Several years ago my brother, Wes used to visit our home every so often and after he began dating the sister of an old girlfriend and later married he was always talking about his other family. She had been married and divorced, with two children, a boy Ron and a girl Sandy. After three years of marriage his wife died with a cerebral hemorrhage. He raised her two children.

I got pretty tired of hearing him talk about what his kids and later his grandkids did. If he wasn’t talking about them he was talking about friends of his and their kids. I was hurt because he never had anything to say about me and my kids. So, I suppose I really didn’t pay much attention to him.

One day our youngest son Nathan, was about to be married. Our oldest daughter, Catie and her two girls were at our house and the girls were going to be in the wedding. So, Catie was getting them ready for the wedding and she had just had Emily, age five, our granddaughter in the shower and had washed her hair while giving her a shower. She was giving Laura, age eight a shower when Emily came bursting into the living room.

My brother Wes was there also. He was just sitting waiting for time to go to the wedding. While the rest of us were trying to get ready, he was watching the furor and enjoying it. He told this story over and over for the next several years. Every time he began talking about the past, he wound up telling about that day. Emily came out of the shower, soaking wet, hair dripping wet, and she grabbed her new dress that Grandma had made for her and began to put it on. My brother Wes said to her, “Emily what are you doing?”

She matter of factly stated, “I’m gonna put this dress on and I’m gonna be beautiful.”

He laughed about it and every time he told that story he would laugh and enjoy it immensely all over again.

I never heard him talk about my kids or my grandkids except Emily. But his other family after he died just one year ago in Feb. 2004 told me that he talked about me and my kids to them all the time. They probably got as tired hearing about us as I did hearing about them. It made me feel sad that I had felt that way. But who knew?

I guess the moral to this story is, be sure of what you know before you begin to be hurt about something, because it may very well be that what you think you know, is not the true facts. The truth may be just the opposite of what you believe to be true.

Nell Berry louis_berry@bellsouth.net

Bio: Nell is a 74 year old newly published author of Growing Up in Missouri and Other Short Stories available from Publish America and amazon.com, it may also be purchased from Barnes and Noble. Nell lives with her husband at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri. They have survived 55 years of marriage. They have four grown children, nine grandchildren and two great granddaughters.