Shirley Gifts Family Heirlooms and Judgements

Hello fellow llamas; it has been a while since I thought of Shirley and that whole nightmare of a family, but recently someone was asking about that side of the family and it brought up some more memories.

I know normally I write about Shirley’s treatment of Sierra (my mother), but today I’m actually going to share a story of her as a grandmother.

At the point of this story, there were three grandchildren: my older sister, myself, and my younger cousin who was the product of deception and later adopted by my uncle after years of lies from his wife about who the father was. I was roughly 9 at this point which would make my cousin 8 and my sister 10. For every holiday we had to go to Shirley’s house. It was one of those houses where kids weren’t allowed in certain rooms because of the carpet, we weren’t allowed to sit on any furniture that wasn’t wooden. We were also expected to wear those uncomfortable dresses with layers of tulle beneath the skirt and itchy fabric, as well as buckled shoes. We weren’t allowed to watch TV or play loudly or in anything that might make us dirty. Needless to say, these holidays were painfully boring for children.

So for this holiday (Thanksgiving) the three of us kids are sitting on the porch where we could watch the other kids playing in the pool down the road. Shirley and Angel come out and they’re each hiding something behind their backs.

“We have something for you girls,” Shirley says. “These are family heirlooms, passed down from my mother.”

They pull the boxes out from behind their backs. There are three boxes.

“This one’s for you, the oldest,” Shirley presents her first box to my sister. My sister opens it. It’s a gold necklace with some gemstones.

“And this one’s for you,” Angel hands my cousin the box she held. My cousin opens it. It’s a white gold ring with a sapphire.

“We were going to give you this one,” Shirley turns to me and opens the box. It’s another ring, but I barely get a glance before she closes it. “But you weren’t good enough this year.”

My stomach sank, and I actually believed it – I wasn’t good enough. Clearly there was something wrong with me if my spoiled younger cousin and trouble-making older sister were both getting family heirlooms and I wasn’t. And given that she just announced it in front of Angel and my sister and cousin, it was obvious to me (at that age) that everyone knew it but me.

Now that I’m older and know the whole story; the entire family was accusing Sierra of cheating on Hunter with her old boss. Therefore, logically, I must be the lovechild because I looked like Sierra’s side of the family and not theirs. Sierra protested this vociferously and tried to force them to get a DNA test to prove that I was, in fact, my father’s child. They all refused (including my father). My sister looked like them, so they accepted her. The irony, of course, is that they gave a family heirloom to the one person who was not related in order to snub me.