name, saying she didn't even know if it was his real name or not (guess I don't have to ask if they knew each other well or were really close or not, do I?). She finally named the town and state. The girls says for the last month she's done a lot of digging on the internet and made phone calls and found out my father only has one surviving brother left as one had just passed and she named them. She knew all the siblings sisters, but she didn't know my father's full name. Strange?
She said all she wanted was to know what he looked like, what he was like, some medical history to give to her children (daughter-aged 10 and son-aged 6).
I went ahead and answered her questions. No DNA matching, no hard evidence, no pictures of my father and her mother together, no just reasons, why? I don't know. I just did.
Do I believe it? I don't know.
Do I think it is possible? In my life? Oh hell yeah! I probably have 96 brothers and sisters running around that I don't know about!
Deep breathing and relaxing is a myth.
