I read someone's life story and I was compelled to do the same. My mother was 37 when I was born. Needless to say I was not a planned child. My mother had been widowed that year, so knowing my father wasn't an option. My closest sibling was 14 years older than me, and my other two siblings were adults and had already moved away.

My mother was a single mother for the first 6 years of my life. She dated a few men over those years, but she never married any of them. Then came an older gentleman from Minnesota who had been coming to the Canadian wilderness to hunt ducks and geese for years.

They got married in June, shortly after my 7th birthday. My mother and I then packed up our stuff and moved from our Canadian farm home and to Minnesota.

I finally had a father, but I could never really bring myself to call him dad. It just never seemed right. Life with my stepfather was......what is the right word....colorful?? See, he was an alcoholic. He was a good provider and genuinely seemed to care for my mother, but his drinking was a source of continuous frustration in our lives.

One of the many examples of his alcoholic anger issues was the time I dropped the newspaper in the lake. My parents live out in the country, and we had to go to our neighbor's house across the lake to get our mail and Sunday paper. Well, one Sunday my step-sister was there, and we decided to go across the lake by boat to get the paper. When we got back to the dock, I had the paper in my arms and I accidentally dropped it in the water when I got out of the boat. My stepfather went off about it, yelling at me that there is no such thing as accidents.

Then there was the time we had gone up to Canada for goose and duck hunting. We stayed in a camper at a friend's house that year. My parents had been in the house drinking and playing cards with their friends for hours that night. I had been in bed for an hour or so when I started hearing some noise just outside the camper. A short time later my mother came in and asked me to come outside to help her. My stepfather had tripped over something and she needed my help to get him inside the camper.

There are countless more tales of his alcohol issues, but one positive thing came out of that for me. I don't drink much and can not stand the smell of whiskey. I have gotten drunk a few times, but rarely. I had just seen too many stupid moments with my stepfather and didn't want to be like that in any way.

After I graduated high school, I went off to college a couple of hours away from where I had grown up. It was far enough away from my parents to give me a sense of freedom, but close enough if I wanted to make a trip home. When I was at college, I dated a few guys and did eventually find the man I was to marry. That's when life took an interesting turn.

A couple of months before my wedding I had gone home for a visit and to help my mother find something to wear for the wedding. We had a pleasant day of shopping, capped off by a wonderful meal at our favorite restarant.

On the way back to my parents' house, my mother turned down the radio and said, "I have something to tell you." Then she dropped the bomb......."Your dad is alive".....

WHAT????? Everything was a bit of a blur after she made that statement. She told me of what her life had been like at the time. She had been widowed for less than a year when she started dating my father. He had told her that he couldn't have kids, so it was quite a shock for her when she realized she was pregnant with his child.

She said that she felt as if she had been lied to. She had broken up with him around the time she found out she was pregnant. My mother kept her pregnancy a secret from everyone, except her parents. She ate just enough so that she wouldn't gain too much weight and cause people to ask questions. She said that she didn't want me to be looked down on for being a bastard child.

She planned on giving me up for adoption, but changed her mind before she left the hospital. Needless to say, my brother and sisters were a bit shocked to hear they had a new little sister.

When my mother and I finally arrived back at her house, I called my oldest sister to get my father's number. She gave it to me and I called him when I got back to my home the next day. What an interesting trip that was......I don't remember how I got from my parents' house to the southern part of Minnesota, some 4 1/2 hours away. I just suddenly realized that I was in the Twin Cities and didn't know how to get from there to my house. I was lost.

When I finally got home, I told me soon-to-be husband what had happened. I then got on the phone and called my father. I had no idea what to say. I just told him my name and asked him if he knew who I was. He did, and then we both started crying. We agreed to meet as soon as we could, which ended up being a few weeks later.

After I had met my father, my mother had called me to ask how things had gone. Then she asked if we planned on inviting him to the wedding. I told her that I wanted to, but we hadn't really worked out all the details yet. Then she made a comment that just made my blood boil. "I guess that I shouldn't have told you until after the wedding."

I was stunned and speechless. I had so many things going through my head that I wanted to say to her, but rather than say things that I might later regret, I just hung up the phone. I didn't talk to her for three days until my sisters called me about it. They said that she felt really bad about it....my response was, "She should feel bad. She kept me from my father for 25 years. He had missed out on so many things in my life and now that we knew each other she wanted him to miss one of the most important days in my life. How dare she."

My mother and I worked things out about my dad and eventually got past it, but a part of me will always resent her for that choice she made all those years ago.