Family Secrets Part 1: Your Parents as Real People.

It is an inevitable fact of life that at some point in your life, you must learn that your parents are just people. Every child starts out with the innate trust of his parents. We couldn't survive if we didn't listen when they told us not to touch the hot stove or run out into the middle of the road, but that trust seems to give way over time as you build up your own experiences. At some point you recognize that your parents are not the eternal font of knowledge and benevolence you once thought they were. You start to judge them by the same standards as you judge other people and they take on a strange double identity. They are your parents, and they are people just like everyone else you know.

I didn't have a sudden realization or revelation that made me look at my parents as regular people. It was a gradual process. It started when I was 10 years old in our living room in the old house my parents bought in Fenton. Mom and Dad gathered my sister and I in the living room to 'talk'. Family meetings weren't something that ever happened in our house, so I immediately knew something was wrong. I remember sitting on the couch next to my Dad while my sister sat in Mom's lap. I sat in silence while my parents explained to us what a divorce was, and how they were planning on getting one. My sister didn't start crying until Mom and Dad explained that they could no longer live together. I kept sitting there in silence, letting my sister ask all the questions.

That was the first of many experiences that made me realize how human my parents really were. While my sister cried and begged them to stay together, I knew they couldn't. I knew that this decision wasn't made lightly, and once it had been made, there would be too much hurt for them to fix it. I was only ten years old, but I had come to terms with their divorce even before they had finished telling me about it.

This was also the first time I saw my parents as real people with their own lives and their own problems, not just as parents. Throughout the separation and the divorce, I got a lot of these little insights. Every time my mom said that my dad was "living in sin" with his new girlfriend, I was able to take it as a jab from a heartbroken woman rather than the gospel truth of my mother. Whenever she came home from work and yelled at us for not doing chores she had never asked us to do, and locked herself in her room for hours, I knew it had very little to do with what me and my sister had done and everything to do with how she felt. All these little glimpses into my parents real lives added up to a realization that my parents were entirely capable of fucking things up. I think it was good for me to realize this at such a young age. When you can look critically at the things your parents do, you are less likely to pick up on some of their bad habits.

When you see your parents as real people, you are faced with a daunting question. Do you like these people? Of coarse you love your parents; they take care of you and love you unconditionally. They are family and you love them in the way only family can love one another, but when you see them as real living breathing people with their own problems, flaws, and quirks you have to look at that new person standing in front of you and ask yourself "Do I like this person?". Would I like them if they weren't my parents? Luckily for me, the answer was yes. My mother has a ruthless sense of humor and a sharp wit that I appreciate. My Dad is the kindest and most giving person I know. They both are very likeable people. I even like my Step Father and Step Mother (although I couldn't always have said that). But what happens when you finally learn who your parents are, and you don't like them at all.

Part 2 is the story of how my Grandmother kept a dark secret from her children all the way to her death bed.