Family Stories

My daughter just told me that every family has their wild and disastrous stories. Is this true?

How come I didn't know that! How come I thought that my family was the only one!

Then, right away, I remembered another story from someone else's family that sounds so made up, it could not possibly be true, but it was literally true. It's a riches to rags story. This is how it was. I'm changing the names because it's not my own family's story.

By the way, this story was no secret. Everyone knew the background story.

I knew Jillie, and I knew her mother, the grandmother, as Grandma Kay. I knew them over forty years ago.

A year or two before I met these people, Grandma Kay's husband was alive. They were phenomenally wealthy people, to the extent that they lived in a real mansion. They even had butlers! I assume they had beautiful cars, must have had a chauffeur if they had butlers. I imagine they had designer clothes. They were loaded.

I don't remember how the father made their money, and I don't remember his name.

The father had a booming business, and I believe he also did investments. There was a fantastic investment that came up. Never expecting to die, the father borrowed on his life insurance, and he died in the next few days before he had anything in place.

The long and the short of it is that Grandma Kay had to find a job and go to work! She got a job as a bookkeeper. I knew her as a tired woman with gray hair and dark circles under her eyes.

Her daughter Jillie got pregnant. She and the father of the baby got married, but the marriage was in name only.

Living in an apartment with her mother, Jillie also had a job. She had her baby. And when the baby was two weeks old, Jillie had to go back to work to make ends meet. This was not her wish.

Like me, the baby at two weeks was left on his own with strangers.

Years later I heard that Jillie had married a wealthy man, and the marriage was good, and she didn't have to work any longer. By then, Grandma Kay had died.

The baby boy grew up just fine. Turned out to be a wonderful guy, I hear.

I try to think up names for the soap opera this story could be in, and I can't seem to think of a good name. I scratch them all:

The Twists and Turns of Life

The World Upside Down

True Tales of the Unbelievable

Indian Ocean Report

Very windy today. Consequently, the waves seem to swell up before they crash. I don't remember seeing this welling up before like a giant fish taking a deep deep breath, and then the giant waves reach the shore, and then the giant waves collapse.

I just looked out again, and there was a giant rainbow crossing the ocean. The arc was huge and clear. I ran and got my camera, and my camera wouldn't work. Battery weak?

Oh, no, this most beautiful rainbow I ever saw, and my camera wouldn't take a picture so I could show you. And now the rainbow is gone. Nevertheless, I will take the rainbow as a sign of wonderful things to come.