My Big Fat Lie

I've lived the same lie for 38 years. Here it is:

My mother has been married three times. At 17 she got pregnant with me in September of 1963 and married a young local boy named Elliott. He went off to military service to send a little money back, and I only have one memory of him other than his military photo that once sat on a table at my grandfather's farm house I grew up in. My only memory of my biological father would be 'The Tent Story' but that's far too long to go into and carry on properly from here. I'll get to it, one story at a time. Grampy still to this day says that Elliott was a good man, and thinks highly of him. I guess they all see each other in church now and then.

A couple years later on Mom remarried a fella named Reggie. His brother Lowell worked the summer fairs, and I spent a lot of time with him, helping run the mouse game. It's a big round table with lots of numbered holes around the outer edge. Players bet on the numbers. The mouse keeper spins the table, sets a mouse in the center of the wheel, and when the mouse walks into one of the numbered holes, it declares the winner. The Mouse Game is no longer found at the fairs, but when I was growing up there was at least two going on at every fair. I don't know why it's gone. Mice seem to enjoy it, so do the people. I miss those days... anyway...

Ultimately mom remarried again when she found Hal. Hal is the hero of this story. He's my dad, and he's a great guy. Lord knows how my mom and he met. I bet he was just going by in his 18 wheeler, and saw mom out on Grampy's lawn. Just strolling about, and stopped talk. All I knew was she started getting into his sleeper cab and heading out on week long trips all over the US of A. It was exciting, they'd bring me trinkets from some of the cities they'd visit. He's one of the most patient loving people ever to walk the earth. He's never in a hurry, so calm, supportive, and all the while funny or down right goofy. I love my dad. He saved my life in so many ways. He's always been a beacon of hope because he's such a dreamer, and the rest of my family are earthy farmer work real hard people, but are not crazy enough to believe some of the stuff that my dad and I support in one another. There's a bit of magic shared between us, and it's so great. He has three kids from his first marriage. There's Brenda, Ron, and Cindy. All older than I am, and I love them all. Somehow I feel like my dad's side of the family accepts me more than my side. They are all so good to me, even when we were kids and our parents were merging in and out of our lives. I always felt bad because I didn't mean to take their daddy away. It wasn't my fault, I was 5. I really love him though, and I'm so glad he came along. In the long run all he did was bring me three older siblings and a whole lot of love.

Mom and dad decided to have a kid. Mother took me outside onto the lawn, with only the trees listening in, and had a talk with me. It was 1970. I was almost 6 years old. She told me now that my little brother was born I was to never talk about my father Elliott, or my mother's early husbands. She wanted it to be like it had been forever with Hal, with no mention of the past. I remember promising to never mention the names of those men again. Just the mention of the name Elliott brings some kind of shame to me. I've never seen E.T. ever in my life... I have some kind of block.

Hey I was a kid, this is cool, a secret between mom and I. She goes on to explain that she always wanted me to be known as first born. That to speak about being born by a different man, my brother could be construed as first born. She wanted to protect my future she told me. I would be given my new father's last name, pretend to be his natural born son, and tell no one.

At 5 years old this was easy. At 43 I'm amazed at how many people don't know. In my adulthood I have come to fear how my brother is going to feel at 37 that the entire family has been lying to him since birth about his and my origins. The irony is that my brother and I work for an Internet business together. We live in different cities and work virtually, but we are in contact with one another at least three times a week. And still he does not know that his big brother is really a step brother. He still says things like, "Dude I'm looking more and more like Dad everyday, I'm getting bald... you must have gotten all of Mom's genes..." I always go "uhuh."

At 18 I left my mom and dad's house, headed to college in Baltimore, and never came back for more than a week visit. I've pretty much kept my distance the last 30 years other than phone calls. If I don't see any family members, I don't have to lie about myself in any way. It's really weird, although no one speaks about it.

I kinda think it's amazing that if everyone just lives a lie, it becomes as solid as any truth. It's what people say, and what they think, and what they do that matters. All this just opened my mind to how Truth evolves over time. We can all look back on history and see the blunders of the past. Things that people once held as true, often change over time. Now if something as solid as Truth can evolve, imagine how a Big Fat Lie can evolve over time.

Here is where I'm stuck:

Do I go against my mother's wishes?

or

Do I lie to my little brother forever about our origins?

Then there's: do I wait until the end of my mother's life to tell my brother, or is that worse and then she'll just haunt me? When do I tell him? Does he ever get told? At his death bed to finish him off good? I really don't know. None of these sound good to me. For some reason I believe that he needs to be told, that truth need prevail and all that stuff. But how... and it's been so long, he's all grown up and I think it will really freak him out. The biology he won't care about. It's the conspiracy. He's pretty much the only one young enough not to know. The whole family has kept him blind to me having a different father than he.

I've been stuck at this point for 38 years...