Family secrets. Know any?

[TNDemo]

Have you ever grown up knowing a family secret or learning of one years later? I have read a number of books where one emerges to the shock of everyone. I am not sure we really had one. I found out about some alcoholism and adoption but nothing earth shattering. What is the most jaw dropping family secret you have ever experienced or at least heard of?

[Mutley]

1. Yeah, a few

:yoiks:

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. Two Huge ones...

My great grandmother was 16 when she married my great grandfather...pretty much because she was preggers. They went on to have 10 kids. :D

One of her kids (a great aunt) went "away" when she was 16... 55 years later the reason why she went "away" came to town to be reunited with her birth mother. :hi:

[RiffRandell]

3. My rents "had" to get married.

God, it just ruined me. :sarcasm:

[KitchenWitch]

4. I know a few

Kind of painful though.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Yes, it's actually one that my mother discovered

As some Lounge denizens know, my mother's father came from Latvia in about 1908 and by the time the wave of Latvian refugees came to the States after World War II, he was well-established and helped a lot of them out with legal and other matters.

A couple of years after he died, my mother was driving around Minneapolis and saw a bakery with a Latvian name. She stopped in, bought some Latvian pastries, and started talking to the owner, telling him that she was the daughter of (my grandfather).

The Latvian man took this in for a moment and then asked, "From the first marriage or the second?"

Here my mom's jaw fell to the floor. She had thought that she was from his ONLY marriage, and when she told my grandmother, it turned out that my grandmother had thought she was the first and only wife.

But apparently the REAL first marriage was common knowledge in the Latvian community.

We were never able to find out who the first wife was or what happened to her. If she hadn't died young, then were they ever legally divorced? Or had my grandfather just left Boston, moved to Minneapolis, and started a bigamous new family?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. Probably on my mom's side.

I have no clue what the hell is going on in that freakshow. Things are pretty much an open book on my dad's side, even though that's the side that used to have a couple mob members and we've had assorted people do jail time.

My stepdad has a schizophrenic sister. I guess that's a family secret, since I've never met her, nor has my mom.

[hickman]

7. It's an old one.

My cousin Patrick didn't so much die because he fell asleep driving late one night and crashed. He had been kind of "weird" for awhile, like since he'd gotten back from Viet Nam. He was upbeat, starting a great job and going back to college. Died one night on the on-ramp to I75. I remember a couple years later hearing my Dad tell one of his close friends that the police report said that Pat had never once touched the brakes. The family was very conservative Catholic, so Patrick was buried in hallowed ground.

[photogirl12]

8. Ummm...yeah

It's the old relative born out of wedlock and raised by the mother's sister thing...not really a big deal.

[AlCzervik]

9. well i knew one but i didn't know it was a secret until i told my sister

it was about her actually, seems Moms already had her cooking when they got married, my sister didn't know but i didn't know she didn't know, well she knows now. Oops.

[RetroLounge]

10. Yeah, there's a few...

Lots of alcoholism, dead relatives due to drinking, etc.

Nothing too earth-shattering.

RL

[femmocrat]

11. It wasn't much of a secret, since they talked openly about it...

but my husband's great-uncle was shot on the main street of their town, during the Depression. They "hinted" it was a mob-hit. His side of the family always was kind of shady.

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. My parents were married three times...

each time to each other. :silly:

First time they eloped, the judge was shitfaced and slurred the vows. My mother felt that it had not "taken" and so insisted on going back to get married about 6 weeks later. Judge # 2 was sober and decided to do the deed again.

After that, my mother "felt" married and made my father a happy man.

Couple years after that and because she had thus far been unable to get pregnant, they did it again in the church. Still took a few years to get pregnant, by which time she had concluded that the civil ceremony had nothing to do with it.

Funny thing was, she never knew her "real" wedding date until after my father died in 1992 and the marriage certificate arrived to verify insurance info. It was the second time that was the charm.

[youthere]

13. The big "secret" in my family(for the last 8 years)..

is that my nephew is gay. Yawn. He's totally out of the closet and everyone is trying to cram him back in. (not sure if there was a pun in there or not, but none intended). Everyone knows and no one is allowed to say it. It sends Grandma in a tailspin and my sister into hysterics-they're holding on to the delusion he'll get this gay thing out of his system and "straighten up". It's the dead elephant in the room. Madness.

:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

The other big "secret" is that my mother had filed for divorce when my dad died (he died suddenly).

[SoyCat]

14. Yes. *Southern family, many members really racist, found out we're a tiny

part black* It still sends some members of the family into a tailspin! I make sure everyone knows just so I can piss off racists.

[ruiner4u]

15. Its pretty much a yawner unless you know my grandmother.

She is German and came to the US after the end of ww2 after meeting my grandfather. She raised my dad with with delusions of german aristocracy being SO proper. The women does have some kind of princess complex..


my grandfather died a few years ago and we were in the funeral directors office.. He asked the date of their wedding.. Then asked the dad of my aunts birth.. My mom and eye just kind of eyed each other and when we were alone we laughed out asses off.. Grammie got knocked up...:)


Like i said, its a yawner.. And as much as i love grandma, she is like Jane Fonda from Monster in Law to my mom...

we took evil pleasure...heh

[TNDemo]

28. I have a friend who got Gaucher's disease.

They wanted to run tests on her husband and children also. Her MIL was German, also with visions of German aristocracy, and was horrified her pristine son had married someone who might have Jewish blood (primarily a Jewish disease). My friend was not Jewish and had no Jews in the family to her knowledge but MIL was horrified all the same. Then her son got tested and guess what - he's a carrier too! I would say the day those tests came back was the day her life ended as she knew it.

[Kali]

16. couple

Found out a grandmother had been divorced before she came west and met my grandfather (SCANDAL - this would have been in the late teens)
Another relative, a great-grandfather was in the KKK. Not so secret, we knew about it as teens. (have seen a membership card and rumor has it there is still a hood in existance. Same side of the family has African markers in the blood. hee hee

Oh yeah, one of my parents was a couple of months "premature".

[Omphaloskepsis]

17. My family is fucked up..

I refuse to offer specifics. I will just toss out a few keywords. Rape, Incest, Murder... I come from a well-rounded group.. And they wonder why I drink.. Add some alcoholism into the group, meth too.

[Irreverend IX]

18. I remember learning about my older brother.

I always thought I was the oldest in the family. Then my mom told me where the scratch marks on the attic walls came from and why our dog wasn't allowed to dig in the backyard.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

19. My grandma was briefly married to a gay man

back in the 1920s. He had a government job, and needed a wife to maintain an aura of respectability. Afew months after they married, she found him with his lover.

How sad for both of them!

[bobbieinok]

20. kind of odd -- I was talking on the phone to my son after he had graduated

from college. He was talking about his grandma, how hard he had found it to be around her; I had always thought he just loved to do stuff with her. But he said she was just so hard to deal with at times. I said 'well, you know, she had a major breakdown when you were 3 and was on medication.'

He was totally stunned; he had never known that. And then I thought well, duh, he was 3. And then just when do you tell him?? I'd just never thought about the fact that he maybe never knew b/c he was so young when it happened; it was just taken for granted in the family and everyone dealt with it.

[TNDemo]

25. I find that interesting because

I was most definitely a Daddy's girl and found my mother difficult to be around most of my life. They divorced when I was 10 (horrible divorce) and when my mother developed Alzheimer's I started searching around for clues to any possible mental illness past (she had early onset and I was not sure I was dealing with Alzheimer's at that point). My dad told me when I was about 2-3 my mother had a breakdown of sorts, deep dark depression. My aunt was 9 years younger than my mother and involved in her own teenage life but says she remembers my mother and dad and us kids being at their house and my mother basically lying comatose in a chair and my grandfather basically telling her to snap out of it and pull herself up by the bootstraps. I didn't know about that episode until I was in my 40s and as far as I know she never took medication (though she thought everyone else needed it) but there was always an emotional area around her that you could not broach. I imagine I felt it even as a toddler.

[blonndee]

21. It was an unacknowledged "secret"

that there were a lot of gay people on my mom's side of the family. My grandmother's brother and neice were both gay, as well as several second cousins on that side of the family. Everyone tries to pretend that's not true by not mentioning it AT ALL.

It IS really kind of unusual, so many out gay people in one family. It does make me wonder about my dad's side of the family, and statistically how many people might be hiding it. Heh heh. Maybe if they came out the bigots could get enlightened a little.

