In the summer of 1969 a prematurely balding man found love at an Arthur Murray dance studio in Texas. The woman was an attractive, plump, single mother of five and she snagged the man right up because he had a good job and he would have her.
The woman and her kids moved in with the man and she spent his money on trips with her friends and a sports car and things like that. The children were discontented. The oldest boy counted the days to his sixteenth birthday when he would ask the woman to sign a form allowing him to join the Navy. The oldest girl started running away at thirteen. The other kids have sporadic memories of her in that house. The middle boy sported a scar in the shape of a rose by his left eye. The woman wore a rose ring on her right hand. The youngest boy was scared. The youngest girl was a baby.
It wasn’t long before the woman decided to love a new fellow. She and the man fought loudly and the youngest girl, now four years old, got scared too. They all stayed with the man for several more months while the new fellow came around the house for holidays and such.
With the two oldest gone and the middle boy too angry at the woman to live with her anymore, that left only the two youngest to move in with the woman and the new fellow. They lived in a few different apartment complexes over a summer and fall. The new fellow worked in Greenland, which would be a long commute so he really just paid the rent and would come around occasionally to yell with the woman. One of those arguments ended in tears at Grandma’s house where the youngest boy would stay to live. The girl would go back to the house with the man and the middle boy. The woman was free to move to Greenland with the new fellow.
The man was now the single parent of a six year old girl and a teenage boy – though the girl has very little memory of the middle boy in the house with them. He went off to college and it was just the girl and the man. Often, just the girl. The man’s good job was an hour away so he left in the dark and, starting in first grade, the girl got herself up, fed, and dressed everyday. She’d slam the front door with the force it took to engage the lock and let herself back in after school. Two hours later the tired man would come home and make them dinner.
The girl thought and dreamed of the woman always. She wrote letters and waited for phone calls and visits. She resented any caring grown-up relation who wasn’t the woman. The man loved the girl as his own and, as far as she knew, she was. No one had bothered to tell her otherwise.
A few years later, when the girl was twelve, she went to visit the woman in another part of Texas where she was working as a house-parent in a facility for troubled youth. During the visit the girl found a strategically placed photograph of herself at her parents’ wedding. She was only a toddler but she easily recognized herself amongst her siblings. The woman told the girl that her real father was a race car driver who had been killed in a work-related incident. She made the girl promise never to tell anyone that she knew this truth. The girl agreed. It was a hard secret to keep.
The first few years were difficult for the man and the girl. He didn’t know how to have a girl and she didn’t know how to not have a mother. The girl spent a lot of time with the youngest boy at Grandma’s house. She strived to make him laugh because he was so sad. She was always happy to learn that the oldest girl was still alive, even if she was alive in a correctional facility and not allowed in Texas anymore. She exchanged letters with the oldest boy who had settled in California and never looked back.
By the time she was in high school the girl and the man had found their way together. He worked hard to protect her from the youngest boy’s darkness but there was little he could do. The girl was unable to hold all of the boy’s pain and would sometimes hurt herself. She hid the wounds from the man.
The girl appreciated the man’s support of her relationship with the boy, whose troubles now included the law. It wasn’t easy for the man to drive her to the jailhouse on those early Sunday mornings so the boy would have visitors or to be the boy’s guardian years later when he needed twenty-four hour supervision by court order. The man had come to love the boy but he did these things for the girl.
When it came time for the girl to graduate from high school, the woman came around and told her that her real father was not a dead car DRIVER but a living car SALESMAN. In fact, he was the most famous living car salesman in town. He had a series of gimmicky commercials that everyone knew. The woman reminded the girl that she’d met the salesman during an event at one of his dealerships a few years before. The woman introduced them and the salesman showed the girl a talking car. Again, she was sworn to secrecy.
The following weeks were surreal for the girl as she would have to sit through the salesman’s commercials while having dinner in the living room with the man.
Since the woman said she’d be informing the salesman that he had a daughter, the girl sent him a graduation announcement with a photo and a letter. She told him not to feel any obligation to her and that she had a loving father. It was unclear whether the letter ever reached him but she did not hear back.
Two years later the girl moved out of the state. She and the man were terribly sad and spoke on the phone often. As she learned to live on her own over the next few years, he always let her know how proud he was and how much he admired the woman she’d become. They’d visit each other and made efforts through letters and cards to express their gratitude and love, but the words they knew always fell short.
The man struggled helplessly to comfort the girl when the youngest boy took his life. The girl’s heart seized and she only felt relief when she thought of joining the boy. She received the boy’s ashes and took them to the same place she’d taken Grandma’s a few years before. She often went to this place by a river with a wooden bridge to be with them. It was better than a graveyard and she could sort of feel them there. The boy and Grandma had never seen a setting like that in their lifetimes and the girl knew they would like it.
Around that time the girl told the oldest boy about the race car driver and the car salesman. He felt certain that her real father was a military man who’d let the oldest boy play with his gun. It mattered very little to the girl. The man was the only version of dad she cared to concern herself with anymore.
Ten years after she left the man’s house the girl found a beau. The man had never before heard her say that she was in love and he was delighted for her. Two months later the man died. The girl’s Love held her up while she moaned and cried for weeks and months. They lived in a space thick with grief and new love, with guilt and confusion around joy in the face of such sorrow. She couldn’t believe her Love would never know the man.
Prior commitments eased or forced the girl back into life where she would have to learn to be in the world without the man. He had always been there, as long as she could remember. Who would care when she boasted an accomplishment? Who would she call when she was afraid her Love would stop loving her? Who would call her because it had been more than a week? Who would send flowers on opening night? Who would tell her the same stories over and over as if for the first time?
Who would send a barbershop quartet to serenade her on Valentine’s Day while she waited tables?
Well, at least that one was a relief.
Now, the girl has a girl and a boy of her own. She will tell them about the man. The same stories over and over, as if for the first time. She hopes they'll want to know.
Showing posts with label families. Show all posts
Showing posts with label families. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Steve Strong: Fun with Ben Cartwright and Hoss
I learned to read with “Fun with Dick and Jane.” Everything was so neat and tidy. Dad wore a suit and hat and went to work. Mom wore a house dress and baked. Dick, Jane and Sally always dressed like they were going to church. When I was at school, I started thinking everyone’s family was like that. And I would have persisted in that belief if it hadn’t been for the magic of television.
Although I wasn’t a great TV watcher as a child, the shows I did watch tended to be a lot like the neat and pressed world of Dick and Jane. Opie Taylor may not have had a mom, but he had his Aunt Bea right there for him. My Three Sons may not have had a mom, but they had their Uncle Charlie. The Cartwright boys may not have had a mom, but they had Hop Sing. Hey, now that I think about it, my family was the functional one. At least I didn’t have an old Chinese man for a mother figure.
But without a doubt, the best family show for my generation was Lost In Space. The Robinson family had it all: A perfect mom (so perfect in fact, she was the same mom in Lassie), a tough (but fair) dad, two daughters and a son, and - best of all - a robot. What could be better than a family from the future with their own robot? And he wasn’t a wimpy cartoon-robot like the Jetsons had. The Robinson’s robot could get tipsy, be patronizing and lovable all in the same episode. With his power-pack removed, he was useless, and was oblivious to everything around him. But best of all, if you really got him angry, he could shoot lasers out of those crab-like claws of his. The robot was sort of like your 40 year old confirmed bachelor uncle, if your uncle could shot lasers from crab-like claws.
But wait, that’s not all. To make this family even cooler, they rode around in space with an extra dad-like guy named Don, plus a bad guy they never seemed to be able to ditch, Dr. Smith.
Instead of wonderful adventures on remarkably similar-looking planets, nowadays we have reality television. We can be a fly on the wall of normal American families like the Osbournes, the Hulk Hogans, the Gene Simmons and the Kardashians. But back in the day, only cool boys like Will Robinson got TV shows about their family. If Hollywood would have made a TV show about my family, they certainly could have employed a large cast of actors.
My original family consisted of my mom and dad, me, my brother and three sisters. Really, a very regular sort of group for the 1960’s. But then things started getting interesting.
When my folks split up, my dad married a woman named Judy, so my second family would have been her and her two children, but by the time I met them my dad told me the marriage had been “annulled.” So, do I count that, or no?
My third family was my mom and her second husband, Roy. He had four kids, and they lived with us for a year, so that was cool having two more brothers. But that marriage only lasted a year too.
Next was my fourth family, which I inherited when my dad married his third wife Joni. She had two daughters and they were married long enough that I came to think of them as sisters. That marriage lasted about 10 years.
My fifth family was my mom and her third husband Dan. He had two little girls who we didn’t see that often, but were fun to have around when they visited. This marriage lasted about 12 years, I bet.
I guess my sixth family would be my dad’s fourth wife Fran. She has two daughters that I see every once in a while. Hard to think of them as sisters really, since we only knew each other as adults.
My seventh family would be my mom’s fourth husband Buzz. He was a good guy (passed away now) and has two sons that I’ve met a couple times.
So if I throw in-laws in the mix, I’m looking at six “fathers” and six “mothers” in my short little life. Final count for siblings (including step-siblings, and in-laws) seems to be nine brothers and 17 sisters. That is, unless I’m missing some. At some point I figure I ought to just round it up to 30 and call it good, right?
When I was a young adult, and about to be married for the first time, I worried a lot about the kind of husband I would be - And about the kind of father I would be. I worried that maybe I was tainted by my past and that I had no right to be a father because I didn’t have a clear picture of any male role models in my own life.
But when that first baby boy arrived, in addition to the panic I felt at being a real father, I found I could tap into an inner strength that I hadn’t ever considered before. I did have some role models for fatherhood I could try to emulate from time to time.
