My mom and I dining on the cruise ship, Jan. 2008.

My mom and I are sitting on a sunny deck in white lawn chairs, sipping cocktails on a cruise ship in the Eastern Caribbean to celebrate my grandfather’s 80^th birthday. I was 21 and living in Jerusalem at the time, but I flew to Miami, Florida for the cruise, while the rest of the family traveled there from Ohio. My mom rarely drinks, but she was happy to see me. It felt like a special occasion. I felt like an adult.

It was just the two of us. My mom had managed to pry me away from Freddie, a cute Englishman I met on the ship who happened to be one of the few men under the age of 75. Even though the entire purpose of the cruise was to spend time with family, my family encouraged me to go for Freddie — weirdly, my 80-year-old grandpa was Freddie’s biggest cheerleader. My mom, not so much. She didn’t approve of me flirting with a random British guy I’d met on a cruise ship. I didn’t listen to her, because she discouraged me from dating most men.

We were probably talking about Freddie when my mom dropped a bomb, almost laughing: “You know I was married before?”

I stared at the cocktails, those red, fruity, diluted tropical drinks in a pear-shaped hurricane glass (I looked up the shape online; a fitting name for a cocktail on a cruise ship.). Clearly they had operated like a truth serum. I can’t remember the taste of the drink. It is eclipsed by the message: My mom kept her first marriage a secret from me (and my brother) for 21 years.

My mom on the cruise deck in January 2008.

I never understood why people went on dramatic quests to find their biological parents after learning they were adopted. I felt strongly that it’s disrespectful to the parent who raised you — who parented you. Until it happened to me. “Wait, is my dad my dad!?” I was overwhelmingly curious. My life flashed by and the mystery sperm man became my “real” father; my known father almost an imposter. This line of thinking made no sense. My parents married three years before I was born.

I was amazed at the secret. We’re a close-knit family. The fact that my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and adult cousins kept her first marriage a secret for over two decades blows my mind. It’s like they were all in on some giant con. How did they hide it? How did one of them not slip? There is absolutely no photographic evidence of the first marriage — at least I’ve never seen it in boxes and boxes of family photos. And why did they hide it? The conspiracy is bizarre, and I still don’t understand it.

My mom told me that the marriage lasted a year, and it was bad. She must have been 28 when they married. She didn’t elaborate. It was a troubled marriage and he was mean. She didn’t say violent, just mean. My mom said that’s why she seemed pained when I dated men who didn’t treat me well. Suddenly the advice was more than a platitude; it was credible and powerful. She took her own advice. My dad is nice. They’ve been married 34 years.

We haven’t talked about it since, though occasionally my mom will say jokingly and a little wistfully, “Maybe I should have stayed married to him. He lives in New York City now. I’d be in New York.” My small town mom who was born and raised in Cleveland would have been a worldly New Yorker. And I wouldn’t have been born, wouldn’t have been me, repeating history, dating men who are bad for me in New York.

______________________________

*Secret Recipe* Cruise Ship Cocktail  

Prep time: 21 years

Ingredients:

1 part mother

1 part daughter

Just enough alcohol

Dash of bittersweets

2 sliced Sunkist oranges

Handful of mull-over-the-past-berries

1.5 ounces tonic laughter

Shake things up

Garnish with sprig of newly minted adult

Zara Lockshin

Zara Lockshin is a lawyer-journalist who swears one day she’ll learn to cook. Before coming to Columbia Journalism School, she practiced law in California and worked on issues related to public health, immigration and civil rights. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Harvard Law School. Zara enjoys covering island beats (Coney Island; Staten Island).