[sakabatou]

22. Yes

[Rowdyboy]

23. My grandfather disappeared in 1922, leaving his wife and baby girl

He reappeared about 18 months later with money, reunited with his wife and child (who'd lived with her father in the interim), and never told anyone where he was.

50 years later he and I had a couple of whiskey and cokes and he told me what happened. He was a young, new father with no money. Went to work one day and was fired, With no job, he simply took off, riding the rails. He knew my grandmother would go home to her family (they ran a restaurant). He followed the crops, picking vegetables, working on farms and cowboying until he saved enough money to start over. Then he came home.

After he died, I told my mom and she cried. No one had ever known.

[reyd reid reed]

24. But...but...

if I told you my deep, dark, family secret -- then it wouldn't be in the family any more. It also wouldn't be secret.

Therefore, like the good little girl that I am,

I ain't saying chit.

:hi:

[miss_american_pie]

26. Oh yeah

I'd rather not say since they aren't mine to tell, but we've got closets and closets full of skeletons.

[hippywife]

27. Yep.

About five years ago, we found out that my great-grandparents, who immigrated from Italy (seperately-didn't meet until they arrived here) were not married until after most of their kids were born and my great-grandpa had a son from a previous marriage. Not a shocker really on the face of it, most of my family laughed when they found out. It was just kind of odd to find out so many years after they had been gone and with only one of their children still living, and very elderly, to tell the tale.

[China_cat]

29. After my grandfather died we found out that he had a twin

sister that nobody knew about. We can trace her through the census record up until she was 6 and then she just disappeared. No death records, no grave. Nobody knew...even Grandpa never mentioned her.

That and we found out that his father was one of the founders of the KKK in western PA.

[Random_Australian]

30. I'm not telling details, but I found some things that are awful.

Nothing illegal.

[NewWaveChick1981]

31. Mine aren't all that shocking, but...

...my sister dated an African-American guy for nearly ten years. Not shocking to me, but my mother was extremely distraught when she started dating him in high school. What started out as an act of rebellion against my mother turned into a very happy relationship for my sister (until they broke up---he had all kinds of emotional and mental issues). My grandmother, being the racist that she was, read my sister the Riot Act and told her how awful it was that she was putting the family through all that. I was in my freshman year in college when all of this took place (sis was a high school senior), and I got to hear about the drama rather than witnessing it firsthand. It caused a HUGE family fuss for several months, then it died down. Fast-forward to 1993, when my sister began dating the man who is now her husband. He is a conservative Quaker (don't ask me how they ended up with each other---'cause I don't know! :rofl:) who is also a big-time racist. Sis didn't know about the racist part until just before they got married when they had a big discussion. She had told him about her past, with the exception of the race issue. She confided in me that she didn't think race made any difference---which it doesn't, but she didn't bring it up in conversations with him. She asked all of us in the family not to tell him anything about that situation, and none of us have. I have issues with her husband anyway, like the fact that he was furious that she used to smoke (that was way before they met, and she quit in 1987) but it's her business.

A couple more: my dad and my maternal grandmother were/are alcoholics. We were/are an upper-middle-class family, and my mother kept that fact covered up because she lived in mortal fear of our neighbors and friends finding out. Dad has been a recovering alcoholic for nearly ten years now, but growing up, I got to see all kinds of fun stuff when he got drunk. Mom issued instructions to all of us that we were never to talk about it outside of the family. Dad wasn't mean or abusive, but it was embarrassing and humiliating as a kid to see my dad act like a fool in front of people. It was a major factor in my parents' divorce. When I was a senior in high school and up late one night working on a paper, the phone rang about 2 AM. Dad used his one phone call from jail to ask my mom to bail him out after his DUI arrest. Mom was livid but went down to bail him out anyway, and I went with her because she had no business being at the county jail alone at 2 AM. He lost his license as a result of all that. Granny (RIP) was, however, a mean drunk, and she became verbally abusive---and she was arrested for DUI on several occasions. She once spent three months in the SC state hospital because of it, and she had her license revoked twice. Granny came to live with us when I was about eight. She was there for six months. I didn't know it until I was older, but she had been put in my mother's custody after the most recent DUI arrest and basically couldn't leave the house without her. When I was about ten, Granny went on a drinking binge for about three months straight and would call my mother to cuss her out and write letters that were horribly abusive. Mom was heartbroken, and I remember seeing her cry very hard when that would happen. :( Granny eventually got better (but never 100% better) and apologized, and they reconciled. Granny still drank up to the time of her death in 1991, but it was much, much less.

