So, I read this book.

Family secrets. Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're little, and sometimes they're in between.

My Aunt C has a secret. When she was a teenager, she had a baby. Her children don't know, and apparently, she lives in fear that this boy will show up on her doorstep. I found out about it as a child, when another aunt spilled the beans. Aunt C showed up, frantic, at my house, to talk to my mother, "This can not come out, no one can know!".

My mother sat me down, and shared Aunt C's story with me. She was in her late teens, living wild, and got pregnant. My grandfather, who she adored, insisted that she could NOT keep the baby, so they sent her to a "home" for pregnant girls. Apparently there were some issues with the baby, and he needed surgery when he was a little older, so he wasn't adopted until he was a year old. She visited him EVERY day, begging her father to let her bring her baby home. He never relented.

Last summer, I read the book "The Girls Who Went Away", which is all about, including stories told by the "girls' themselves, getting knocked up in the 50's and 60's. It broke my tiny, shriveled, blackened heart. I feel certain that this book could help her. Show her that there is no shame in what happened to her, because, for certain, it happened *to* her.

I love Aunt C. She is the only one who shows up for my children's parties, now that my dad is dead. I can count on her, the way I cannot count on anyone else in my family. How do I share this with her, without digging up painful memories, or inadvertantly ratting her out to her children?

What happens when she eventually passes? Do I share this news with my cousins, one of whom I am rather close to? It's certainly not my secret to share, I just hate knowing that she lives with this secret shame, when she has nothing to be ashamed of.