Well, Dear, Your Real Father is Jewish

My mother-in-law is a dear, but slightly flaky, person. Although my husband had known since he was a small child that he had been adopted by his mother's second husband, she never talked about much about her first husband. All my husband ever heard was that his biological father was a cadet at the Naval Academy, where his mother's Dad taught, and he was the product of a youthful (she was 16) indiscretion and a quicky marriage/divorce.

Curiously, to me, my husband never showed any interest in learning about his biological father or possible siblings. I'm an only child and, if I thought I had half-siblings out there, somewhere, I'd move the earth to find them. I would want to know chapter and verse about my biological father's family. But not David. He was indifferent, saying that he had four other siblings and had never known any other father and didn't care to speculate. He is SO different from his half-siblings that I frequently wondered if there was another family out there somewhere, looking and acting like David.

One Thanksgiving, his parents, my mother, and some friends came to join us at our house in the mountains. We were cooking a big feast and I found myself alone in the kitchen with David's mother, so I took the opportunity to ask her about David's biological father. She told me that he was from California, that he hadn't finished at the Naval Academy, and she thought he had remarried and had a family.

David came into the kitchen, aggravated from a heated phone converation with his extremely bigoted ex-wife, who objected to their children being exposed to homosexuals, heathens and people of color (of course that's not how she put it), when they were with us. "I just wish, one time, I could say something that would just shut her up and leave her speechless," he fumed.

His mother, who had been stirring the beans and looking pensively out the window, said absently, "Well, Dear, your real father is Jewish. What do you suppose she'd say to that?"

He turned, raced to the phone and imparted the news to his ex-wife, who was, indeed, rendered speechless, at least temporarily. Fifteen minutes later, she called back to implore him not to reveal this to any of her family or friend. (Like there was ever a chance of that.)

So, that's how my husband, at age 42, learned about his heritage, although he still has no interest in finding them.

It's No Accident That "GOD" is "DOG" Spelled Backwards

Heat Waves, Hurricanes, and Uncancellable Business Travel

OK, so I know it's that time of year, here in costal southeast Florida, BUT does a hurricane have to be whipping up exactly at the time I am getting ready to leave for the only Must Attend business meeting of the year?? Bad enough that I have to go to Chicago, where they're having a record-breaking heat wave, but add all the extra anxiety of leaving home, not knowing what's going to happen while you're gone or when/if you'll be able to get back, and it makes for one cranky woman. The husband isn't so happy, either. He NEVER comes on my business trips, but he loves Chicago and wanted to come on this one. If Hurricane Chris looks likely to threaten Florida, he'll be staying home to put up storm shutters, bring in patio furniture, and hunker down with the zoo, which includes three large, extremely furry dogs, two of whom are storm-phobic, four cats, one of whom is psychotic (that would be Zoe, my best friend's cat), and my best friend. Nobody's going to be happy in that house!