And last but not least: my brother is gay. I have absolutely no problem with that, but Mom certainly did. She did everything she could to keep that fact away from my stepfather because she was sure he'd leave her if he found out. :wtf: My stepfather was a better man than that, but Mom was so afraid he'd blame her. I was at my mom's house one afternoon in 1996, and the only other person in the house at the time was my stepfather. We started talking about mundane things, and then the subject of my brother somehow came up. He said, "I wonder if (brother) can join us for dinner tonight or if he has a date with his boyfriend?" He said it very nonchalantly and with no malice---in fact, he had a little smile on his face. I stopped in my tracks, looked at him, and smiled back. I said, "I don't know. We'll ask him when he gets back." I asked him how long he'd known, and he just laughed a little and said, "As long as I've known your brother." My stepfather was a good man, and Mom didn't give him enough credit.

Oh, and apparently me being bi has never been a family issue. I guess it's because I dated guys and married one, but for some reason, Mom doesn't think that's scandalous. :shrug:

[BOSSHOG]

32. My Uncle was a bastard

Got this third hand but heard a few years back that my Dad's oldest brother was not my father's mother's son. But they both had the same father, my grandfather. I was told my sweet grandma took him in and raised him as her own from an infant. My uncle and father looked very similar. All parties are now deceased. No way in hell to prove this one way or the other now. The story originated from one of my Dad's sisters. I do know that my grandfather was a rough old cob as was my father. My uncle was born in the early 20's.

Oh, and my older brother was born full term, five months after my parents were married. Mom look good in her wedding pictures. This occurred in '49. Imagine premarital sex way back when, who would have thought?

[Giant Robot]

33. Yup

Apparently I have a nephew/niece out there somewhere. No one has ever mentioned this, and I only found out because my S-I-L told me about it some time ago.

[skygazer]

34. A couple of mundane ones and one shocker

Well, two shockers, come to think of it. The mundane ones are the people who "had" to get married - my very strait-laced aunt and uncle.

The shocker came last summer when my sister was in the hospital dying - apparently she and my dad had a fight and it came out that my dad was NOT her real father. :wow: Which actually means that she was technically no relation at all to me - she was the product of my dad's first marriage. Apparently, his wife (they were only married a short time) was pregnant with his friend's kid, my dad married her, it didn't work out and he kept my sister because she was an alcoholic.

Of course, it made no difference in the way any of us siblings felt about her - she's our sister. But it sure affected the way I feel about my dad - why the hell he'd tell her such a thing after 54 years when she was sick and dying, I cannot imagine. :grr:

Weird thing is, my cousin found out something similar about himself just a couple of years ago. That was a bit of a shock, too, particularly for him.

[crim son]

35. I don't know how jaw-dropping it is,

but about seven years after my grandfather died at age 83, my sister and her husband were visiting Gramma. She asked them to go down to the basement and bring up some old reel-to-reel films to view and sort through. They did so. Long story short, one of the films showed my grandfather as a middle aged man, with a completely strange woman and a completely strange child. They were obviously a family. My grandmother's reaction was, of course, shock, but there wasn't much discussion. My sister and her husband agreed that night to remove the tape from the collection so Gramma could never find it again. We still wonder if it was the right thing to do, but Grampa was the love of Gramma's life. She would weep whenever she talked about how much she loved him, EVEN while he was still alive and sitting right next to her! Sigh.

[Left Is Write]

36. I wrote a short story called Family Secrets.

However, there are no shocking ones in my family that I am aware of.

[HEyHEY]

37. Yes, my Dad has a half-sister he's never met

His father was married once before and had a daughter. Back in those days during the divorce the wife always got the kids... even if she was an ether addict (The reason for the divorce). I think I'm the only one my Dad has told about this besides my Mom of course.

[cobalt1999]

38. oh lots...

Tracing the family genealogy it was discovered our family initially came to America as part of a Scottish Penal colony - not a great start.

The family has been in Florida since well before the civil war, so there is a large number of them that were VERY active in the Klan. My granny was rumored to have shot a few blacks in the 20's. I'm not sure I believe that, although she always carried a .38 handgun in her purse and a shotgun in her car.

