Her name was
Mary.
My
grandfather met her in
Europe in the middle of the war.
I got her
eyebrows, and her
wild hair.
She and Grandpa were both
of Irish descent.
She was born in
England and she grew up
Catholic.
He grew up in the
States; he was
Protestant.
The wedding photos are a blur.
Prior to Grandpa's death, we had always believed that she was
the first one to leave, and that
my father was raised by a well-meaning stranger because his mother didn't love him.
When we cleaned out his hotel, we found otherwise; it was in the form of
letters she had written to his sister. Beautiful penmanship and British spellings.
Frequent use of words like "
frantic," "
panic," "
another woman." She wrote with a
clipped English lilt. I always imagined her speaking so too.
She died in '74. Married again, we think. We got her
obit at the library. Dad and I talk about looking up his
half-sister for kicks, but we forget.
His stepmother's name was
Laura, true to
Little House on the Prairie form.