I had an idea. If I researched my family’s history, maybe I could figure out why my family is as crazy as it is. Or at least I could figure out how my mother and father were related.

 

I want to reassure you. My mother and father weren’t blood relatives. But they were related even before they got married. My mother’s father’s sister (her aunt) married my father’s father’s brother (his uncle). Got it?

 

It appears that the women of my mother’s clan had a weakness for MBY men. Or perhaps my great-aunt’s example influenced my mom. I learned that my great-aunt Ida had journeyed from South Africa to visit relatives in the U.S., met her MBY man, and stayed in the U.S. to marry him and raise a family here. My mom did the same. In fact, she even met my father at her aunt’s house during her visit from South Africa.

 

The meeting between my mom and dad took place during a 1940s thaw in the two families’ relationships, which I discussed earlier.  In fact, my mother’s wedding announcement refers to "the bride’s aunt … who wore black crepe."Some relatives say my mother’s aunt was "like a mother to her."

 

But here’s where the craziness comes in. Before long my parents and my aunt broke off their relationship.  She was my mother’s closest blood relative in the U.S. But their relationship ended even as my parents lived less than 20 miles away.

 

I met my great-aunt Ida once, when my parents took me into her store. I must have seen the taxidermied bear that impressed other relatives who visited that establishment. But what stuck in my mind instead was that she gave me $5. Or rather, she handed it to my mother for safekeeping. I never saw it again. $5 seemed like an immense sum of age at age five.

 

Anyway, how could my mom go from love to no contact with her aunt? And how could I do the same with my father?