My father and uncle made and ran a large scale moonshine operation in the 50's (Dad had some great stories about running white lightning) Eventually it got too big and the police destroyed the enormous still in the swamps. No arrests were made as the local police were paid off.

[WolverineDG]

39. I have 2, possibly 3 cousins in Brazil

Possibly more, because they would have been born in the 40's & probably have families & kids of their own.

It was a long-told rumor in my family, but nothing was concrete until my uncle died & my cousin found letters from them in his papers. Seems he spent some time down in Brazil, fell in love with someone down there. We're not sure if they got married, & if they did, got divorced.

I'll never know their names because my cousin refuses to give any information about them to the rest of us. :grr:

dg

[Bunny]

40. Mine aren't too scandalous, but I didn't find out about either of them

until I was in my forties, which I think is strange.

First: my mother's grandparents were *gasp* first cousins! Yes, it's true. My mother blames every single incidence of mental disorder, physical problems, and just plain weirdness in our family on us being "inbred".

Second: a boy who was adopted by my father's aunt and her husband is actually the biological son of my mother's sister! My mother and my father's sister helped to arrange the adoption when the biological father of the baby boy abandoned my mom's sister, and she had to bear the child out of wedlock. Whew - did you follow that? Back in the 50's that was a big deal, so everything was kept hush-hush for decades afterwards.

I'm glad that things have changed and that people don't have to live with these kinds of secrets anymore. It just isn't healthy, is it?

[martymar64]

41. My family has quite a few . . .

My father was an alcoholic (he went into rehab 25 years ago and hasn't drank since)

My grandfather was a wifebeater. He used to beat up on my Grandma up until he got Parkinson's.

My parents had to get married because my mom got knocked up with my sister.

My cousin has severe Down's Syndrome and was institutionalized at an early age and still is.

My great grandfather was tried (but acquitted) for bootlegging while he was sheriff of Tulsa, OK back in the 20's. He came into office right after the Tulsa race riots in 1921.

My sister dabbled in IV drugs as a teenager and now has Hep C as a result.

My stepbrother was gay and died of AIDS.

My mother is learning-disabled and my grandmother tried to have her instititutionalized, but my great aunt intervened and prevented it.


I've learned of much of this recently and it took a little effort to process it all without totally hating my family. My lesson learned is that I can rise above the failings of my family and be the best person I can be.

[Nikia]

42. For some reason, the "secret" that bothers me the most

Is that my great grandfather killed his baby sister when she was 3 by lighting her on fire. It was probably an accident and he could have just as easily killed himself too.
I was also suprised to find out recently that another great grandfather was an alcoholic. My grandmother mentioned it me saying that is why she never had alcohol in the house and married a man who didn't drink (I had thought that it was her Baptist upbringing).
There was some illetigamacy and divorce in my family, but it never seemed like a big deal since my parents divorced when I was young and my mother was pregnant when they married. It didn't seem like a big deal that my great grandmother had spent time in a mental hospital either. I wasn't too shocked by some of my long dead ancestors crimes against humanity either.

[hunter]

43. A few started over in the U.S. with fabricated pasts.

If the sign says "No Irish Need Apply" well then, you ain't Irish.

That's my dad's family. My mom's family is even more complicated. Her ancestors were not at all what they claimed -- they moved out west because they had to for various reasons, either they were hiding something, or some sheriff was looking for them.

Not "jaw dropping" however. Secrets don't last long within our family.

"You will scarcely ever find an Irishman dabbling in counterfeit money, or breaking into houses, or swindling; but if there is any fighting to be done, he is very apt to have a hand in it." Even though Pat might "'meet with a friend and for love knock him down,'" noted a Montreal paper, the fighting usually resulted from a sudden excitement, allowing there was "but little 'malice prepense' in his whole composition." The Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati in 1853, saying that the "name of 'Irish' has become identified in the minds of many, with almost every species of outlawry," distinguished the Irish vices as "not of a deep malignant nature," arising rather from the "transient burst of undisciplined passion," like "drunk, disorderly, fighting, etc., not like robbery, cheating, swindling, counterfeiting, slandering, calumniating, blasphemy, using obscene language, &c."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_American#_ref-8