Matthew filed for divorce from Anne when she couldn’t give him a son, but he still lived in their house. One day, she met Harry, an old friend from school, and eventually realized how much better she was without Matthew. Years later, Anne accidentally ran into her ex-husband and couldn’t recognize him.
“Oh my God! Harry! It’s so nice to see you!” Anne exclaimed when she accidentally stumbled into her old school friend on the street. She had left her five girls with her mother, a rare break for her, and wanted to get a cup of coffee on the streets of Seattle.
“Anne, it’s lovely to see you too! Hey, would you want to get some coffee and catch up?” Harry answered, and she nodded immediately. They went into the café and chit-chatted until Harry asked about her family.
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“Oh… that’s actually a difficult subject,” she began.
“Well, raising five children is not easy for anyone,” Harry commented, knowing a bit of her from social media and such.
“Matthew? What are you doing here?” she asked, looking at his uniform and the pretzel tray.
“Yeah, sure. That’s hard. But it’s more than that,” Anne continued. “Matthew changed after the birth of our twins. They’re 9 and they barely speak to their father. I think they’re scared of him.”
“I don’t understand,” Harry said.
“Matthew wanted a boy, and we hoped, but we had two beautiful girls instead. That’s why we got pregnant again and again, but we kept having girls. After our fifth daughter was born, Matthew became another man. He filed for divorce, and I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Anne explained about her husband, her hand wiping the sweat forming on her forehead.
“Wow. That’s rough. But think about this, you’ll be better off without him, right? I mean if he hasn’t been speaking to your eldest girls, then he couldn’t have been the best father to the rest. You already raised them on your own,” Harry encouraged. “And now that I’m in Seattle permanently, I could help. You could move in with me.”
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Anne’s jaw dropped. She didn’t expect such an offer from Harry, especially since they had just met again after many years. But she knew back in school that he always had a huge crush on her. Still, that offer was too generous and kind. She couldn’t accept it. She changed the subject, and they talked about his successful life.
Meanwhile, things at her house got even worse over the next few weeks. They were divorcing, but Matthew still lived with her, acting like he was single, partying, making noise at odd hours, waking the girls, and being a menace to them.
Anne would talk to Harry all the time, and his offer still stood. But when Matthew decided to bring a girl over to their marital home, Anne was done. She called Harry, packed, and left the house with all the girls.
Their divorce got more complicated when she took Matthew to court to get their big house back. Despite her living in Harry’s house, her soon-to-be ex-husband didn’t deserve to keep their big home. The judge granted her every request based on Matthew’s horrible lifestyle and gave her full custody without question.
Eventually, she and Harry fell in love, and he bought an even bigger home for their family. When she and the girls moved in with him, she put her house up for rent and stopped thinking about Matthew for many years.
***
A year after marrying Harry, Anne had their son, Alan, who was the most beautiful boy in the world, and he had five big sisters adoring him at every moment. Anne couldn’t have been happier.
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More time passed, and one day, she picked Alan up from preschool and decided to drop by the mall to buy him new shoes. The girls were busy with their extracurriculars, so it was only mother and son.
Anne never imagined she would run into Matthew there. He was working at the pretzel shop, in charge of distributing free samples at the mall, and Alan ran up to him asking for some.
“Alan, don’t run away from me like that,” she said to him before catching a glimpse of Matthew’s surprised eyes.
“Anne?”
“Matthew? What are you doing here?” she asked, looking at his uniform and the pretzel tray. It didn’t make sense. Matthew worked in an office as an executive. He earned a decent amount of money. He was required to pay tons in child support, but he never did, and Anne didn’t care. She had more than enough for her girls. But he wouldn’t be able to pay what was required with a minimum wage job at the mall.
“I’m working here,” he said and looked at the boy holding her with one hand and munching on a pretzel with the other. “Is this your son?”
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“Yes, this is Alan,” Anne answered, feeling an intense pride that she had a son that wasn’t his. “He’s Harry’s kid.”
“Oh, nice to meet you, Alan,” Matthew said, looking down and giving the kid a weird look. Of course, it was not Anne’s fault that she gave birth to girls. The sperm determines the gender, and everyone knows that. But Matthew had decided to blame her for years and checked out of their marriage because he wanted a boy, as if gender was important at all.
