11 readers share stories of caring and connection
C.R. Far Rockaway, NY
Scandal happens to other people. Not to us. Not in our family.
For decades, this was the unspoken mantra in my head. What we experienced, what went on behind closed doors… that wasn’t scandalous, that was just daily life. No one outside the family would ever know. It was just our normal.
Until it wasn’t. Cracks slowly emerged in the shiny facade that had been carefully erected, projecting cool, enviable confidence to the outside world, even as the inside was gradually crumbling. But the more the inside crumbled, the louder the mantra reverberated in my head: Scandal happens to other people. Not to us.
So as we faced the inevitable shattering of the facade, we dialed up the mantra, gave it a little tweak. If the shiny facade we projected to the world is going to come apart, at the very least, we’d retain our dignity and privacy. No one from the outside world would hear a word about the goings-on from us. Let the rumor mill churn on its own, such is the way of the world; no piece of juicy hearsay would ever be traced back to a reliable source inside the family. We have each other, and we have busy, productive lives, baruch Hashem. This sideshow does not have to show up anywhere outside the four walls of our nuclear family.
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