Post-script to Origin Story #0

[genderjumper]

Not everyone will have seen the 5,500 words I dropped yesterday recounting my complex history with my complex family, but today I got a wild text from my mom that makes a perfect epilogue...

After telling me the answer to tonight's Final Jeopardy!:

"This was my wedding night 54 years ago. I usually look at [first husband]'s FB page, but there have been no posts on it for several years. Today I found [first husband's second wife, who has the same name but spelled differently]'s page and learned they were married 50 years in March. I'm glad he found someone who could tolerate him and make him happy since it wasn't me."

So my mom, whose anniversary with my step-dad (her second husband) I kept track of because neither of them could ever remember through 20 years, still keeps tabs on the first husband she married at 18 and who left her only a couple years later? My mom, who became estranged from her parents for eight years after that wedding and still doesn't really know how to have a direct conversation with me, still drops random bombshells like this out of nowhere. My mom, who silently looks down on my decades of nonmonogamy but still waxes nostalgic for a relationship with a guy she hasn't seen since before I was born.

I think she cheated on him and he stomped off petulantly, but I have no idea what went down. Maybe she'll tell me next year. After Final Jeopardy!