Or as a parent hide from your children? I am watching the series "Pieces of Her." It reminded me of what my dad hid from me and I never knew until after he died. My mother never knew. After one of my dad's cousins, whom I knew as an uncle, told me I promised to never tell my mother. My father after WW 2 was in a common law marriage for 2 years. He came home to find his "wife" doing the uglies with another guy. He packed up his things and left. He had shared with this cousin that he suspected she might be pregnant but had no proof. With the advent of the internet and my experience as a state investigator, I searched for years and was unable to find any leads. I had the state, town, and the woman's name or the name she gave my father. I finally decided that with all the dead ends, if I did find she had a child, chances were it wouldn't be my father's since she had at least two sexual partners, probably more. I never have had the feeling that I have a sibling. My instinct is good about things like this, so I don't think about it anymore until today watching this series. Did your parents keep any secrets from you?
I won't repeat it here, but I posted about one example in this thread. I guess I was a sensitive boy, and not eager to think things through to the hard answers. Chickens disappeared from time to time too, and I had an idea what was going on with that but it was never once done in front of me.
I don't know of anything my parents hid but like @Beth Gallagher I'm sure there were some. As far as us, we didn't even keep cooking wine in the fridge while the kids were here. Let them drop by unannounced on a Tuesday morning now and they'd be scared for life.
I know my dad owned a handgun but I never had a clue where he hid it. The other guns were in the open but not the handgun. On the other end of the coin, I had a handgun while raising my son and he was shocked to find that I had one when he was helping me move to Texas when he was twenty.
My father kept a lot of secrets because it was part of his job with the government. Many secrets he took to his grave, some he could reveal 10 years after the fact. When he was on assignment on one job, all he could tell us was he drove for an hour from where he stayed for this assignment and met the other scientist on a remote desert parking spot that had armed guards. There was also a constant search of the skies as this was restricted airspace. Stinger missiles were ready to go if needed. After they were patted down, they loaded them on a bus with the windows blacked over and behind a closed bulkhead door. They had spotlights for reading since they were on the bus for an hour before they reached a desert mountain where a huge garage-type door opened and they drove into the mountain and unloaded. It was a vast underground bomb-proof complex where they kept all the early government computers that were massive. This was the 1950s. He revealed 10 years later that his sole job there was to calculate space flights and program the computers. It was 1969 before he told us that his team did all the preparatory work for sending a man to the moon. He semi-retired and was on the ranch after Kennedy was elected and after reviewing their work, started the push to be the first country on the moon. Occasionally he would get a large envelope with an assignment and he would spend days doing pages of math calculations on both sides of a sheet of typing paper. He wrote like a typewriter and his print was very small. He then sent that envelope by registered mail to another friend (former coworker) and after a couple more exchanges, the final envelope went to an undisclosed location in the early NASA. He totally retired after the moon landing. In the 1950s he did a couple of assignments in Nevada where he rode to an undisclosed location on a black windowed bus. I suspect it was area 51 because where he was staying fits in perfectly. He would never confirm or deny that he had worked in area 51. When asked direct or leading questions he would remind me that if he told me and it was found out, we would both be killed. That was back in the day when national security was serious business and anyone leaking sensitive information was eliminated. When I asked him if he believed in UFOs, he said no, they were all identifiable. I asked him if he believed in aliens from other planets, and he said no, not since ancient times. He remained silent if asked more direct questions. The other big secret he had was about his involvement in WW2. All he would ever tell anyone was he spent most of the time in training with the Canadians in northern Montana or on the beach doing maneuvers. It was about 2010 when I was contacted by a woman putting together the history of the First Special Force, an American Canadian commando unit 1800 strong that is credited with saving Italy and turning the tide of the war. My daddy was a Black Devil, a member of the toughest military group to ever serve. I never paid attention to the medals I inherited until after this lady contacted me. My father had many highly decorated sharpshooter medals. The FSF records show my father was a highly decorated sniper. I wondered why my father preparing for a trip to Alaska for the summer, would want a K43 German sniper rifle for bear instead of a large USA caliber. In reading the stories shared in the descendants of the Black Devil group, I read an account where the father had shared his experiences with his son. My father was with eight commandos that totally surprised a group of german commandos and killed them all and took their K43's and ammo since they were low on ammo. They admired the superiority that the Germans had in rifle firepower. They used those K43s to take out the German railguns. Now I understand why he chose the K43 for grizzly protection. My mother and Father were thankful that I was female since I had also become a sharpshooter. I now understand why. I also understand why he was so distraught when one of the neighbors boys I grew up with was killed in Vietnam. He volunteered so he could be a sniper. My father spent hours trying to talk him out of volunteering. Before he was killed he wrote home that he regretted not listening to my father. I think my father felt guilty for not telling him that he was also a sniper and knew the pain he would bear for life if he survived.