I could try to be as loving at Andy Taylor. I could try to be as sincere and wise as Steve Douglas. I could try to be as fair to my children as Ben Cartwright. And most of all, I could try to be as adventurous as Dr. John Robinson.
I found I could change diapers, play on the floor with action figures and sing a child to sleep. I discovered I could coach soccer and baseball, read to my children, or pretend the floor was made of hot lava. I realized I could tell stories, act like a fierce cheetah, or play basketball in the driveway.
I wonder how my children will look back someday and think about their dad. What things will they be nostalgic for? Which of my sayings will they use on their own children? What will they do to be a better dad than I’ve been?
Maybe they’ll compare me to Billy Ray Cyrus or Danny Tanner, or even Jesse Katsopolis. We may not have gotten lost in a spaceship together, but in my own defense, I think they’ll look back on the times we had together as the best times of their lives.
I think I would, if I had a dad at home when I was young.
Although I wasn’t a great TV watcher as a child, the shows I did watch tended to be a lot like the neat and pressed world of Dick and Jane. Opie Taylor may not have had a mom, but he had his Aunt Bea right there for him. My Three Sons may not have had a mom, but they had their Uncle Charlie. The Cartwright boys may not have had a mom, but they had Hop Sing. Hey, now that I think about it, my family was the functional one. At least I didn’t have an old Chinese man for a mother figure.
But without a doubt, the best family show for my generation was Lost In Space. The Robinson family had it all: A perfect mom (so perfect in fact, she was the same mom in Lassie), a tough (but fair) dad, two daughters and a son, and - best of all - a robot. What could be better than a family from the future with their own robot? And he wasn’t a wimpy cartoon-robot like the Jetsons had. The Robinson’s robot could get tipsy, be patronizing and lovable all in the same episode. With his power-pack removed, he was useless, and was oblivious to everything around him. But best of all, if you really got him angry, he could shoot lasers out of those crab-like claws of his. The robot was sort of like your 40 year old confirmed bachelor uncle, if your uncle could shot lasers from crab-like claws.
But wait, that’s not all. To make this family even cooler, they rode around in space with an extra dad-like guy named Don, plus a bad guy they never seemed to be able to ditch, Dr. Smith.
Instead of wonderful adventures on remarkably similar-looking planets, nowadays we have reality television. We can be a fly on the wall of normal American families like the Osbournes, the Hulk Hogans, the Gene Simmons and the Kardashians. But back in the day, only cool boys like Will Robinson got TV shows about their family. If Hollywood would have made a TV show about my family, they certainly could have employed a large cast of actors.
My original family consisted of my mom and dad, me, my brother and three sisters. Really, a very regular sort of group for the 1960’s. But then things started getting interesting.
When my folks split up, my dad married a woman named Judy, so my second family would have been her and her two children, but by the time I met them my dad told me the marriage had been “annulled.” So, do I count that, or no?
My third family was my mom and her second husband, Roy. He had four kids, and they lived with us for a year, so that was cool having two more brothers. But that marriage only lasted a year too.
Next was my fourth family, which I inherited when my dad married his third wife Joni. She had two daughters and they were married long enough that I came to think of them as sisters. That marriage lasted about 10 years.
My fifth family was my mom and her third husband Dan. He had two little girls who we didn’t see that often, but were fun to have around when they visited. This marriage lasted about 12 years, I bet.
I guess my sixth family would be my dad’s fourth wife Fran. She has two daughters that I see every once in a while. Hard to think of them as sisters really, since we only knew each other as adults.
My seventh family would be my mom’s fourth husband Buzz. He was a good guy (passed away now) and has two sons that I’ve met a couple times.
So if I throw in-laws in the mix, I’m looking at six “fathers” and six “mothers” in my short little life. Final count for siblings (including step-siblings, and in-laws) seems to be nine brothers and 17 sisters. That is, unless I’m missing some. At some point I figure I ought to just round it up to 30 and call it good, right?
When I was a young adult, and about to be married for the first time, I worried a lot about the kind of husband I would be - And about the kind of father I would be. I worried that maybe I was tainted by my past and that I had no right to be a father because I didn’t have a clear picture of any male role models in my own life.
But when that first baby boy arrived, in addition to the panic I felt at being a real father, I found I could tap into an inner strength that I hadn’t ever considered before. I did have some role models for fatherhood I could try to emulate from time to time.
I could try to be as loving at Andy Taylor. I could try to be as sincere and wise as Steve Douglas. I could try to be as fair to my children as Ben Cartwright. And most of all, I could try to be as adventurous as Dr. John Robinson.
I found I could change diapers, play on the floor with action figures and sing a child to sleep. I discovered I could coach soccer and baseball, read to my children, or pretend the floor was made of hot lava. I realized I could tell stories, act like a fierce cheetah, or play basketball in the driveway.
I wonder how my children will look back someday and think about their dad. What things will they be nostalgic for? Which of my sayings will they use on their own children? What will they do to be a better dad than I’ve been?
Maybe they’ll compare me to Billy Ray Cyrus or Danny Tanner, or even Jesse Katsopolis. We may not have gotten lost in a spaceship together, but in my own defense, I think they’ll look back on the times we had together as the best times of their lives.
I think I would, if I had a dad at home when I was young.
Marsi White: An Ode to Wipe Out
So tonight is "Ladies' Night" on the TV show Wipe Out. Though not my first choice in television, I am completely entertained. On my right is my six-year-old daughter, curled up on my husband's lap. In front of me, my 10-year-old sits drinking a soda for dinner, after just returning home from soccer practice. My daughter is extra excited because she always roots for the girls, more specifically, the pretty girls. My son and husband are equally engaged.
As I watch, it occurs to me that we are bonding. And I wonder: is it such a sad state of affairs that it takes a show like Wipe Out, where people make complete fools of themselves, for the modern family to bond? It is hard to NOT to find funny a girl calling herself the "Naughty Baker" trying to cross the scarecrow planks, while getting plowed-over by a device called “the rug burner” and being splattered by raw eggs and milk. Regardless of the subject, we are laughing together. And for a family who is pulled a several different directions on any given day of the week, anything together is fantastic.
I do not think we are much busier than any other family of four. Our son plays competitive soccer, which has two practices a week and games on weekends. As any parent of an athletic child knows, the seasons for the different sports overlap. For us, baseball starts up at the same time as soccer tryouts. Other than that, our schedule seems fairly tame, compared to what I imagine it could be.
Yet, we are never home. I think this is the norm. I am the stereotypical soccer mom without the stereotypical minivan. I work. My husband works. We work hard. We pay our bills. It’s funny - I have a much different picture of what it means to be a soccer mom, now that I am one. I used to think soccer moms didn't work – rather they just ran taxi service to practices. Not so much. The more I delve into the soccer world, the more I know. Most moms are just like me. Most dads are just like my husband. Balancing their jobs, family life and schedules with the growth and development of their children. Who would have thought?
I had a similar experience when I joined the PTA. Yes, there are the crazies, but most of the parents who were really getting things done were just like me. Smart and smarter. Funny and funnier. Focused. Awesome.
And along comes the summer. I longed for the lazy days of summer to be filled with endless family bonding time and countless memories. We envisioned the kids with little to nothing to do, us in hammocks sipping our beers reminiscent of our childhood (sans beers) and wishing we did not have to go to work on Monday. After the race horse of a year that we had all had, I was planning the dream. However, summer seemed shorter than usual. The honey-do list went untouched. Vacation was postponed until winter. We did not hammock-it-up once. And most of the beers I had were when I was out with the girls.
With summer coming to a close, I keep picturing the kids reciting in front of their class a back-to-school essay on the topic, “What I did this summer?” and I think to myself, what will my kids say? Did we do enough? We did manage a two-day jaunt to Vegas and they did partake in some pretty inventive summer camps. But, will they be proud to read their essay, or will they tremble in front of the class at the notion of reporting that they went to a couple of local soccer tournaments and swam in their grandparents’ pool? Did we achieve the balance between obligatory schedule and family time, this summer? What is it that they say about good intentions?
The kids are about to start 2nd and 5th grades. They have grown so much over the summer. Matured so much. Realizing how fast their childhood is fleeting by, I know I will continue to crave time with them. In an ideal world, family bonding will occur naturally around the dinner table every night. However, fast food around the dinner table is just not quite the same as sharing something home-cooked; so, I better start cooking again soon. Summer days will soon give way to a routine of soccer practice, dance lessons, hectic work schedules and lunch dates. I will be back to taking family bonding time where I can get it. Even if it means watching Fly Girl dominating the Wipe Out Zone at a tremendous cruising altitude.
As I watch, it occurs to me that we are bonding. And I wonder: is it such a sad state of affairs that it takes a show like Wipe Out, where people make complete fools of themselves, for the modern family to bond? It is hard to NOT to find funny a girl calling herself the "Naughty Baker" trying to cross the scarecrow planks, while getting plowed-over by a device called “the rug burner” and being splattered by raw eggs and milk. Regardless of the subject, we are laughing together. And for a family who is pulled a several different directions on any given day of the week, anything together is fantastic.
I do not think we are much busier than any other family of four. Our son plays competitive soccer, which has two practices a week and games on weekends. As any parent of an athletic child knows, the seasons for the different sports overlap. For us, baseball starts up at the same time as soccer tryouts. Other than that, our schedule seems fairly tame, compared to what I imagine it could be.
Yet, we are never home. I think this is the norm. I am the stereotypical soccer mom without the stereotypical minivan. I work. My husband works. We work hard. We pay our bills. It’s funny - I have a much different picture of what it means to be a soccer mom, now that I am one. I used to think soccer moms didn't work – rather they just ran taxi service to practices. Not so much. The more I delve into the soccer world, the more I know. Most moms are just like me. Most dads are just like my husband. Balancing their jobs, family life and schedules with the growth and development of their children. Who would have thought?
