Have you ever had a family revelation?

 I was just talking on the phone to my older brother. I thought he knew more about what was going on in the family, than me, just because he was older, and the only son. I always knew he was a bit of a space cadet, and I'm sure the drugs he's taking for severe depression are muddying his memories, but I didn't know that he knew so little of what was going on in the family. Geez, I was telling HIM things about situations that he was involved in, that he has the absolute wrong picture of what went on. It's made me wonder if I have had it wrong all along...... and I KNOW that's not right.  But GEEZ, has it ever startled me. It makes me see things in a whole different way.

Has anyone had something like that happen to them? What was it, and how did it impact on you?

 

ViolaB 

Mine's slightly different. I realized a lot of the narrow minded things I was taught and brought up hearing were not the truth as the world saw it. It broadened my horizons and opened a whole new world to me.

There's never been any "secrets" in our family, except when my mom didn't realize that my nephew was gay.  Not that it was something kept quiet about around her, just the topic never came up.

Not like yours but I do think as we age we find out so much and thinking someone had the whole inside story is not the way it was. Life is full of surprises.

 I've been talking to my 92 year old aunt a lot lately since my dad died. There was a bit of tension between them, so we didn't visit that often. I've had the best time reconnecting with her. One thing I just recently realized is that I got my sense of humor from her. I always wondered where it came from, because it sure wasn't from my parents. They had their own sense of humor, but it was different from mine.

My family is not the secret-keeping type.  It's got more of a rant and rave and cry your troubles to the wind style.

There is one sad event about which I've heard about four different, somewhat conflicting stories, but not because anyone is keeping secrets.  It's more that the answers are unclear, and different relatives have different theories, which over the past 40 years they've translated into "fact".

No..not any family revelations from my side of the family.

I just typed a couple paragraphs regarding DH's side of the family...but dang since they've been kept secret for so long (and they'd be of NO interest to anyonehere) I've still decided to keep them secret!!!

;)

 My parents weren't really keeping secrets as much as there were a lot of things they just didn't talk about. I could never get my dad to talk about his feelings about anything....impossible to figure out or explain my mother.....passive agressive would be best, but even that is woefully inadequate. 

I thought that I was the left-out kid, not being involved in things, not being told things that were going on.... but the things that my brother talked about that startled me were, I suppose, crises, that our dad was going through. I knew ALL about them. He has some really messed up misconceptions, that would, and probably do, impact on his perception of our dad. That's what has me really confused tonight. On a separate issue of perceptions, he came across an elderly gentleman who he thinks was his high school band teacher. Our dad was the band teacher of the closest school to that one, in the next district. They knew each other, for sure, although not well. I knew a few things about this teacher that were probably a bit exaggerated, except that, as a high school student, I was doing things where I was hanging out with practice or student teachers, and they'd say things.... discuss certain schools and teachers they worked with.. and seeing as that was dad's business, and I knew a lot of the people they talked about, through dad's association with them...well, you can imagine that it was sometimes an eye-opener.

We all know that people will see what they want to see, and think what they want to, or need to, for their own sanity, I suppose, or to suit their own purposes. We see a lot of that on these boards. I guess, in this situation, I'm just surprised that he didn't know about some of these things...like the civil suit against dad, and the events that led up to it, and how it just disappeared. I never did get the details on that part of it, but it hardly matters. 

So, what am I confused about? I guess it's that I'd have thought that something that would greatly impact any family would be known by the immediate family..... as I said, I've always felt like the outsider in my own family, and I KNOW my younger sister is a complete space cadet, deliberately having her own agenda..... they both received a lot of attention as kids.... yet I seem to be the one who knows what was going on.... news to me, and that's kind of thrown me.

 

VB 

I noticed that you referred to your brother as somewhat a space cadet and in another post, you referred to your sister as somewhat a space cadet, whatever that means. Have you taken a good look at yourself?

 VIola - I think sometimes it's a case of "not my reality."  Your brother and sister's reality is not  yours!  Ex-DH really thought his family was "normal."  I started to wonder when he, my Ex-MIL and BIL all remembered the same event - but with totally different details and meaning.  We all choose what we remember, and HOW we remember it, and the meaning/importance we attach to those memories.  Sometimes family members create elaborate fictions around certain events, or they speculate about some event they don't really understand, and those things solidfy into "facts" which you will never be able to dislodge.  

Yup. I didn't know about it until about 20 years ago, but a cousin who was adopted by an uncle and aunt turned out to be a blood cousin. Maybe we could call her a double cousin? It seems that her mother, my mother's sister, had a fling with a sailor in the coast guard during WWII. My aunt was married to a Seabee, and he wasn't around for four years during the war. She had two sons. She gave up the baby for adoption, and my dad's brother and his wife adopted her. Seems everybody in the family knew except me. I didn't know until after my aunt died. Aunt and her husband were divorced after the war (he was a wife beater), he took her sons, and they were raised by his mother. Aunt remarried and had another son, and I used to babysit him summers while she worked. I always wondered why my aunt asked so many questions about my cousin, and always answered her questions from my teen-age point of view. That point of view? She was a spoiled brat who didn't have to ask for anything because her parents and grandparents provided whatever next new thing that came along. On her 16th birthday she got a car. Not just any car, of course, but a brand new car. Dang!

 

I did admit that she was as cute as a button and very smart, always on the honor roll at school and very popular. Looking back, I admit that I was green with envy! She wasn't really a spoiled brat--my definition of spoiled is a child who thinks only of him/herself with no thought of fairness, sharing, kindness, compassion. She never was like that and was involved in volunteer activities, had a part-time job while school, helped care for her grandparents. So she actually was quite a nice person. I was merely jealous of all the material things that she had; no reason why she shouldn't have had those things since her parents/grandparents could well afford to provide them.

 

She took care of both her parents when as they got older, still does a good bit of volunteer work, and just a really nice person. We aren't close, but we're very friendly, and I like her a lot now. 

My family has been in a revolution so long they could use some revelation!

 LOL sstetzel

Well, that's my dad's half of the family, anyway, in feud mode.

SCGranny, how would you put it, when you just see your siblings as odd, growing up, and as adults, they both have major depression issues? The experts all tell us that there are a lot of things to watch out for in children, that weren't known about, 50 years ago, that indicate mental illness, or a tendency that way.

Yooper, isn't that funny that you mention that, as I found out, about 20 years ago, that my grandfather's sister was in a similar situation. In those days, adoption wasn't done within the family, nor were adoption records ever opened. This would  have been early '30's, I think. I've always wondered about cousins that might be out there.

Oh, the "not my reality" is a good phrase. I'm going to keep that one. I've heard it before, of course, but it didn't stick in my head. 

 Thanks for the input!

 

ViolaB 

The dynamics of family are such that everyones perceptions of the same situation are not always the same. Personality also governs perceptions. How something directly involves us or whether we are on the outside of a situation has a lot to do with memories. Besides what is done is done and why air it now to possible rancor or hurt or whatever.