With autism you never know, but it looks pretty good.

I just wish he would eat more. He ate some cookies, but even the macaroni and cheese I got him, which he'll usually eat, didn't look right to him. Eric is the pickiest eater on Earth, and I finally had to get him a bag of chips from the car...

Otherwise, it was fairly pleasant, done in honor of a youth minister who is leaving.

I made a call to my mother today, asking her a little bit about how old my paternal grandparents were when they had my father, how long they had been married, etc.

"Oh, they had been married for quite a bit. Of course, Mr. Schroeder had been married before...."

"Oh?"

That's what I said. Mentally I was screaming WHAT????

"Oh, yes. I don't know much about it..."

"Did they have any kids? My grandfather and his first wife, I mean?"

"No. They may have adopted some..."

"Did she die or did they divorce?"

"Oh, they divorced. Your grandmother Hazel was a secretary where he worked..."

"Of course, my Daddy--- Arthur--- was married before, too."

"What? Your father was married before?"

"Oh, yes. I think Mother was in the first wedding, as a bridesmaid or something. You know she grew up across the street from your grandfather..."

"Did he divorce his first wife too?"

"Yes."

"This isn't the Hollywood starlet he dated, the one who was in WINGS, the silent film that won the first Academy Award, was it?"

"Oh, no. He just dated the starlet. But he married before. I don't know much about her, but I do know that once we had a phone call, and he talked for a time, and when he came back he said, 'I was speaking to the woman who was almost your mother.'"

Okay, I'm thinking about this. My paternal grandfather was forty-five when my father was borne. If Pop had any adopted siblings via the first marriage, the sibling could be grown by the time Pop was born, which would explain why nothing was mentioned by Pop. Still...

I feel like the FORSYTE SAGA, where Fleur Forsyte finds there is all this complicated family history about people she had always taken for granted before. Or one of those John Jakes characters in something like the KENT FAMILY CHRONICLES.

Or any character in a soap opera who finds a lot of family history he has never heard of before.

I never knew either of my grandfathers were married before. My big brother, whom I talked to a few minutes later, wasn't aware of one of them being married before, either.

Well, why does it matter?

Practically, it doesn't. What's done is done, and there are really no other members of the family that I don't know about, since the only kid that resulted was a possible adopted kid. Maybe.

Why didn't they ever mention it before? Granted that Arthur died before I was born (that's the maternal grandfather) and that Albert Sr. died in 1958 when I was four or five, and Hazel died in 1960, when I was six or seven...

Francine, my maternal grandmother, lasted till late 1983. She saw Jamie, her first great-grandchild, before she died. Yet I never heard word one of this.

I thought divorce was relatively rare back then, but if both my grandparents had one (granted that my maternal grandfather was rich, pre-Depression, and thus possibly a little more prone to that sort of thing) it must be more prevelent than I thought.

Was divorce just a thing you didn't mention much, back then? Did Francine not want to mention that her husband was married before, because it hurt her?

Very strange. I have to imagine young adult passions in people who were old when I was a toddler.

My sister-in-law is going to xerox off some family documents and send them to me. I wonder if I'll find any other surprises? Will I go through every soap opera cliche?

I'm pretty sure I don't have an evil twin.

Maybe.