I had a similar experience when I joined the PTA. Yes, there are the crazies, but most of the parents who were really getting things done were just like me. Smart and smarter. Funny and funnier. Focused. Awesome.
And along comes the summer. I longed for the lazy days of summer to be filled with endless family bonding time and countless memories. We envisioned the kids with little to nothing to do, us in hammocks sipping our beers reminiscent of our childhood (sans beers) and wishing we did not have to go to work on Monday. After the race horse of a year that we had all had, I was planning the dream. However, summer seemed shorter than usual. The honey-do list went untouched. Vacation was postponed until winter. We did not hammock-it-up once. And most of the beers I had were when I was out with the girls.
With summer coming to a close, I keep picturing the kids reciting in front of their class a back-to-school essay on the topic, “What I did this summer?” and I think to myself, what will my kids say? Did we do enough? We did manage a two-day jaunt to Vegas and they did partake in some pretty inventive summer camps. But, will they be proud to read their essay, or will they tremble in front of the class at the notion of reporting that they went to a couple of local soccer tournaments and swam in their grandparents’ pool? Did we achieve the balance between obligatory schedule and family time, this summer? What is it that they say about good intentions?
The kids are about to start 2nd and 5th grades. They have grown so much over the summer. Matured so much. Realizing how fast their childhood is fleeting by, I know I will continue to crave time with them. In an ideal world, family bonding will occur naturally around the dinner table every night. However, fast food around the dinner table is just not quite the same as sharing something home-cooked; so, I better start cooking again soon. Summer days will soon give way to a routine of soccer practice, dance lessons, hectic work schedules and lunch dates. I will be back to taking family bonding time where I can get it. Even if it means watching Fly Girl dominating the Wipe Out Zone at a tremendous cruising altitude.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Meg Wood: Close
First came Alexander.
I met him an hour after he met the world,
Red-faced and wailing.
I’d seen his foot on an ultrasound once;
The same foot now fluttering against my palm,
A lively miracle.
I was pushing him on a swing when his brother was born.
A warm spring day.
The next morning, we met Matthew together.
I cupped his head in my hands, breathed in his breath.
Xander covered him in stickers,
A prized possession.
My sister’s first took me whole, no surprise.
I spent a week with Luke just after his birth.
I held him for days, hips rocking as to a metronome,
Heart wobbling like sea legs on land.
Atoms, energies exchanged, traded,
A permanent bond.
Then came Sydney, first girl, last.
I kissed her toes the day we met (one hundred times, I counted).
I love you, I whispered. I’ll be here, I’m here.
We girls stick together. We ladies, we stay.
Shared gender, shared blood,
An immutable connection.
People ask if it’s hard not having my own.
It’s hard sometimes, I say.
There’s a loss there of dreams, grief for a plan, a falter in moving on.
Then Syd curls up in my lap, calls me “Grandpa,” falls asleep;
Luke’s face lights up when he sees mine, so happy he claps as he laughs;
Matt listens rapt, sometimes skipping a breath, as I read him adventurous tales;
Xander teaches me football, tries not to laugh, high-fives as I finally score.
Some days it’s hard, the ones I’m alone.
My pockets emptied of toys.
Most days, though, I marvel I’ve earned such a life:
A lap full of nieces, piggy backs with the boys, the sound of “Aunt Meg!” through a door.
Desert body, oasis heart:
A closeness of close-enough.
Meg Wood usually ends her poems with knock-knock jokes. You can read her opinions about books, films, and TV at http://megwood.wordpress.com, as well as her internationally revered (or reviled, depending on what she's said about Christian Bale that day) Boyfriend of the Week essays at http://megwood.com.
I met him an hour after he met the world,
Red-faced and wailing.
I’d seen his foot on an ultrasound once;
The same foot now fluttering against my palm,
A lively miracle.
I was pushing him on a swing when his brother was born.
A warm spring day.
The next morning, we met Matthew together.
I cupped his head in my hands, breathed in his breath.
Xander covered him in stickers,
A prized possession.
My sister’s first took me whole, no surprise.
I spent a week with Luke just after his birth.
I held him for days, hips rocking as to a metronome,
Heart wobbling like sea legs on land.
Atoms, energies exchanged, traded,
A permanent bond.
Then came Sydney, first girl, last.
I kissed her toes the day we met (one hundred times, I counted).
I love you, I whispered. I’ll be here, I’m here.
We girls stick together. We ladies, we stay.
Shared gender, shared blood,
An immutable connection.
People ask if it’s hard not having my own.
It’s hard sometimes, I say.
There’s a loss there of dreams, grief for a plan, a falter in moving on.
Then Syd curls up in my lap, calls me “Grandpa,” falls asleep;
Luke’s face lights up when he sees mine, so happy he claps as he laughs;
Matt listens rapt, sometimes skipping a breath, as I read him adventurous tales;
Xander teaches me football, tries not to laugh, high-fives as I finally score.
Some days it’s hard, the ones I’m alone.
My pockets emptied of toys.
Most days, though, I marvel I’ve earned such a life:
A lap full of nieces, piggy backs with the boys, the sound of “Aunt Meg!” through a door.
Desert body, oasis heart:
A closeness of close-enough.
Meg Wood usually ends her poems with knock-knock jokes. You can read her opinions about books, films, and TV at http://megwood.wordpress.com, as well as her internationally revered (or reviled, depending on what she's said about Christian Bale that day) Boyfriend of the Week essays at http://megwood.com.
Stella Jongewaard - Broken Home
When I was six my favorite activities were climbing trees, reading books, swinging, making mudpies, and playing with Play-Doh. I didn’t have the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop and I didn’t have more than a handful of colors but I made snakes, snails, bowls, and slightly less identifiable objects. I have a memory of spending an afternoon making a two-dimensional person. An afternoon is a long time to a kid and sadness descended when he ended up longer than my little table was wide and his legs fell off.
According to everyone’s favorite bastion of fact Wikipedia.org, Broken home is a term used to describe a household, usually in reference to parenting, in which the family unit does not properly function according to accepted societal norms. This household might suffer from domestic violence, a dissolved marriage, drug abuse, or anything else that interferes with the upbringing of children.” Wiktionary.org simply defines a broken home as one in which the parents have separated or divorced. I dig that Wiki’s definition includes the phrase “accepted societal norms” but in the last year I’ve realized something: I despise the term “broken home” -- the term, its use, the generally accepted meaning.
Some of you have a Papa Roach song playing in your head now. That’s okay – there’s no judgment here. Maybe a skosh.
The number of my peers raised in divorced homes was much smaller when I was a kid. Those kids and their parents had the honor of being set on a different shelf in our minds; the same shelf you’d find things like knowing looks and behind a hand someone hissing “diVORced” with that odd inflection. They disappeared for a while in the summer, writing letters about their other life. Truth be told I was even a little jealous sometimes. My closest cousins grew up in a broken home and while my mind heard my parents talking about the challenges my aunt faced, I only saw the things they were allowed to do that I was not. They’ve always been beautiful, popular, and the darlings of the family [my grandparents hung their pictures, not mine] and I didn’t feel I had much of an advantage due to my parents’ marriage. Instead I saw every aspect of my home life with a hypercritical eye, including the nights as an eight-, nine-, ten-year-old I lay in bed praying my mom and dad – married nearly forty years this August – would get divorced.
This fall would have brought my eighth wedding anniversary. It was pre-empted by what will become the anniversary of my divorce. October 2002 – July 2010.
In the last year my children have experienced broken home life. Absolutely. We have moved twice, the first time to a town ten miles away from the town in which we continued to try to live our lives and the second only two months later because it meant being able to move back to this town. We sold our house with my bright, beautiful, so-green kitchen where I started really cooking and K.’s bedroom with the sheep and rolling green hills painted on the walls. I went from working full-time to being depressed full-time to going back to school full-time. They’ve seen me at the delicate point of that bend where the space around me was taut, holding its breath, until I snapped and yelled and sank to the floor, sobbing. This is the thing: they experienced broken home life prior to this year. It was just a different flavor of broken. Subtle not-quite-right fading to nothing before a metallic tang of resentment and buried anger culminating in sharp words and insults and broken promises and before you know it, you’ve got a mouth full of glass shards.
What I’m clinging to is the notion that a broken home isn’t forever. We broke. There are fragments of the us-that-was scattered all over the floor. Maybe this is wrong, but I tell the kids we’re still a family, just a different kind. We’re a mom and a dad and a boy and a girl and we broke. Who decided we had to stay that way? I choose to fit us back together – to take steps toward wholeness. This mess has seemed, at times, like an inescapable nightmare yet I can say with certainty things are better today than they were one year ago. There’s less focus on survival and more focus on love and hope and strength and growth. My hands are clumsy, patting and smoothing into rough organic shapes.
mend*
verb \ˈmend\
transitive verb
1 : to free from faults or defects: as a : to improve in manners or morals : reform b : to set right : correct c : to put into good shape or working order again : patch up: repair d : to improve or strengthen (as a relationship) by negotiation or conciliation — used chiefly in the phrase mend fences [spends the weekend mending political fences — E. O. Hauser] e : to restore to health : cure
2 : to make amends or atonement for [least said, soonest mended]
*http://www.m-w.com
According to everyone’s favorite bastion of fact Wikipedia.org, Broken home is a term used to describe a household, usually in reference to parenting, in which the family unit does not properly function according to accepted societal norms. This household might suffer from domestic violence, a dissolved marriage, drug abuse, or anything else that interferes with the upbringing of children.” Wiktionary.org simply defines a broken home as one in which the parents have separated or divorced. I dig that Wiki’s definition includes the phrase “accepted societal norms” but in the last year I’ve realized something: I despise the term “broken home” -- the term, its use, the generally accepted meaning.
