Today’s been a long day. Evidently, everything I know about how my Mom and Dad met, the trajectory of their romance, all of the family lore — is just not true.

Had you asked me this morning how Mom and Dad met, I’d have said, “Oh, it was sad. Mom’s sister Dolores died in a car accident driving from Saint Louis to visit Mom at the University. Dad was the friend of a friend at the University who drove Mom back home.”

This is why I was surprised to read Mom’s early letters to Dad detailing Dolores’ New Year’s Eve plans, facial routine, and favorable opinion of Dad as a boyfriend.

”Maybe she dies later,” I thought. But still, how did they meet if not in the darkest Meet Cute story ever?

You know what else is family lore? The decline of her marriage. The lore is Jerry began flirting, Mom got jealous, they went to counseling, she fought for her marriage, then went to Saint Louis and rediscovered Dan and self-esteem, said “screw this marriage,” and filed for divorce.

I was just thumbing through another stack of letters and saw that she filed for divorce the week before she went back to Saint Louis.

Now, I can see spinning that. You want to tell your kids you were the injured party, and you tried, but their father didn’t. That makes sense. And I forgive her anything, because she’s my Mom,and a great mom at that. (And an adorable girlfriend, three funny letters a day, the cuteness it’s exhausting.)

And I’m not mad at all, just puzzled. Wouldn’t there have been a conversation beginning with “You’re an adult now, so here’s the real story” — oh, well no, because there was David, and he was never an adult.

You know how I feel tonight? There was a story on NPR once about a black baby born into a white family. White mom, white dad. He was told all his life he was white so that’s what he told people. Eventually, enough people corrected him so that he had a talk with his mother, and he discovered the family history he’d been given was not true.

My case is not that extreme. But today has been exhausting. I read a three inch stack of letters and it took hours, with the calculating and recalculating, adjusting my memories, and updating the timeline worksheet.

This is probanly why I don’t remember reading these letters in 2018, I must have gotten a hint there were discrepancies and I just closed the box.

But now, it’s a project. Maybe a letter a day, though, I’ll scale it back.

Were it not for the references to Falstaff beer I would never believe that my Dad – my stoic, emotionless, rational Dad – wrote three letters a day full of all the passion I have never heard from any man in my entire life.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” And then … expounding on that.

(There was even one part where Mom had to use the whiteout.)

Evidently the three letters a day drained him of all the verbal love because in all my life I never heard him say “I love you” to my Mom. Perhaps they said it behind closed doors.

(There was even a part in which he promised to love Dave and me, which made me choke with laughter when I read it, because he really was clearly waiting us out. )

The best thing he wrote wasn’t in a letter, it’s the notes he took when she called him in Saint Louis after their ten-year separation. He wrote down her name, then her phone number, then her phone number with exclamation points and circled, then another circled and underlined and with exclamation points… and the page is just eventually full of just her phone number. Well, except for the three times her number is interrupted with scribbled notes. (“Friends?” “Why unhappy?” “Staying?”)

It is just dear. Makes me like him a lot.

What’s really remarkable is that while Mom’s letters are full of teasing, humor, and guilt over using Jerry’s credit card to pay for the new tires she will use to drive away from Texas, Mom says I love you — once. On the last letter she sends, on the day of their wedding, she signs, “I love you, Your Wife Margi.”

Back in December of 2017 I looked in the box marked “Mom correspondence” and read Mom’s letters. Somehow I skipped the letters sent from my soon-to-be stepfather, aka “Dad”.

This new information from Dad’s letters all prompted me to check the dates and make a spreadsheet to track who did what to whom and when, because what I always held to be the timeline did not hold up.

The previous timeline: my father Jerry has an affair with a new lady at his new job, Mom gets jealous, Mom takes me back to visit her parents in St. Louis and leaves Dave with Jerry, after a few months Mom calls up her old boyfriend, they “fall into each other’s arms” (until my forties I assumed they hugged and held hands), Mom gets her own apartment in St. Louis, and by the end of six months is divorced from Jerry and after months of pleading from my (step)Dad she marries him.

I’m having to revise that timeline now that I’ve read the letters my Dad wrote Mom during her separation, plus a letter from Mom’s neighbor that flatly relates that Jerry’s co-worker was spending the night —

“Not your business!” you cry, appalled. I say it is my business, given that I was five and my life blew up in months.

How many months? Two. Not six months as I had thought. Two. Two months from separation to finalized divorce.

The question of who did what to whom — first — is still pretty ambiguous, as the letter from the neighbor isn’t dated. Evidently Mom had to convince the judge that Jerry was unstable, not that he cheated on her.

I remembered in my forties Mom said she believed Jerry hadn’t — technically — been unfaithful. At the time I scoffed. Now that seems feasible, given that the whole thing fell apart so fast.

Two months.

And it would have been one month but Mom told Dad she needed a month to think before they took things to the next step.

Oh! Hey, that also explains why she got her own apartment after … one month. Look at that. So many things are falling into place with this new timeline.

It gives me things to admire (very brave, taking action like that) and things to not admire (at least I got to two months to adjust, David got no warning at all).

If reading Dad’s letters gave me a new point of view on Mom, it really gave me a new point of view on Dad, which I will tell you about tomorrow.

I’ve been going through Mom’s old papers and correspondence. One thing she wrote was called “The Growing Old Part,” and now that I am too growing a little bit older, I read it with interest.

She wrote the below musing to herself in 1984. She was born in 1934, so I guess she was a young chick of 50, which is insane. I believe she retired at 52. She then annotated it again in 1993, when she would be a young retired chick of 59.

The Growing Old Part

How can you keep your children interested in you when you’re old so they’ll look out for you and yet not resent you?

The main thing would be to pay for as many services as you need. Don’t try to save money for your kids after you’re gone. The Corps is a good place to hire people who give services.

Plan regular events that include your children, but are short. Don’t drag the visit out. If you ask them for help or advice — take it. Be interested in what they are doing, but don’t give advice.

Try to involve yourself in activities that include other old people. If you’re in your own home, take the OATS bus to the senior center for lunch.

Try to keep clean. Buy new clothes. Get your hair done. People have to look at you!

Don’t let people see your depression or hear your fears.

If you land in your kid’s home temporarily, keep the door closed. Try to plan long stretches out of the house on the patio or porch. Read, listen to the radio, work puzzles, have the library send books, make one phone call per day. Make a plan for the future – send for material, research where you’re going, immerse yourself in the subject. Even if you never go, you will have something to talk about other than your doctor bills. Do craft work.

If you are forgetful – forget it! Don’t make an issue of it and get upset. Make signs to tell you where things are and keep things there. Keep a notebook and calendar nearby and constantly check it.

If none of this works, kill yourself, but make it look like an accident.

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Above dated 7–31–84

Later annotation, dated 9-31-93:

This was written when my mother was so ill. She died in March 1988, and Dan’s mother had been living with us following her leg amputation. Still makes sense, though.

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Yes. She is dark. I certainly am glad I had no children who might see me naked or anything that prompted that closed door, whether she saw her Mom naked or her Mother in law saw her naked …

I take her advice though, on the forgetfulness. Not her advice on hiding fears.