Looking up my Past

 When I was a kid, I didn’t realize that something had happened to me that changed my life.  I found out from my aunt June, who told me after my parents had died.  My Aunt had married a man and had two daughters with him.  She divorced him, and He took his older daughter with him to California, and so I thought my aunt had only had one child, until she married again when I was a teenager.  But that is incorrect.  My aunt had had this first marriage and divorce, ten remarried before I was born, and her second husband loved me.  He had dark hair and eyes, like I did, and when he would stroll me, would say I was his daughter.  I was crazy about him, and when he died, in an accident taking my niece to ice skating lessons, my parents and my aunt told me not to speak about him, but of course I did.  My aunt tried to explain, but I was too young, and it buried itself in my unconscious.  So, I never said to my aunt and niece that I was sorry or missed him.  Between my aunt’s first marriage and her third, she had loved a man and lost him while he was taking Delores ice skating.  None of us mentioned it, and I never believed my aunt and niece had lost someone so dear to them.  

There I was, over forty, and learning for the first time I had lost someone, and my Aunt and Niece had as well, without explaining how this affected all of us.  My Aunt’s third husband was not very likeable, and I never cottoned to him.  But my aunt had a third child at 37, and it was a boy.  He was indulged completely, and my uncle was thrilled.  He and his brother adored the boy.  His brother never had kids, so the nephew was like a son to him as well.  He was younger than a couple of his mom’s grandchildren, but they all got along.  What a story?  Almost impossible to believe.  I did not like my nephew any more than my uncle, as he was spoiled and had no sense of humor about it.  I still don’t.

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