Some of you have a Papa Roach song playing in your head now. That’s okay – there’s no judgment here. Maybe a skosh.
The number of my peers raised in divorced homes was much smaller when I was a kid. Those kids and their parents had the honor of being set on a different shelf in our minds; the same shelf you’d find things like knowing looks and behind a hand someone hissing “diVORced” with that odd inflection. They disappeared for a while in the summer, writing letters about their other life. Truth be told I was even a little jealous sometimes. My closest cousins grew up in a broken home and while my mind heard my parents talking about the challenges my aunt faced, I only saw the things they were allowed to do that I was not. They’ve always been beautiful, popular, and the darlings of the family [my grandparents hung their pictures, not mine] and I didn’t feel I had much of an advantage due to my parents’ marriage. Instead I saw every aspect of my home life with a hypercritical eye, including the nights as an eight-, nine-, ten-year-old I lay in bed praying my mom and dad – married nearly forty years this August – would get divorced.
This fall would have brought my eighth wedding anniversary. It was pre-empted by what will become the anniversary of my divorce. October 2002 – July 2010.
In the last year my children have experienced broken home life. Absolutely. We have moved twice, the first time to a town ten miles away from the town in which we continued to try to live our lives and the second only two months later because it meant being able to move back to this town. We sold our house with my bright, beautiful, so-green kitchen where I started really cooking and K.’s bedroom with the sheep and rolling green hills painted on the walls. I went from working full-time to being depressed full-time to going back to school full-time. They’ve seen me at the delicate point of that bend where the space around me was taut, holding its breath, until I snapped and yelled and sank to the floor, sobbing. This is the thing: they experienced broken home life prior to this year. It was just a different flavor of broken. Subtle not-quite-right fading to nothing before a metallic tang of resentment and buried anger culminating in sharp words and insults and broken promises and before you know it, you’ve got a mouth full of glass shards.
What I’m clinging to is the notion that a broken home isn’t forever. We broke. There are fragments of the us-that-was scattered all over the floor. Maybe this is wrong, but I tell the kids we’re still a family, just a different kind. We’re a mom and a dad and a boy and a girl and we broke. Who decided we had to stay that way? I choose to fit us back together – to take steps toward wholeness. This mess has seemed, at times, like an inescapable nightmare yet I can say with certainty things are better today than they were one year ago. There’s less focus on survival and more focus on love and hope and strength and growth. My hands are clumsy, patting and smoothing into rough organic shapes.
mend*
verb \ˈmend\
transitive verb
1 : to free from faults or defects: as a : to improve in manners or morals : reform b : to set right : correct c : to put into good shape or working order again : patch up: repair d : to improve or strengthen (as a relationship) by negotiation or conciliation — used chiefly in the phrase mend fences [spends the weekend mending political fences — E. O. Hauser] e : to restore to health : cure
2 : to make amends or atonement for [least said, soonest mended]
*http://www.m-w.com
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Barbi Beckett: POP
In the summer of 1969 a prematurely balding man found love at an Arthur Murray dance studio in Texas. The woman was an attractive, plump, single mother of five and she snagged the man right up because he had a good job and he would have her.
The woman and her kids moved in with the man and she spent his money on trips with her friends and a sports car and things like that. The children were discontented. The oldest boy counted the days to his sixteenth birthday when he would ask the woman to sign a form allowing him to join the Navy. The oldest girl started running away at thirteen. The other kids have sporadic memories of her in that house. The middle boy sported a scar in the shape of a rose by his left eye. The woman wore a rose ring on her right hand. The youngest boy was scared. The youngest girl was a baby.
It wasn’t long before the woman decided to love a new fellow. She and the man fought loudly and the youngest girl, now four years old, got scared too. They all stayed with the man for several more months while the new fellow came around the house for holidays and such.
With the two oldest gone and the middle boy too angry at the woman to live with her anymore, that left only the two youngest to move in with the woman and the new fellow. They lived in a few different apartment complexes over a summer and fall. The new fellow worked in Greenland, which would be a long commute so he really just paid the rent and would come around occasionally to yell with the woman. One of those arguments ended in tears at Grandma’s house where the youngest boy would stay to live. The girl would go back to the house with the man and the middle boy. The woman was free to move to Greenland with the new fellow.
The man was now the single parent of a six year old girl and a teenage boy – though the girl has very little memory of the middle boy in the house with them. He went off to college and it was just the girl and the man. Often, just the girl. The man’s good job was an hour away so he left in the dark and, starting in first grade, the girl got herself up, fed, and dressed everyday. She’d slam the front door with the force it took to engage the lock and let herself back in after school. Two hours later the tired man would come home and make them dinner.
The girl thought and dreamed of the woman always. She wrote letters and waited for phone calls and visits. She resented any caring grown-up relation who wasn’t the woman. The man loved the girl as his own and, as far as she knew, she was. No one had bothered to tell her otherwise.
A few years later, when the girl was twelve, she went to visit the woman in another part of Texas where she was working as a house-parent in a facility for troubled youth. During the visit the girl found a strategically placed photograph of herself at her parents’ wedding. She was only a toddler but she easily recognized herself amongst her siblings. The woman told the girl that her real father was a race car driver who had been killed in a work-related incident. She made the girl promise never to tell anyone that she knew this truth. The girl agreed. It was a hard secret to keep.
The first few years were difficult for the man and the girl. He didn’t know how to have a girl and she didn’t know how to not have a mother. The girl spent a lot of time with the youngest boy at Grandma’s house. She strived to make him laugh because he was so sad. She was always happy to learn that the oldest girl was still alive, even if she was alive in a correctional facility and not allowed in Texas anymore. She exchanged letters with the oldest boy who had settled in California and never looked back.
By the time she was in high school the girl and the man had found their way together. He worked hard to protect her from the youngest boy’s darkness but there was little he could do. The girl was unable to hold all of the boy’s pain and would sometimes hurt herself. She hid the wounds from the man.
The girl appreciated the man’s support of her relationship with the boy, whose troubles now included the law. It wasn’t easy for the man to drive her to the jailhouse on those early Sunday mornings so the boy would have visitors or to be the boy’s guardian years later when he needed twenty-four hour supervision by court order. The man had come to love the boy but he did these things for the girl.
When it came time for the girl to graduate from high school, the woman came around and told her that her real father was not a dead car DRIVER but a living car SALESMAN. In fact, he was the most famous living car salesman in town. He had a series of gimmicky commercials that everyone knew. The woman reminded the girl that she’d met the salesman during an event at one of his dealerships a few years before. The woman introduced them and the salesman showed the girl a talking car. Again, she was sworn to secrecy.
The following weeks were surreal for the girl as she would have to sit through the salesman’s commercials while having dinner in the living room with the man.
Since the woman said she’d be informing the salesman that he had a daughter, the girl sent him a graduation announcement with a photo and a letter. She told him not to feel any obligation to her and that she had a loving father. It was unclear whether the letter ever reached him but she did not hear back.
Two years later the girl moved out of the state. She and the man were terribly sad and spoke on the phone often. As she learned to live on her own over the next few years, he always let her know how proud he was and how much he admired the woman she’d become. They’d visit each other and made efforts through letters and cards to express their gratitude and love, but the words they knew always fell short.
The man struggled helplessly to comfort the girl when the youngest boy took his life. The girl’s heart seized and she only felt relief when she thought of joining the boy. She received the boy’s ashes and took them to the same place she’d taken Grandma’s a few years before. She often went to this place by a river with a wooden bridge to be with them. It was better than a graveyard and she could sort of feel them there. The boy and Grandma had never seen a setting like that in their lifetimes and the girl knew they would like it.
Around that time the girl told the oldest boy about the race car driver and the car salesman. He felt certain that her real father was a military man who’d let the oldest boy play with his gun. It mattered very little to the girl. The man was the only version of dad she cared to concern herself with anymore.
Ten years after she left the man’s house the girl found a beau. The man had never before heard her say that she was in love and he was delighted for her. Two months later the man died. The girl’s Love held her up while she moaned and cried for weeks and months. They lived in a space thick with grief and new love, with guilt and confusion around joy in the face of such sorrow. She couldn’t believe her Love would never know the man.
Prior commitments eased or forced the girl back into life where she would have to learn to be in the world without the man. He had always been there, as long as she could remember. Who would care when she boasted an accomplishment? Who would she call when she was afraid her Love would stop loving her? Who would call her because it had been more than a week? Who would send flowers on opening night? Who would tell her the same stories over and over as if for the first time?
Who would send a barbershop quartet to serenade her on Valentine’s Day while she waited tables?
Well, at least that one was a relief.
Now, the girl has a girl and a boy of her own. She will tell them about the man. The same stories over and over, as if for the first time. She hopes they'll want to know.
The woman and her kids moved in with the man and she spent his money on trips with her friends and a sports car and things like that. The children were discontented. The oldest boy counted the days to his sixteenth birthday when he would ask the woman to sign a form allowing him to join the Navy. The oldest girl started running away at thirteen. The other kids have sporadic memories of her in that house. The middle boy sported a scar in the shape of a rose by his left eye. The woman wore a rose ring on her right hand. The youngest boy was scared. The youngest girl was a baby.
It wasn’t long before the woman decided to love a new fellow. She and the man fought loudly and the youngest girl, now four years old, got scared too. They all stayed with the man for several more months while the new fellow came around the house for holidays and such.