My step-parents, actually Guardians, would never mention or talk about my family. IOW, my Aunt, who physically abused me and my dad, who was a full-blown alcoholic. And, to a point, I'm glad they didn't.
Faye, interesting story. I'm sure many special forces have some regrets. And we will only know what the PTB want us to know.
I suspect my mother was pg when she an dad married. But did not marry because she was pg. the baby did not live although was carried 12 mos. or so they said. Was a still birth. Anyways the date and timing were off,but never mentioned. Otherwise any secrets were the ones I kept about him from her.
I have discovered that there were a lot of things that my parents didn’t tell me, and I didn’t know to even ask about. Since Robin started delving into our ancestry, we have found some relatives we didn’t know were related before, and puzzled over some of the places my folks went and why. If I had a wish, it would be to go back in time far enough to ask my mom all of those questions and learn more about my family. One interesting thing that we puzzle over is my mom and dad’s marriage. They lived in a tiny north Idaho town, were both old enough to get married without permission, and for some reason they drove all of the way into Spokane , Washington, (over 100 miles away) to get married. This was in 1922, so they drove in an old Model T car, and it was at least a 2 hour trip from Bonners Ferry, probably more back then with the slower vehicles and narrow roads. My parents didn’t know anyone in Spokane, and it was a church there where the pastor married them, and the pastor’s wife acted as the witness for them. It must have been harder to show all of the necessary information since they were out of the state where they lived, and Washington has always been a lot more fussy about things than Idaho. As far as I know, my mom and dad both got along fine with the in-laws, so it should not have been an objection to the marriage that made them go to Spokane and get married. Things like this are such a mystery to me, and I wish that I had known to ask questions when my folks were still alive.
That would be a mystery for me also. They apparently didn't want you to know so they never spoke of it. I wonder if you had asked if they would have told you all the reasons. Prehaps going out of state also served as a honeymoon. If they survived the depression as children and were conservatives as many were back then, that might explain it. Were they efficient dual-taskers?
My mom was born in 1905, and daddy in 1903, so they were married before the depression. After getting married, they moved from north Idaho to Southern California where my maternal grandparents lived, and they worked there until about 1930, when they came back to Idaho and bought the farm where they lived through the depression times and until after I was born in 1945. I believe that my mom would not have deliberately lied to me if i asked her a direct question, but I don’t remember them ever talking about where they got married, and I never thought to ask. My parents were pretty efficient at whatever they did, so probably good dual-taskers (not quite sure what you are asking ? ). Both of them were excellent shots, and my mom was the entrepreneur of the family, while my dad was a power lineman from the time I was born until he retired, for the REA co-op he and my mom helped to start to bring electricity to north Idaho rural communities. This is my mom and dad working on the engine (it looks like) of the Model T on their way to California. I can’t even imagine driving all that way in a vehicle like that, but they always spoke like they enjoyed the trip.
I feel that my father HAD to know that he was adopted. But we were raised on stories that were outright lies. I didn't find out the truth until long after he died and my mother, who also must have known, was very closed-mouth about it.
I have a half sister I've never met. My dad got his high school girlfriend pregnant. My mom knew about it for 50 years and I just found out when my dad died.