Aunt Pooh was an at-home mom who wrote in her spare
time and was active in the women’s movement.
Today, she’s won awards for her writing and teaches at the community
college. My Uncle Joe is a therapist,
which Ed says was lucky for my cousins, who had to grow up in a house with
writers and feminists hanging around all the time and making protest signs in the
living room.
Aunt Pooh gave me a nice cup of pumpkin spice tea and organic
oatmeal cookies. “Well now, I always
wondered how long it would take you to notice your birthday. I figured that if you were like your mother,
you’d have spotted it years ago. But you
take after the rest of us. Too busy with
life to worry about numbers.”“Well, I never needed to see it. I thought I knew when I was born. But why did everyone tell me I was a year younger? I could have been driving or drinking or voting!”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not lying to you, but not arguing with your mother. She was upset enough.”
“Upset about what?”
Aunt Pooh signed. “Charlie,
for someone who reads so much, you are showing a real lack of imagination . . . Do you remember when you got married, and
your mother’s dress fit perfectly except in the stomach area?”“So we got it altered.”
“And if you look at the wedding pictures, you’ll see how big
her bouquet was.”
Fortunately, I’d put my cup down or I would have dropped
it. “You mean my parents had to get married?” I don’t know which was more shocking, that my
mother had been pregnant at her wedding or that she had lied about it. “But why . . .”
“Oh, Charlie,” Aunt Pooh shook her head. “Your mother was so innocent. She was so wrapped up in her science and
numbers that she didn’t know what could go on with people. She didn’t see consequences and when they
turned up, she was dumbfounded. But
there’d been enough scandal already. She didn’t
want it to follow you for the rest of your life.”
“What scandal?”
“You know your father was married before and that you have a
half-sister. Didn’t you ever wonder why
she never came to visit?”
“I gave up asking. My
mother always changed the subject. And
it made me too sad to think about it.”“Well, your mother’s office was next to your father’s. One thing led to another and his wife found out. She stormed into the Chemistry Department, trashed his office and your mother’s and got a quickie divorce. Very bad business decision on her part, but she agreed because your father offered to pay very generous child support and not have her arrested, which he could have done. And then she moved; she was probably too embarrassed.”
“What did Grandma and Grandpa say?”
“There was all kinds of stuff happening at the time. Everyone was getting divorced either for ‘personal
growth’ or because they found someone else.
You know how your grandmother was, always looking for the positive. So she threw herself into planning the
wedding and then the baby shower. Dad
said that your mother could always support herself and a baby if she had
to. You know, they never understood poor
Louie.”Poor Louie! I never thought of my mother like that.
I’ll have to think about this and talk it over with Karen
and Nikki and maybe Janet and maybe Kate and maybe even Ed.
And I’ll have to think about something else to put on the
blog. 
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