With the two oldest gone and the middle boy too angry at the woman to live with her anymore, that left only the two youngest to move in with the woman and the new fellow. They lived in a few different apartment complexes over a summer and fall. The new fellow worked in Greenland, which would be a long commute so he really just paid the rent and would come around occasionally to yell with the woman. One of those arguments ended in tears at Grandma’s house where the youngest boy would stay to live. The girl would go back to the house with the man and the middle boy. The woman was free to move to Greenland with the new fellow.
The man was now the single parent of a six year old girl and a teenage boy – though the girl has very little memory of the middle boy in the house with them. He went off to college and it was just the girl and the man. Often, just the girl. The man’s good job was an hour away so he left in the dark and, starting in first grade, the girl got herself up, fed, and dressed everyday. She’d slam the front door with the force it took to engage the lock and let herself back in after school. Two hours later the tired man would come home and make them dinner.
The girl thought and dreamed of the woman always. She wrote letters and waited for phone calls and visits. She resented any caring grown-up relation who wasn’t the woman. The man loved the girl as his own and, as far as she knew, she was. No one had bothered to tell her otherwise.
A few years later, when the girl was twelve, she went to visit the woman in another part of Texas where she was working as a house-parent in a facility for troubled youth. During the visit the girl found a strategically placed photograph of herself at her parents’ wedding. She was only a toddler but she easily recognized herself amongst her siblings. The woman told the girl that her real father was a race car driver who had been killed in a work-related incident. She made the girl promise never to tell anyone that she knew this truth. The girl agreed. It was a hard secret to keep.
The first few years were difficult for the man and the girl. He didn’t know how to have a girl and she didn’t know how to not have a mother. The girl spent a lot of time with the youngest boy at Grandma’s house. She strived to make him laugh because he was so sad. She was always happy to learn that the oldest girl was still alive, even if she was alive in a correctional facility and not allowed in Texas anymore. She exchanged letters with the oldest boy who had settled in California and never looked back.
By the time she was in high school the girl and the man had found their way together. He worked hard to protect her from the youngest boy’s darkness but there was little he could do. The girl was unable to hold all of the boy’s pain and would sometimes hurt herself. She hid the wounds from the man.
The girl appreciated the man’s support of her relationship with the boy, whose troubles now included the law. It wasn’t easy for the man to drive her to the jailhouse on those early Sunday mornings so the boy would have visitors or to be the boy’s guardian years later when he needed twenty-four hour supervision by court order. The man had come to love the boy but he did these things for the girl.
When it came time for the girl to graduate from high school, the woman came around and told her that her real father was not a dead car DRIVER but a living car SALESMAN. In fact, he was the most famous living car salesman in town. He had a series of gimmicky commercials that everyone knew. The woman reminded the girl that she’d met the salesman during an event at one of his dealerships a few years before. The woman introduced them and the salesman showed the girl a talking car. Again, she was sworn to secrecy.
The following weeks were surreal for the girl as she would have to sit through the salesman’s commercials while having dinner in the living room with the man.
Since the woman said she’d be informing the salesman that he had a daughter, the girl sent him a graduation announcement with a photo and a letter. She told him not to feel any obligation to her and that she had a loving father. It was unclear whether the letter ever reached him but she did not hear back.
Two years later the girl moved out of the state. She and the man were terribly sad and spoke on the phone often. As she learned to live on her own over the next few years, he always let her know how proud he was and how much he admired the woman she’d become. They’d visit each other and made efforts through letters and cards to express their gratitude and love, but the words they knew always fell short.
The man struggled helplessly to comfort the girl when the youngest boy took his life. The girl’s heart seized and she only felt relief when she thought of joining the boy. She received the boy’s ashes and took them to the same place she’d taken Grandma’s a few years before. She often went to this place by a river with a wooden bridge to be with them. It was better than a graveyard and she could sort of feel them there. The boy and Grandma had never seen a setting like that in their lifetimes and the girl knew they would like it.
Around that time the girl told the oldest boy about the race car driver and the car salesman. He felt certain that her real father was a military man who’d let the oldest boy play with his gun. It mattered very little to the girl. The man was the only version of dad she cared to concern herself with anymore.
Ten years after she left the man’s house the girl found a beau. The man had never before heard her say that she was in love and he was delighted for her. Two months later the man died. The girl’s Love held her up while she moaned and cried for weeks and months. They lived in a space thick with grief and new love, with guilt and confusion around joy in the face of such sorrow. She couldn’t believe her Love would never know the man.
Prior commitments eased or forced the girl back into life where she would have to learn to be in the world without the man. He had always been there, as long as she could remember. Who would care when she boasted an accomplishment? Who would she call when she was afraid her Love would stop loving her? Who would call her because it had been more than a week? Who would send flowers on opening night? Who would tell her the same stories over and over as if for the first time?
Who would send a barbershop quartet to serenade her on Valentine’s Day while she waited tables?
Well, at least that one was a relief.
Now, the girl has a girl and a boy of her own. She will tell them about the man. The same stories over and over, as if for the first time. She hopes they'll want to know.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Josh Grimmer: Lost family
The prevalent theory of the under-35 set is that the modern-day family won't consist of your blood relatives, but rather your friends. You separate yourself from your biological unit, make your way into the world, and become your own person. You meet new people! You start to hang out with them. You confide in them, tell them your secrets. Your fears and hopes and dreams. They support you. You support them. You form a group of four, maybe five people who all share the same sorts of ideals. They're your new family now, biology be damned.
Except, of course, you've still got your real family. I always hated my family – well, my parents at least. My dad was pretty awful at being a dad until very recently, and my mom is, well, wretched. Now, most people don't believe me when I talk about how awful my mom is. Think of the worst woman you know. She's awful, right? Massive bitch. Just mean to everyone, depressing, cruel, manipulative, all of that, right? Well, she's biologically capable of having kids. Her name is Kathy, and she has three of them. That family is so far away from me. I have a new family now.
I spent most of my childhood as a feral cat. Sleeping whenever I wanted to. Eating whatever was on the lawn. Living at other houses for days on end. Three days with the Magnuses here, dinner with the Bussieres there. Out until 5am. Back for a couple hours of sleep. Off to school. Over to Nate's house after class. I would go weeks – up to a month – without seeing my family. No notes, no messages. Nothing. I spent three days in the hospital without hearing from them. I'm pretty sure that, in hindsight, I fucking hate my parents for not keeping better tabs on me. They didn't really know that I was moving out until the day before I got on the plane. My mom didn't go out of her way to see me on the morning of my flight. Then again, I've told her more than once that the next time I attend a function with her, I want her to be in a casket. I guess we're about even now.
I really want to believe that my family is composed of my friends. My family is you, and you, and you, and you, and you. I love you all so, so dearly and you mean the world to me. You do. The thing is, you're not really my family anymore. You were, for like nine months. Then I got married. My wife is my family now. My wife and my cat, pretty much. I tried for the better part of 20 years to be a good son. That never worked. Now all I think about is being a good husband. Well, that, and what I'm going to do when she eventually leaves me for an orthodontist from Orange County.
I have no desire to expand my family. It's me and my wife. That's enough. Plus Peepopo, the Unhelpful Cat. That makes too damned many already. Peepopo does nothing. She adds nothing. I don't make a lot of money, but at least I contribute. Goddamned Peepopo does nothing. NOTHING. The embodiment of sloth. She's good company, though. When I'm dicking around the house and my wife's not home, I talk to the cat. “Peepopo, I'm thinking of getting a slice of pizza.” “Y'know, Peepopo, I really ought to get back to writing.” “Did you hear that, Peepopo? Guided By Voices is touring again!” My major concern is that Peepopo has replaced my actual inner monologue. While I was on vacation last year, back home in Massachusetts, I'd read an article online and think “Oh man, Peepopo! I had no idea that movie was shot entirely on location!” Then I realized Peepopo wasn't in the room. And I wasn't talking out loud. I was thinking to a cat who wasn't there. I had gone insane.
My family is mercifully far away from me, entirely by my own doing. I don't want them anymore, but they're still mine. With the exception of my mom, I still really love them. If one of my brothers needed money, I'd do my best to get it to him. If my dad were to fall ill, I'd be there in a heartbeat. And, truth be told, I feel that way about my closest friends. And honestly, truly, if I had to, I could remarry. I don't want to have to, but I'm certain I could fall in love again. Maybe not the same love I share with my wife, maybe not even as much, but it's not out of the question.
Maybe I'll have kids, and maybe I'll love them. I certainly hope so. I mean, I want to. I don't think I can love children, though. Like, babies. I don't like them, or the way they look, or the noises they make. I hate the idea of any human – any living, breathing human being – staking their entire life on me remembering to make sure they stay alive. It's too much. It's scary, it's awful. It's ugly. Dark and miserable. There's nothing there for me. Maybe I'll be a good father. I come from a long line of terrible fathers, though, so the odds are stacked against me.
Maybe I don't want to be a good father. I think being a good husband is enough.
Except, of course, you've still got your real family. I always hated my family – well, my parents at least. My dad was pretty awful at being a dad until very recently, and my mom is, well, wretched. Now, most people don't believe me when I talk about how awful my mom is. Think of the worst woman you know. She's awful, right? Massive bitch. Just mean to everyone, depressing, cruel, manipulative, all of that, right? Well, she's biologically capable of having kids. Her name is Kathy, and she has three of them. That family is so far away from me. I have a new family now.
I spent most of my childhood as a feral cat. Sleeping whenever I wanted to. Eating whatever was on the lawn. Living at other houses for days on end. Three days with the Magnuses here, dinner with the Bussieres there. Out until 5am. Back for a couple hours of sleep. Off to school. Over to Nate's house after class. I would go weeks – up to a month – without seeing my family. No notes, no messages. Nothing. I spent three days in the hospital without hearing from them. I'm pretty sure that, in hindsight, I fucking hate my parents for not keeping better tabs on me. They didn't really know that I was moving out until the day before I got on the plane. My mom didn't go out of her way to see me on the morning of my flight. Then again, I've told her more than once that the next time I attend a function with her, I want her to be in a casket. I guess we're about even now.