Luckily, the girls now had an actual father figure, thanks to Harry, who loved them dearly from the first moment they met. They didn’t need him, and Anne never had to see him.
“Listen, Anne. I didn’t want to ask this now. I wanted to take you to coffee or something. But I’m desperate. I lost everything due to my lifestyle, and I was wondering if we could sell our old house,” Matthew asked, his head down in shame.
“Oh… well, it’s currently being rented. But I’ll think about it,” Anne said. “We have to go now. I’ll call you about the house.”
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She grabbed Alan’s hand tightly and walked away from the man who didn’t know what he had thrown away. But she was going to be the bigger person. She sold the house and gave him half its worth, although legally, she could keep the entire thing. But something in her gut told her to do the right thing.
Eventually, Matthew asked to see the girls, but none of them wanted that. The twins were teenagers who grew to hate him, and the rest followed their big sisters’ footsteps. Matthew stopped asking about them and stopped calling after a while. They never saw him again. He wasn’t family.
What can we learn from this story?
- Family is more than just DNA. Matthew didn’t want to be a father to his children, and Harry stepped up for the girls.
- You might regret your actions. Matthew lost everything, including his high-paying job, and it was clear he regretted what he did, but he couldn’t take it back.
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.
Mary Lou Retton Has Pneumonia and ‘Is Fighting for Her Life,’ Daughter Says
The gymnastics champion sprang to stardom at the 1984 Olympics, where she became the first American woman to win a gold medal in the all-around competition. Her family is raising money online, saying she lacks health insurance.
May Lou Retton at the 1984 Olympics, where she won five medals.
Mary Lou Retton, who became one of the most popular athletes in the country after winning the all-around women’s gymnastics competition at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, has pneumonia and is “fighting for her life” in the intensive care unit, her daughter said in a statement this week.
Retton’s daughter McKenna Lane Kelley said on Instagram that her mother “is not able to breathe on her own” and that she had been in the intensive care unit for more than a week.
Kelley asked for donations to help pay for her mother’s hospital bills, saying her mother lacked health insurance. By Wednesday, she had raised more than $260,000 online from more than 4,600 donors.
She did not share more specific information about her mother’s condition, though she said that her pneumonia was “a very rare form.” It was not clear what hospital Retton was in.
Kelley, who was a gymnast at Louisiana State University, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, another daughter, Shayla Kelley Schrepfer, released a video on Instagram thanking people for “all the love and support that you’ve given to my mom.”
“She’s still fighting,” Schrepfer said. “It’s going to be a day-by-day process, and we hope that you guys will respect her boundaries, as we want to keep the details between her and our family right now. She has been treated with the best of the best professionals here, and it has been such a blessing to have their hands on her.”
At the 1984 Olympics, Retton became the first American woman to win the all-around gold medal or any individual Olympic medal in gymnastics. Going into the final rotation of the competition, she was five-hundredths of a point behind Romania’s Ecaterina Szabo, and the only way she could beat Szabo was to score a perfect 10 on vault.
Retton scored a perfect 10.
She won five medals in Los Angeles, including two silvers, for team and vault, and two bronzes, for uneven bars and floor exercise.
Though there was an asterisk by Retton’s victory in the history books — the Soviet Union, which was the most dominant force in women’s gymnastics at the time, boycotted the 1984 Games — it nonetheless made her a sports hero in the United States. In addition to earning her the traditional trappings of Olympic gold, like appearing on a Wheaties box, she was widely viewed as an inspiration to a new generation of American girls entering gymnastics.
Even as the American gymnastics program grew and the country won more medals, including the team gold in 1996, Retton’s prominence remained: For 20 years, Retton, now 55, was the only American woman to win the all-around title, until Carly Patterson became the second in 2004.
Retton was born in Fairmont, W.Va., and got her start early, like many top gymnasts. By the time Retton was 7 years old, she was training in gymnastics full-time.
Retton’s talent had been apparent from the start, but a big break came at an Olympics elimination tournament in Reno, Nev., in 1982, where she impressed Bela Karolyi, who would go on to coach her in the 1984 Olympics.
“I immediately recognized the tremendous physical potential of this little kid,” Karolyi said in a March 1984 interview.
Retton appeared in a number of films and TV shows in the late 1980s and 1990s, including the comedy film “Scrooged.”
After her athletic career, Retton became a motivational speaker to promote the benefits of proper nutrition and regular exercise.
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