Family Secrets

Norman Reisman

We used to have one in my family. (Oh, come on. You must have one, too.). When it began it seemed innocuous enough, but over the years it became so burdensome, like a weight that just needed to be lifted off of my shoulders. I won’t make you suffer. Here it is:

After my mom’s death my dad remarried a divorced woman, Gladys. She previously had a 3 year old son named Steve. They married in 1955 when I was 6. So the new family consisted of my dad, Charles, my step mom, Gladys my 12 year old sister, Elaine, Steve and me. Gladys wanted us to appear to the world just like we were all one big original family. She didn’t think the truth was anyone’s business and nobody questioned it. It was actually kind of fun, in the beginning.

Complicating things was the fact that my birth mother, Helen, was the youngest of 8 siblings so I had aunts, uncles and cousins all over Brooklyn and Long Island. Not only that, but I was the youngest of all the cousins. That put me in an enviable position considering the size of the family. Relinquishing that spot was very difficult. Even worse was going from the youngest of 2 children to middle child, in an instant. (Where’d all the attention go?)

Part of the strategy was to move to Florida for 2 years. When we moved back to Long Island, there were only a few of my birth mother’s relatives that we maintained contact with. They became “our old friends from Brooklyn.”

My folks went to great lengths to maintain the family secret. Relatives on my birth mother’s side became relatives on my father’s side. My folks would celebrate phony anniversaries. They went to Spain for their 25th (which was actually about their 9th or 10th), just for appearances sake. And it’s not like we were all so alike. My sister and I looked and acted like my father and Steve looked and acted like Gladys. On several occasions when I’d be left alone with another adult, I’d be asked on the QT, “That’s not your real mother, is it?” I would respond, “Of course.” Sometimes I’d be asked in front of Gladys, “Do you get along with your little brother?” She would immediately jump in with, “They’re very different types!” (I actually think if someone asked me that today, that she’d magically appear and respond, “They’re different types!”)

And there was plenty of just plain lying about things. It became such a tangled web. But my siblings and I kept the secret through about college age. My folks maintained the secret until their deaths and they lived to ripe old ages. A funny thing happened when they went to sell their Del Ray Beach Condo. The real estate agent that they chose to list it said to my father, “Aren’t you Charles Reisman from Brooklyn, formerly married to Helen, etc?” Well, that guy didn’t last too long, at all.

As I grew older, I started to realize what an injustice this secret was to my mother and to her memory. Her family must have felt it all along. The fact that she ever even existed was just erased from all of our lives.

At Jewish funerals we all hear rabbis talk about the “memory" of a person. A person is still alive as long as he or she is remembered. So I’ve been trying to revive Helen’s memory by being honest and telling her story to the world. I even went as far as endowing a small scholarship in her name at my alma mater, UAlbany. That will insure that her memory, or at least her name, will go on for a very long time.

I could go on and on about this but Alte’s editors prefer 500 word stories, so I’ll stop here. I’ll end by just saying, “May her memory be a blessing.”

If there’s anything you’d like to get off your collective chests, I’m all ears.