I really want to believe that my family is composed of my friends. My family is you, and you, and you, and you, and you. I love you all so, so dearly and you mean the world to me. You do. The thing is, you're not really my family anymore. You were, for like nine months. Then I got married. My wife is my family now. My wife and my cat, pretty much. I tried for the better part of 20 years to be a good son. That never worked. Now all I think about is being a good husband. Well, that, and what I'm going to do when she eventually leaves me for an orthodontist from Orange County.
I have no desire to expand my family. It's me and my wife. That's enough. Plus Peepopo, the Unhelpful Cat. That makes too damned many already. Peepopo does nothing. She adds nothing. I don't make a lot of money, but at least I contribute. Goddamned Peepopo does nothing. NOTHING. The embodiment of sloth. She's good company, though. When I'm dicking around the house and my wife's not home, I talk to the cat. “Peepopo, I'm thinking of getting a slice of pizza.” “Y'know, Peepopo, I really ought to get back to writing.” “Did you hear that, Peepopo? Guided By Voices is touring again!” My major concern is that Peepopo has replaced my actual inner monologue. While I was on vacation last year, back home in Massachusetts, I'd read an article online and think “Oh man, Peepopo! I had no idea that movie was shot entirely on location!” Then I realized Peepopo wasn't in the room. And I wasn't talking out loud. I was thinking to a cat who wasn't there. I had gone insane.
My family is mercifully far away from me, entirely by my own doing. I don't want them anymore, but they're still mine. With the exception of my mom, I still really love them. If one of my brothers needed money, I'd do my best to get it to him. If my dad were to fall ill, I'd be there in a heartbeat. And, truth be told, I feel that way about my closest friends. And honestly, truly, if I had to, I could remarry. I don't want to have to, but I'm certain I could fall in love again. Maybe not the same love I share with my wife, maybe not even as much, but it's not out of the question.
Maybe I'll have kids, and maybe I'll love them. I certainly hope so. I mean, I want to. I don't think I can love children, though. Like, babies. I don't like them, or the way they look, or the noises they make. I hate the idea of any human – any living, breathing human being – staking their entire life on me remembering to make sure they stay alive. It's too much. It's scary, it's awful. It's ugly. Dark and miserable. There's nothing there for me. Maybe I'll be a good father. I come from a long line of terrible fathers, though, so the odds are stacked against me.
Maybe I don't want to be a good father. I think being a good husband is enough.
Aurora Nibley: Smyly darn ya, Smyly
I got a series of emails this past week from my grandfather in Alabama. Really it was just one email, but I received a series because it took him about six tries to fail to attach a file and then just copy and paste it into the body of an email for us to see, and this email (the one he wanted us to get) contained a copy of a list of farm chores. The only reason I can think of that I got this thing is that I must just be on Pappy (yes, Pappy)'s email list for his kids and grandkids and he sent the list out to everyone. What I really can't figure out is why he sent the thing out at all. He does have a farm, or at least a plot of land that he calls a farm, but he doesn't grow anything there. The list seems like actual chores that need to be done (there are items on the list like “insecticide on trees” and “weed old dogs' graves”), so I don't think this is just some old guy email gag. But I've only been to Alabama twice in my life and I have no intention of going now, so those chores are going to have to get done without me.
My mother's parents and all of their other children, and their children, live in Huntsville, Alabama, where Pappy is not in fact a farmer by trade. He worked for NASA all through the 1960's and 70's (he worked on the Apollo Program, as a matter of fact), he did well enough to retire early, and from what little contact I've had he seems to have spent the bulk of my lifetime just buying toys for himself. The “farm” was bought as a playground for his RVs, his tractor, his ATVs, and a Miata that he had for a while, until I came out to visit and told him it was a woman's car. (He sold it quietly, a few months later. I felt bad because I knew he loved that car, but I didn't make the rules—Miatas are for ladies.)
As for me and my Southern roots, I will happily exploit them for social purposes (“You're from Birmingham? No way! My family's all in Huntsville!”), but my father's family is based in the West and I was raised in Southern California, and I imprinted early. Alabama makes no sense to me. No sense. Pappy took me down the river one day on his boat (his boat! He has it for fishing! FISHING!!), and as we zoomed down the river (because fish apparently do not mind outboard motors), he pointed out lighter patches of rock on the cliffs above us. “See thar, hunny? That's whar the Yankees shot thar guns for practiss whal they was cummin down the river.” For a confused moment or two I thought he was talking about the baseball team.
Really, the only time I have ever been identified by anyone at all as Southern was when I was doing the most Californian thing ever: making movies. In a past life, I worked quite a bit as a movie extra and slightly less as a production assistant, and it's true what they say: Hollywood is a small town. Even as a “Background Actor” (read: “extra”: read: “human set dressing”), you see the same faces over and over again. That winter, I had stolen a University of Alabama sweatshirt from my mother, and was known for wearing it around set when the cameras weren't on. Since remembering people's names can be such a chore, there were several people who took to calling me “Alabama,” which was written in huge letters on my sweatshirt and was a cute thing to be called, so I went with it. I was confused the first couple of times people came up to me and said “Roll tide,” but who wouldn't be? I mean, that's a crappy fight call. What kind of school has a mascot that a person can't dress up as?
Pappy and the rest of the Smyly crew had their annual family reunion about a month ago. I wasn't there, but I have seen videos of previous Smyly reunions. They involve lots of campfire songs and wearing the same t-shirts and running around in the Alabama woods. I guess that since they comprise a large clan themselves, they aren't afraid of being attacked by any potential background artists from, say, Deliverance.
The high point of the Smyly reunion is the yearly game of Undertaker. Pappy and the two of his sons-in-law who are in attendance find a person who has not been to the reunion before. I'm not really clear on how they do this; I'm sure that by now they've been reduced to using my cousins' junior high school sweethearts. Anyway, they take this poor victim, blindfold him or her, and instruct them to behave as though they were a corpse being measured for a coffin. Pappy and my two evil uncles then use a tape measure to measure the length of the “body.” They lift the head, to measure it for a “hat,” they lift the arm and measure that, and finally, they lift one of the person's legs up into the air and pour a glass of ice water down their pant leg, to the delight of all. I'm heartbroken to have missed it.
I guess my point is that I am in the Smyly family, but not of it. And I for one am all right with that. I am grateful for the genetic material and all, but no matter how much money Pappy may have (and he has a lot), I just can't get on board with the cruel practical jokes, and the hard-core right-wing values, and the offensive pretend racism (I like my pretend racism to actually have a punchline, at least). So even though I like the idea of having a large tribe to be a part of and I sometimes am sad that I don't live near any of my family, I think I can get by in my little apartment with my husband and my cat and the name that I got from my father (I don't get along with him either, but that's another story for another day).
The family I've got is small, but I picked it out myself.
My mother's parents and all of their other children, and their children, live in Huntsville, Alabama, where Pappy is not in fact a farmer by trade. He worked for NASA all through the 1960's and 70's (he worked on the Apollo Program, as a matter of fact), he did well enough to retire early, and from what little contact I've had he seems to have spent the bulk of my lifetime just buying toys for himself. The “farm” was bought as a playground for his RVs, his tractor, his ATVs, and a Miata that he had for a while, until I came out to visit and told him it was a woman's car. (He sold it quietly, a few months later. I felt bad because I knew he loved that car, but I didn't make the rules—Miatas are for ladies.)
As for me and my Southern roots, I will happily exploit them for social purposes (“You're from Birmingham? No way! My family's all in Huntsville!”), but my father's family is based in the West and I was raised in Southern California, and I imprinted early. Alabama makes no sense to me. No sense. Pappy took me down the river one day on his boat (his boat! He has it for fishing! FISHING!!), and as we zoomed down the river (because fish apparently do not mind outboard motors), he pointed out lighter patches of rock on the cliffs above us. “See thar, hunny? That's whar the Yankees shot thar guns for practiss whal they was cummin down the river.” For a confused moment or two I thought he was talking about the baseball team.
Really, the only time I have ever been identified by anyone at all as Southern was when I was doing the most Californian thing ever: making movies. In a past life, I worked quite a bit as a movie extra and slightly less as a production assistant, and it's true what they say: Hollywood is a small town. Even as a “Background Actor” (read: “extra”: read: “human set dressing”), you see the same faces over and over again. That winter, I had stolen a University of Alabama sweatshirt from my mother, and was known for wearing it around set when the cameras weren't on. Since remembering people's names can be such a chore, there were several people who took to calling me “Alabama,” which was written in huge letters on my sweatshirt and was a cute thing to be called, so I went with it. I was confused the first couple of times people came up to me and said “Roll tide,” but who wouldn't be? I mean, that's a crappy fight call. What kind of school has a mascot that a person can't dress up as?
Pappy and the rest of the Smyly crew had their annual family reunion about a month ago. I wasn't there, but I have seen videos of previous Smyly reunions. They involve lots of campfire songs and wearing the same t-shirts and running around in the Alabama woods. I guess that since they comprise a large clan themselves, they aren't afraid of being attacked by any potential background artists from, say, Deliverance.
