Secrets

Secrets....So I was thinking a lot about this subject the other day...and in fact, I think of it all the time. I am a person that harbors MANY secrets, most of them NOT my own. I think it’s because I am a good listener, I also know it’s because I care deeply about friends I am close to and they know I will always be there to listen to them. They also know that if I am told that this is truly a secret, I will hold it in my mind and heart and never tell a soul. I’m talking about secret love affairs, secret babies, secret identities, secret past lives, all kinds of things that are made for a truly good book, or movie??!!! I find myself wondering if you ever truly know a person, 100 percent completely. Do you know your mate? Do you know your friends? Do you know yourself??For example, I’ll talk about my mom, Ana. One day I’m at my grandma’s house in Newport Beach a few years back. I’m flipping through all the old photo albums and I come across a picture of my mom in a white dress, about 15 years old or so. It’s adorable, I wonder what the occasion was, and why she had gloves on, and why she has the same smirk on her face that I get when I’m uncomfortable but have to smile. My grandma says, oh, that’s your mom in her debutante gown, she went to charm school and the whole bit, didn’t you know? I thought, no, I didn’t know, that was something she probably hated growing up. The mom I know is a free spirit, a hippie of sorts, a wise sage. Yet she moves with the style and grace of someone who was brought up with all the material comforts that money could buy, but as I’ve come to find out, she was missing a lot of things that money could not buy. You see, my mom was adopted, and so was my uncle, her brother, Uncle Michael. My grandfather was a lawyer and President of Farmer’s Insurance, and my grandmother stayed home and tended to the kids, as was common in those days. It was a very strict household, there were rules and there was a very high level of expectation. As soon as my mom was old enough to leave, she left and moved to Hawaii. She always knew she was adopted, and I’m sure there had been times when she was young, and my sisters and I were small, that she might have wanted to find out about her birth parents, but she was too busy taking care of us to think about herself. It was only a few years ago that she and her birth mother, Pat actually met. It turned out well, and although the whole situation could have turned out bad, it actually turned out well. There were questions only Pat could answer for my mom, and things only she could understand about their whole situation. It was a secret Pat held on to for many years, and near the end of her life, it was a secret no more. She had finally been reunited with her first born daughter after many years, and as much as we all had questions, and I even found myself getting defensive, i.e., I would never give up my child!!! No matter what, how could she have done that? the fact is, you never really know the place a person is until you are in it. In the end, my mom and Pat were able to connect and catch up on many years without each other, in a way that most people would not understand. Secrets can really take a toll on you, sometimes they do on me. There have been times where people have told me things in confidence, and I mean, serious things, life altering things where it’s like, did you really just tell me that? Now I have the burden on my heart to carry it or help them release it to where it’s supposed to be. Or to help to make things right, even though you can’t turn back time. The people closest to me know me, about my joys, my fears, my hopes and my dreams. Even though that remains true, there is still a tiny part of me that I DO NOT want to share, with anyone. It’s probably because I’ve shared too much. Is that wrong? Are you like that? Do you need to know every single thing about someone to love them? Or are some things sacred? I would love to hear your thoughts, friends!!!