Lies My Father Told Me, Volume 2

Here's an old chestnut, "We're all one big happy family." In a way it wasn't a lie, it was an omission of important facts. You know, a lie.

We were a model Johnson County, Kansas family--Dad, Mom, two daughters and one son.  Demographically, we were the perfect '60's family. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't all tea and cakes. The neighborhood we lived is was pretty nice. Residential, school right down the street, no real poverty, but we seemed to have less than everyone else on the block. Still, I had my bike and Lincoln Logs and baseball cards and the Boy Scouts, we weren't rich, but by no means were we poor. Still, we really had to stretch a buck. Dad worked a series of odd jobs along with his regular job at TWA. He took wedding photos, he cleaned businesses, he even worked on the railroad.

That cooled down after we all tuned eighteen or so. My dad and I would even take walks and stop for coffee and pie along the way. One night he told me the story of a woman he met when he was in the Air Force. He seemed to be far away while telling the story, kind of like a man and the one who got away. I asked, "So why did you marry mom instead of her?" I was curious, son to father I was curious.

I don't really remember what he said, he mumbled, he started off with "Well..." and there didn't seem much to hold onto. Curious, but it that's all I'm gonna get then that's all I'm gonna get. Then for my 30th birthday I got a dose of the truth.

You see, he did marry that woman, they had two sons. For my 30th birthday I got two half-brothers. Surprise!

There it was, the elephant in the room. Why were we the poor people in Johnson County? (BTW-there are many worse places to be "the poor people.") It's because we weren't a family of three, we were a family of five. Of course my dad had to work his ass off, but since my folks never shared those little facts we just thought dad was never home. It wasn't that he wasn't there for us, he was so busy taking care of our family and his other family that he wasn't there for anybody.

You see, he lied about his other family because he believed it wasn't good for either family to be enmeshed with the other. In the end what this lie cost me was two brothers and my father. He did it for the sake of the children, and in the end it did not.

My dad tried and he was wrong. Maybe that's one of the great lessons of parenting, you will be wrong. Then again that's the lesson of being a child, your parents tried not to screw up--even though they did they tried not to.

Ultimately the product of the lie is that I never got to know what was going on and am none the better for it.