The high point of the Smyly reunion is the yearly game of Undertaker. Pappy and the two of his sons-in-law who are in attendance find a person who has not been to the reunion before. I'm not really clear on how they do this; I'm sure that by now they've been reduced to using my cousins' junior high school sweethearts. Anyway, they take this poor victim, blindfold him or her, and instruct them to behave as though they were a corpse being measured for a coffin. Pappy and my two evil uncles then use a tape measure to measure the length of the “body.” They lift the head, to measure it for a “hat,” they lift the arm and measure that, and finally, they lift one of the person's legs up into the air and pour a glass of ice water down their pant leg, to the delight of all. I'm heartbroken to have missed it.
I guess my point is that I am in the Smyly family, but not of it. And I for one am all right with that. I am grateful for the genetic material and all, but no matter how much money Pappy may have (and he has a lot), I just can't get on board with the cruel practical jokes, and the hard-core right-wing values, and the offensive pretend racism (I like my pretend racism to actually have a punchline, at least). So even though I like the idea of having a large tribe to be a part of and I sometimes am sad that I don't live near any of my family, I think I can get by in my little apartment with my husband and my cat and the name that I got from my father (I don't get along with him either, but that's another story for another day).
The family I've got is small, but I picked it out myself.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Rebecca D'Urso: Blonde non Blonde
This morning, I used one of my dad’s old t-shirts to make my hair curlier. He would have been proud. When I was younger, I hated my hair. It was a clumpy afro that was full of frizz and knots. My mother, not being Italian, would keep my hair cut short or in pigtails just so she didn’t have to hear me scream every morning when she tried to comb it. My grade school classmates constantly made fun of me because I didn’t have the long flowing waves that were so popular. That, coupled with the apostrophe in my last name, helped to make me an outcast well before my nerd tendencies developed.
My father was first-generation Italian, so I had the typical mass of aunts, uncles, cousins, and the matriarch great-grandmother who had married and re-married every time she outlasted her husband. Each union brought more people into the group until you couldn’t remember everyone’s names. Weddings and funerals were like a reunion, and if you didn’t kiss Great-Grandma Maria first, you were put on A List. My mother, being blue-eyed with her hair dyed blonde, didn’t look like she fit in and my dad’s family made her feel it every chance they could. She used to sit with the wives who were some sort of “other” European stock. She preferred it that way because those ladies were a lot more fun.
Up until the end of high school, I looked like a cross between my dad and his sister. I had olive skin, big brown eyes, and the ever-present afro. I didn’t have any obvious traits from my mother, but I wanted to look like her so badly. When I would help my grandma make pasta or bread, she would tie my hair up in a white dishtowel. I would dance around the kitchen with my “beautiful long blonde hair” until she would yank it off, angry I wasn’t proud of my brown-black mess. She would complain to my mother that I didn’t embrace my heritage. This, of course, was because my mother would let me eat raviolis from a can whenever I was at home. My mom would nod, and then roll her eyes when my grandma turned her back.
Because my mother’s family lived all across the country, I didn’t get to know them until much later. I thought I was stuck with my dad’s relatives, with their ignorance and in-fighting. We were constantly caught between one cousin’s war with the other. If you picked a side, both of them would turn on you once the fighting was done. Family gatherings caused a lot of anxiety because I never knew what terrible tricks my cousins would play on me. After one particularly scarring incident, I wailed to my mom that I didn’t want to be Italian anymore. When she asked why, I told her I didn’t want to be crazy.
Once my grandma and dad’s sister died, our little three-person unit stopped going to the family parties. We hung out with a small select few from that group, but even they turned eventually. We replaced them with friends and created new bonds with my mom’s family. I started to learn about my “other side.” Some of them were also crazy and hurtful but there were even more who were interesting, fun, and loving. It was around this time I started to look more like my mom. I straightened my hair and dyed it red, much to my dad’s dismay. He didn’t understand that my hair was a connection to all that crazy from my past.
Eventually, my dad reconnected with relatives from my grandpa’s side. That group had moved all around the country when my dad was a young man, and he had lost touch with them. These were people who had gone to school and dared to marry people who weren’t from The Neighborhood. It took me until my twenties to finally meet cool Italians who made me wish I had embraced that heritage a little more. I finally understood where my artistic side came from, why I hugged strangers when meeting them.
I’m getting married in three weeks, and the thought used to give me anxiety. Not because it’s a huge commitment, but instead because of the expectation I would invite all those terrible people from my past. I was afraid that my husband-to-be would flee after staring my bloodline in the face. I was ecstatic when my mother told me that we were only inviting the people we love, the people who inspired us. When she married my dad, they were forced to include people they had never met. There was almost a war because my mother wanted ham and chicken instead of sausage and peppers. My mother, not knowing better, acquiesced to become “the good wife.” My parents vowed I would never go through that. My wedding would be what I wanted with only one or two traditions thrown in because they actually meant something to us.
Instead, the room will be filled with friends who are family and family who are friends. They are people who I admire and who make me laugh. There will be Dean Martin playing in the background because I love his music, and I will be stuffing my face with linguine because it is delicious. The best part will be my bouncy mass of hair, each curl a tribute to my dad.
My father was first-generation Italian, so I had the typical mass of aunts, uncles, cousins, and the matriarch great-grandmother who had married and re-married every time she outlasted her husband. Each union brought more people into the group until you couldn’t remember everyone’s names. Weddings and funerals were like a reunion, and if you didn’t kiss Great-Grandma Maria first, you were put on A List. My mother, being blue-eyed with her hair dyed blonde, didn’t look like she fit in and my dad’s family made her feel it every chance they could. She used to sit with the wives who were some sort of “other” European stock. She preferred it that way because those ladies were a lot more fun.
Up until the end of high school, I looked like a cross between my dad and his sister. I had olive skin, big brown eyes, and the ever-present afro. I didn’t have any obvious traits from my mother, but I wanted to look like her so badly. When I would help my grandma make pasta or bread, she would tie my hair up in a white dishtowel. I would dance around the kitchen with my “beautiful long blonde hair” until she would yank it off, angry I wasn’t proud of my brown-black mess. She would complain to my mother that I didn’t embrace my heritage. This, of course, was because my mother would let me eat raviolis from a can whenever I was at home. My mom would nod, and then roll her eyes when my grandma turned her back.
Because my mother’s family lived all across the country, I didn’t get to know them until much later. I thought I was stuck with my dad’s relatives, with their ignorance and in-fighting. We were constantly caught between one cousin’s war with the other. If you picked a side, both of them would turn on you once the fighting was done. Family gatherings caused a lot of anxiety because I never knew what terrible tricks my cousins would play on me. After one particularly scarring incident, I wailed to my mom that I didn’t want to be Italian anymore. When she asked why, I told her I didn’t want to be crazy.
Once my grandma and dad’s sister died, our little three-person unit stopped going to the family parties. We hung out with a small select few from that group, but even they turned eventually. We replaced them with friends and created new bonds with my mom’s family. I started to learn about my “other side.” Some of them were also crazy and hurtful but there were even more who were interesting, fun, and loving. It was around this time I started to look more like my mom. I straightened my hair and dyed it red, much to my dad’s dismay. He didn’t understand that my hair was a connection to all that crazy from my past.
Eventually, my dad reconnected with relatives from my grandpa’s side. That group had moved all around the country when my dad was a young man, and he had lost touch with them. These were people who had gone to school and dared to marry people who weren’t from The Neighborhood. It took me until my twenties to finally meet cool Italians who made me wish I had embraced that heritage a little more. I finally understood where my artistic side came from, why I hugged strangers when meeting them.
I’m getting married in three weeks, and the thought used to give me anxiety. Not because it’s a huge commitment, but instead because of the expectation I would invite all those terrible people from my past. I was afraid that my husband-to-be would flee after staring my bloodline in the face. I was ecstatic when my mother told me that we were only inviting the people we love, the people who inspired us. When she married my dad, they were forced to include people they had never met. There was almost a war because my mother wanted ham and chicken instead of sausage and peppers. My mother, not knowing better, acquiesced to become “the good wife.” My parents vowed I would never go through that. My wedding would be what I wanted with only one or two traditions thrown in because they actually meant something to us.
Instead, the room will be filled with friends who are family and family who are friends. They are people who I admire and who make me laugh. There will be Dean Martin playing in the background because I love his music, and I will be stuffing my face with linguine because it is delicious. The best part will be my bouncy mass of hair, each curl a tribute to my dad.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Tina Rowley: Nothing
It’s the hot water you were born into. You were in it before that, even, steeped in your mama’s body. But you come out and go right into the family pot, and the flavor is simmered right into you, for good or for ill. It smells like your family, it tastes like your family. You can’t get away from it, no matter how far you go, but you won’t really know which part is you and which part isn’t. Is some part of your bones your own? How far down into my body do I have to go to find some purity*? Is all I am apart from my family some faint dot of light, a web of thoughts? Whose brain is this?
*I almost exclusively see this purity in my own children, though. They may have steeped in me but I feel more like a door they walked through, completely independent except for the shape of an eye, the angle of an eyebrow. They had to get here somehow. It had very little to do with us. To me, they came as the adults they’re going to be, wrapped in the temporary, frustrating chrysalis of their own baby suits. But that’s them.
On the one hand, I don’t want to be a part of a family, a member of an inescapable group where fifteen of us are walking around with the same mouth. A family is like a cult, and the curl at the side of your lip that you share with Cousin Sue is the telltale marker. We’ve both been there. We know.
Bound by a secret, bound by something that only your family understands, bound by a sadness, your family’s sadness. Your own family’s shame: no one else’s is like it. Good to have a place to go where people also know the secret, the secret thing that renders you a family. Not everyone likes this soup. It’s a family recipe. It tastes familiar, we all love it. We’re used to it.
Two blood lines. One side of the family dominates. The other I can’t see. It’s like the portrait you can stare at that’s a woman from one angle, a vase from the other – only here all I can see is the vase, no matter how plainly visible the woman is. One side bullies the other side out of existence. Van Gelders* trump Valtanens. My father’s side wins.
