Family Secrets Part III

"About six months later", my Mom continued her story, "I heard from Joe again." "He was coming home. His parents, still on the run from the government, were staying in Texas. He was going to stay with his grandparents in Chicago and try to find work, so that he and I could get married as originally planned." Now mind you, my mom was maybe 18 at the time. She had spent all four of her high school years dating this guy, and he proposed before she even graduated. So she, in her then-young mind, had everything already planned out. Of course at the time, the plan was for him to work at his dad's store and maybe take it over someday. Unfortunately, that wasn't the plan anymore. So here he was, without a job, no college education, and about to live with his grandparents (who Mom said were wonderful people)-- all at the sprightly age of 21. Not much of a future there right? Well, tell that to an 18 year old girl with dreams of white picket fences and "Somewhere that's green" in her eyes. That was my Mom in 1962. "Joe moved in with his grandparents and tried to find work-- to no avail." Mom went on. "He'd exhausted all his options. He still wanted to get married, but had reached the end of his rope. So he did the only thing he could do next... he joined the Air Force." Joe decided to enlist and get an education while serving our country. Certainly this was a noble idea. But when he went to enlist, he ran into yet another brick wall. "When he tried to get his birth records, which you need to enlist in the armed forces, he found that there was no record of his birth. Anywhere. He had never seen a birth certificate, and when he went to find one, there wasn't any record of anyone with his name being born on his birthdate." Anywhere. "So Joe contacted his parents. And he found out that the man he thought was his father was not really his father. His mother had him with another man before she even met him." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. His mother had a relationship with another man, and voila, Joe was created. But soon after Joe was born, the guy took off, and she later met the man that Joe believed was his father. And they were married. "Why didn't this guy legally adopt Joe as his own son?" I asked my Mom. "I have no idea," she replied, "They either completely forgot about it and just pretended that this guy was really Joe's dad, or just pleaded ignorance to the whole thing, just in case it wouldn't matter anyway." But it did matter. And now, not only was Joe's life a mess because of what happened with the business, it was a FURTHER mess because he had a father that he never met. So Joe found his real father, got a copy of his birth certificate, changed his last name to match his birth father's name, and married my mother. "We had a really great ceremony," Mom said. "I wore a gown, it was in a church in my hometown, and we had a huge reception. It was my dream wedding, even if it was doomed." Joe's parents didn't attend the wedding, for obvious reasons. But they did send a gift. My mother's $250 that she gave them from her own savings. "After the wedding, we moved onto the base in Indiana," Mom said, "and things quickly started to unravel. I HATED it. There was NOTHING for me to do. I had no friends, no family, and no life. I got a job at a clothing store, and HATED that as well. The people were unfriendly, unwelcoming, and just plain rude." She couldn't remember the name of the base or the city where it was located, but based on my research, it must have been Grissom Air Reserve Base (f/k/a Bunker Hill Air Force Base) in Peru, Indiana. We did make some friends on the base, but I was still very lonely," Mom said. "All we had to do was bowling and movies." "Life with Joe wasn't all I had dreamed it would be," Mom continued, "and in hindsight, looking at all that had happened to him, I can see now why he was the way he was. He had a terrible temper, and would go off about the most ridiculous things." I asked my Mom if he ever hit her, and she said he hadn't. I was glad to hear that. "The last straw for me came pretty quickly though. He'd been unbearable and just a plain crab for weeks. One night, we were bowling with some friends from the base. Joe was a good bowler, and took pride in that fact. Well that night, he didn't bowl such a great game, and he was really upset about it. I told him to just let it go, but he wouldn't. And while we were walking home from the alley, he took his bowling ball and threw it down on top of someone's mailbox." "That was the night I decided I had had enough," Mom said. "All I could think of is, 'Next time it's going to be me,' and I just couldn't let that happen. So I told him that I was miserable here, and I couldn't take it anymore. And furthermore, he was a child, and he needed to grow up. And until he did, I couldn't live with him anymore. So I packed up my things, got on a train, and went home to my parents. And I never went back." They filed for divorce, and it was soon over. In the course of one year, my Mom went from a giddy high school graduate to a truly desperate housewife to a divorcee. Two years later, she met my father while working at Warwick Electronics in Zion, IL. And a couple of years later, they were married. Mom went to nursing school, and just before she had me, she became a nurse, which was her dream. Two children, and forty years later, my parents are still married. It hasn't been perfect, and sometimes I wonder how and why they stayed together, but I'm glad they did. As they get older, I don't think they could really imagine living without each other. I'm glad my Mom told me about this, and I am so incredibly proud of her for taking charge of the situation, standing up for herself, and getting out of what could have been a very volatile situation. She took charge of her own life at a time, and in a situation where many would have held on "just to make things work" or "to see if things would get better." She knew it wouldn't, and that to stay there would be to waste her life. I've said before that my Mom is my hero. And with this story, I believe it even more so. I often wonder how and when they would have told us about my Mom's previous marriage if we hadn't found the pictures. I don't know if my Mom even knew they existed anymore at the time. I remember them vividly. Joe was wearing his dress white outfit, and there were many other recruits dressed up as well. One picture in particular was very familiar when my sister and I were paging through them almost twenty years ago. It was a picture of my Grandma and Grandpa. I remember it so well because it was on display in my Mom's bedroom for as long as I could remember. I never asked my Mom where the picture was taken. It was a great picture though, and I couldn't blame her for saving it. She threw out most of the rest of the pictures after we found them. In a way I wish she hadn't, but I can understand why she did. That part of her life was long gone. It just didn't exist anymore. This was her life now. Mom has no idea whatever happened to Joe. The last time she heard from him was when they officially annulled their marriage so my parents could marry in the church. She has no idea if he is even alive anymore. She knows he remarried as well, and had kids. But that's all she knows. I wonder if he's told his kids about my Mom.