3) When it wasn't your choice...

Dr. Phil is a show that I use to watch on a regular basis, until we cut our cable to the minimum TV channels and so then Dr. Phil was no longer on at times that I could easily watch. He came on was when I was coming home from work.

I managed to watch the show on this one particular day, so it was a treat to me to get home in time to watch it. I definitely think it was meant to be. The show was about a girl (Krista) that found out that her mother had an affair with a married man while she was married to her 'daddy'. Her biological father lived down the street. The four of them (both sets of parents) knew the truth but her mother didn't tell her until she was 11 and then decided that Krista needed to know the truth too. This changed Krista for the rest of her life. Now her brothers, referred to her as their 'half-sister' when they used to refer to her as their sister. Everything changed for her.

I am around Dr. Phil's age (+/-), so I am sure that he will agree that when we were children, we lived in a much smaller world (news was mostly local, and you only knew your community and possibly the outer edges of your community), not the technological society that we now find ourselves in, where we know within seconds something that happened around the world. Also our day to day standards were much different than now. It was unusual for parents to be divorced and it was unusual to hear about affairs (not that they didn't happen, but it was always kept hush, hush or whispered behind closed doors). People were expected to be accountable for their selves and what others’ thought about them mattered. Children listened to an adult and knew; whether they were related or not, that they had to listen to that adult and if they got into trouble with them, a stranger, it would be far worse if their parents found out. They wouldn't dare tell that person "where to go". This is the era that I grew up in. This is part of my past, and Dr. Phil’s show brought up so much more of my memories from my past....and so many more tears. Tears, feelings and memories that I thought I had dealt with, were out there fresh, living them all over again....

My parents were older, not young like my friends' parents were, some I think couldn't make up their minds whether my father was my father or grandfather (he wasn't quite that old), just suffice it to say that they were in their late forties and mid-fifties at this time of my life.

My mother was divorced. But, no one ever knew that my mother and father "lived-in sin" as it was called then. No one knew that my mother wasn't Mrs. Smith. No one but her and my dad knew why she signed legal documents as Walker-Smith. I remember questioning her at one time when I saw her signing a bank loan, but she just said that she always wrote her full name for legal purposes. I knew that they were both in their 'second' marriage or so I was told. I didn't know that my father was only separated and not divorced yet.

However, everything was about to change for me when I learned 'the truth'.

I was around 12 years old when my best friend learned that her parents "had to get married" and her mother was only 15..... My best friend was very upset about all this and it upset me too, and I went home crying and very indignant about this..... My mother’s solution to the problem was to sit me down on the edge of the bathtub, while she sat on the toilet seat and she proceeded to tell me that her and my father was not even married.

Not married????? That can't be!! I know that you are married - you have me. What do you mean that you aren't married?

As I sat there completely shocked and stunned, my mind slowly started processing things that I had noticed as a kid, that didn't make sense; but being a kid, I just accepted them as just being life, things that crazy adults do. This explained s.o.o.o.o. much to me... all of sudden a light bulb went off in my head. Not married, but why not? Why not, because my dad was separated, but not divorced and there was some legal mumble jumble about having to be separated for seven years before a divorce could be finalized and then how he couldn't afford the divorce once his seven years were up. So they lived together. Lived together....parents’ at their age didn't just live together.... they married each other. Kids were only just now starting to stand up for their rights and not get married just because of a baby, but to live in sin - even for them was still way out there - and wouldn't even contemplate it; and here my parents, for 13 years had been living together!!!!

So here I was, terribly upset about my friend being conceived out of wedlock and while I am so upset, my mother is telling me this stuff. Telling me that it is about time I learned the truth from her, before someone else told me. (Like who else knew, that would dare to tell me something so awful). My friend was conceived out of wedlock, but I was an illegitimate child.... I was my dad's bastard child. How I HATE that term.... 'Bastard child'.

We were living a sham. Nothing that I thought was real was real anymore. The 'family' that I thought I was in - I wasn't anymore, but now things were making sense. Now I understood why some of my brothers (they were married) accepted me as a sister and why some of them didn't. Now I knew why when I went to visit my oldest brother (at about age 6) and his mother was there babysitting his kids ... she slammed the door right in my face! My mom and dad sent me to the door to see if my brother was home. They knew that there was a possibility that she'd be there (my father's separated-from wife) because my brother's wife had just passed away and he had young children and she'd be helping to look after the kids. I couldn't understand for years, why she'd be mean enough to do that to a little kid, but now it made sense (sort of, I still couldn't do that to an innocent kid).

So, I dealt with it. I couldn't go crying to my girlfriend, because it would become the village gossip. I had to suck it up and deal with it all on my own. Nothing had changed (as far as my mom was concerned) but to me.... everything changed. Now I saw the attitude that my sister held to my father (she was my mom's daughter) was understandable. All my siblings were old enough to know the truth and what was really going on, while I lived in this bubble and had no idea at all. Now I understood why my sister and brothers had nothing to do with each other, unless they were forced to and that wasn't very often. Three of my brothers wouldn't have anything to do with my dad - this now made more sense too.

When I was 15, I attended my parents wedding. If you think that it is strange to go to your mother or father's 2nd wedding to a step parent... try going to your biological parents' wedding at 15. It was surreal. It was strange. The wedding was quiet, held at a non-denominational church, with just my sister, her husband and son, my grandmother and myself, seven people in total. Even the reception was just the seven of us. It was the biggest secret of all times.
Through this I matured quickly. I dated and got married early in my life... 17, just before my eighteenth birthday. My parents had to sign a consent form for me to get married.

From my experience of having an older set of parents and my friend having younger parents and then meeting my husband (and his family) who also had a younger set of parents... I knew that I wanted to be a young mom. I wanted my children to be wanted, conceived in marriage and grow up knowing their parents loved them and that they fit into life properly by everyone's standards. I didn't want them to be 'conceived out of wedlock', 'illegitimate' or anyone's 'bastard' child or any other label that society could throw at them.

None of what happened to me... my conception.... my 'sham' of a family life... none of that was my fault, but how I went forward from there, that would be my choice and any mistakes I made would be my mistakes to be responsible for....because they were my choices...

Granny