*My father’s mother’s maiden name was Van Gelder. My maiden name is Kunz, so wherever you see the word Van Gelder, you can substitute Kunz. However, it was the Van Gelder wing that was the loudest and the closest, so it’s Van Gelder from here on out.
In the Van Gelder family trunk: 1) Clairvoyance, passed like a beam from generation to generation, a light right between the eyebrows. No, a window, and through that window the light passes. 2) Volume, vehemence, fight. 3) Something bent, something twisted. Secrets. Pockets of ill mental health. 4) Treasures from the Far East. Chinese and Indonesian blood, years logged in India and on Java. Philosophy. Spices. A framed, gilded leaf from the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha sat when he reached enlightenment, the leaf an offshoot from the original plant, like all of us descendants that have come down the line. 5) Vintage stories with famous faces passing through. Henry Miller, Gloria Swanson, Salvador Dali, George Bernard Shaw, E.E. Cummings. The effect altogether is shabby, tweedy, glamorous.
And then, shoved into a corner, is my mother’s side: so vivid for her, so inaccessible for the rest of us. She grew up on a farm in Northern Finland. The farm was called Siertola, and for her it was like Tara. Her memories are of cows, and skating on frozen lakes, and yellow leaves, and the texture of her wool coat. They’re beautiful to her, they’re moving, and they can barely be heard over the Van Gelder din. The Valtanen music is too quiet, it’s too spare. Long, slow, single cello notes against a wintry background. So much is marked by absence. I met my grandmother before she died – she was just like a stick figure. Skinny, with straight hair that stuck out, and no English. I couldn’t tell what she was like. And then she was gone. My grandfather left her when my mother was one, so he wasn’t there. He was a streak of dark hair, a cloud of alcohol, one meeting with my mom when she was 15. “I hear you’re my daughter.” “That’s what they tell me.” And then he was gone, too. Valtanen faces are broad, their limbs are sturdy. I only know what we look like. I don’t know who we are.
Finland was too far, and we only had the one representative, so we defaulted to Van Gelder. We were swarmed by cousins on Sunday nights, talking about Theosophy and arguing over curry at the dinner table. Voices rising, arms waving. Privately, I loved it. It was warm and wild and loud and familiar and it felt almost like mine. Publicly, Van Gelder blood was freak blood and I wasn’t happy about it. We were vegetarians before anyone knew what the hell that was. We were Theosophists. “What the fuck is that?” asked everybody. (Can’t do it for you. Not now. God bless Google.) My grandmother was a famous clairvoyant who as a young girl transmitted messages from soldiers who died in Gallipoli to their families, healed people with her hands. It felt like we were the goddamn Munsters. I felt like Marilyn, looked like Eddie, worked on being the Munster who could blend in, pass for Grade B if not Grade A American. I dumbed it down, blanded it up, played to the crowd. “What religion are you?” (Oh, shit.) “We’re…Christians.” I learned to tell jokes, be cool, shake off the familial stuffiness. I loved being free of it. I loved making my own persona.
Oh, man.
Here comes the regret. There’s something too poignant here that I don’t want to look at. Distancing myself from my family, rejecting them. Subtly. There’s betrayal in here somewhere, and I don’t know who did it first. I don’t want to look. And there’s a love that I don’t want to talk about either.
KING LEAR
What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.
There’s something at the core that I didn’t show you, that I can’t show you, that you’d never be able to see anyway, because you’re not my family.
This is hard. Family. Jesus. I’m losing my way, here, maybe on purpose.
I buck at being part of a family. I would sort of rather be alone. It can’t be helped, though. Also, that’s not true, and I love them. Oh, who knows? The topic makes me want to stick my head out of the window. It makes me need air. And we don’t have time to properly address this. The hot water we’re born into, the haunted houses we grew up in. The drama soaked into the walls. Aeschylus, Tolstoy, Ibsen, O’Neill. Everybody knows the family is a killer. The safest place on earth, right? Your home. Wonderful. The back of your hand. Yes! True! And you spend your whole life dismantling the little bombs they accidentally planted inside you. (That’s too dramatic and also not dramatic enough.) Whatever note I leave this on, it’s the wrong note. What did you do to me? Thank you for everything, sincerely. The other one. Both.
This did nothing any justice. Sorry, family.
*I almost exclusively see this purity in my own children, though. They may have steeped in me but I feel more like a door they walked through, completely independent except for the shape of an eye, the angle of an eyebrow. They had to get here somehow. It had very little to do with us. To me, they came as the adults they’re going to be, wrapped in the temporary, frustrating chrysalis of their own baby suits. But that’s them.
On the one hand, I don’t want to be a part of a family, a member of an inescapable group where fifteen of us are walking around with the same mouth. A family is like a cult, and the curl at the side of your lip that you share with Cousin Sue is the telltale marker. We’ve both been there. We know.
Bound by a secret, bound by something that only your family understands, bound by a sadness, your family’s sadness. Your own family’s shame: no one else’s is like it. Good to have a place to go where people also know the secret, the secret thing that renders you a family. Not everyone likes this soup. It’s a family recipe. It tastes familiar, we all love it. We’re used to it.
Two blood lines. One side of the family dominates. The other I can’t see. It’s like the portrait you can stare at that’s a woman from one angle, a vase from the other – only here all I can see is the vase, no matter how plainly visible the woman is. One side bullies the other side out of existence. Van Gelders* trump Valtanens. My father’s side wins.
*My father’s mother’s maiden name was Van Gelder. My maiden name is Kunz, so wherever you see the word Van Gelder, you can substitute Kunz. However, it was the Van Gelder wing that was the loudest and the closest, so it’s Van Gelder from here on out.
In the Van Gelder family trunk: 1) Clairvoyance, passed like a beam from generation to generation, a light right between the eyebrows. No, a window, and through that window the light passes. 2) Volume, vehemence, fight. 3) Something bent, something twisted. Secrets. Pockets of ill mental health. 4) Treasures from the Far East. Chinese and Indonesian blood, years logged in India and on Java. Philosophy. Spices. A framed, gilded leaf from the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha sat when he reached enlightenment, the leaf an offshoot from the original plant, like all of us descendants that have come down the line. 5) Vintage stories with famous faces passing through. Henry Miller, Gloria Swanson, Salvador Dali, George Bernard Shaw, E.E. Cummings. The effect altogether is shabby, tweedy, glamorous.
And then, shoved into a corner, is my mother’s side: so vivid for her, so inaccessible for the rest of us. She grew up on a farm in Northern Finland. The farm was called Siertola, and for her it was like Tara. Her memories are of cows, and skating on frozen lakes, and yellow leaves, and the texture of her wool coat. They’re beautiful to her, they’re moving, and they can barely be heard over the Van Gelder din. The Valtanen music is too quiet, it’s too spare. Long, slow, single cello notes against a wintry background. So much is marked by absence. I met my grandmother before she died – she was just like a stick figure. Skinny, with straight hair that stuck out, and no English. I couldn’t tell what she was like. And then she was gone. My grandfather left her when my mother was one, so he wasn’t there. He was a streak of dark hair, a cloud of alcohol, one meeting with my mom when she was 15. “I hear you’re my daughter.” “That’s what they tell me.” And then he was gone, too. Valtanen faces are broad, their limbs are sturdy. I only know what we look like. I don’t know who we are.
Finland was too far, and we only had the one representative, so we defaulted to Van Gelder. We were swarmed by cousins on Sunday nights, talking about Theosophy and arguing over curry at the dinner table. Voices rising, arms waving. Privately, I loved it. It was warm and wild and loud and familiar and it felt almost like mine. Publicly, Van Gelder blood was freak blood and I wasn’t happy about it. We were vegetarians before anyone knew what the hell that was. We were Theosophists. “What the fuck is that?” asked everybody. (Can’t do it for you. Not now. God bless Google.) My grandmother was a famous clairvoyant who as a young girl transmitted messages from soldiers who died in Gallipoli to their families, healed people with her hands. It felt like we were the goddamn Munsters. I felt like Marilyn, looked like Eddie, worked on being the Munster who could blend in, pass for Grade B if not Grade A American. I dumbed it down, blanded it up, played to the crowd. “What religion are you?” (Oh, shit.) “We’re…Christians.” I learned to tell jokes, be cool, shake off the familial stuffiness. I loved being free of it. I loved making my own persona.
Oh, man.
Here comes the regret. There’s something too poignant here that I don’t want to look at. Distancing myself from my family, rejecting them. Subtly. There’s betrayal in here somewhere, and I don’t know who did it first. I don’t want to look. And there’s a love that I don’t want to talk about either.
KING LEAR
What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.
There’s something at the core that I didn’t show you, that I can’t show you, that you’d never be able to see anyway, because you’re not my family.
This is hard. Family. Jesus. I’m losing my way, here, maybe on purpose.
I buck at being part of a family. I would sort of rather be alone. It can’t be helped, though. Also, that’s not true, and I love them. Oh, who knows? The topic makes me want to stick my head out of the window. It makes me need air. And we don’t have time to properly address this. The hot water we’re born into, the haunted houses we grew up in. The drama soaked into the walls. Aeschylus, Tolstoy, Ibsen, O’Neill. Everybody knows the family is a killer. The safest place on earth, right? Your home. Wonderful. The back of your hand. Yes! True! And you spend your whole life dismantling the little bombs they accidentally planted inside you. (That’s too dramatic and also not dramatic enough.) Whatever note I leave this on, it’s the wrong note. What did you do to me? Thank you for everything, sincerely. The other one. Both.
This did nothing any justice. Sorry, family.
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