Kim Catirall who I remember from as Samantha in “Sex in the City” was this week’s person on NBC’s “Who do you think your are?” Kim’s Focus was on her Grandfather who left her Grandmother and his three young daughters including Kim’s mother in Liverpool England in 1938. I had assumed that Kim was born in the US, but she is from Liverpool moving to New York many years ago. Kim’s mother just had one picture of him looking through some Curtains in an old photo. Kim went to Liverpool interviewing her Grandfather’s sister who only confirmed what she already knew. When Kim got back to her hotel she found that she had received a package with a Marriage registry for her Grandfather to another woman in 1939 in Durham England which is not far from Liverpool on the east coast of England (Liverpool is on the west coast) so she went to Durham. Where she found that he had four more children two girls and two boys, she interviewed one of the girls finding more photos and that he moved to Australia where he died in 1974.
I try to see what lessons were to be learned from this program this one is that there are skeletons in every Family Tree, you have to accept them trying not to judge too unsympathetically for you can never know the full story and times change. Years ago poor people never thought of getting a divorce they just left is that any worst than all the people today who leave their mate just because they get bored, they are still leaving their children without a father. As it happens both my Grandfathers left their families, on my father’s side he just took off for Ireland during the Irish revolt and was never heard of again. My mother had to quit school at nine years of age to help support her mother, little brother and sister. He did try to come back years later, but my uncle full-grown by then threw him out. You have to remember that the times were bad even worse than the times are now and to judge is human, but to forgive divine.
