My mom called yesterday, just to talk. We were on the phone I think for about 45 minutes, chatting about this and that, but in the course of the conversation she said a few things totally casually that blew me away. I really did not need to have a lower opinion of my father, but now I do. And one thing that amazes me is that she still thinks he was a good man and she still loves him. Now, I fall short in the Unconditional Love Arena. I know this. But her example tears me in two ways. one is an admiration for her ability to love apparently regardless of the circumstances. I think there's something very pure in that but the other half wants to SCREAM at her "ARE YOU BUGFUCK CRAZY????!!!!" These are some for instances from yesterday's conversation. A story I had heard was that they both worked for North American Rockwell. I heard that my father pulled my father's employee picture off the board and after a passage of time I know nothing about, they ended up married. The picture was in his wallet when he died. I am unsure of timeframes here but I THINK they married (eloped to Las Vegas) when my father was 30 and my mother was 23. They married on the 4th of July. If this is correct and I was born February 9th then I was the probable reason for the marriage. She said something in the conversation yesterday about feeling she had to do extra to "make up" for the fact that she wasn't working. First of all, she did way beyond any reasonable expectation, but I also reminded her, "You told me that he said, when you were pregnant with David, that if you continued to work after the baby was born he would divorce you." She then casually said, "I had no choice. He was my supervisor and he terminated me." Just WOW. My father was a lusty sort. In addition to my mother and a predilection for girl children, he apparently had a rather playboy existence. My mother let drop that he had her buy Hershey's kisses- for him to eat with another woman at the office. And either that one or another wanted him to take her to Palm Springs. But this is nothing as honest as polyamory. this was just flat out cheating in my view with my mother as his slave and never a valued person either. There was more in this conversation of yesterday but i am still chewing on this stuff. If I have a poor attitude about men, it is well warranted through generations of men in my family.