Playing peek-a-boo isn’t always a good thing

When FOF Rona was about 13, she and her brother, Bobby, were awoken in the wee hours of the morning by noises coming from the adjoining hotel bedroom. They were away with their mother for a summer week in the country. Their dad was back in the city, working. Rona and Bobby tiptoed to the door that separated the rooms and gingerly opened it a tiny bit. There they saw their mother in bed with another man. Horrified, Bobby returned to his bed, but Rona quickly dressed and ran to the hotel lobby to call her father to tell him what happened.

When Rona and Bobby returned home, their dad called them together and pointedly asked if they thought their mother had had sex with the man (remember, this was over a half century ago, and many of us didn’t know what sex was until we were 20!) They answered “yes.”

The incident was never discussed again. “My parents stayed married but things didn’t seem to be the same after my call,” Rona remembers.  “I know my father loved my mother with all his heart when they married because I read the diary he wrote on their honeymoon. We have no idea if he ever told her what he learned, but it changed their relationship forever.”

Rona’s first husband ran off with another woman and she’s always afraid her second husband will do the same. “My mother was a self-absorbed woman, which affected my self worth,” Rona told me. She will never forget that summer night, long ago, in the hotel room.  She only wishes she had talked to her mother about it before she died.

0 Responses to “Playing peek-a-boo isn’t always a good thing”

  1. Anna says:

    My word it is a different age today. Divorce is now accepted and women work and have their own income so it is easier to go your separate ways rather than sweep these types of things under the carpet.

    REPLY

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