ninanevermore

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about an email I received this weekend from the craziest of all my crazy aunts. In it, Aunt Sue* asked me (and everyone else on her distribution list) to not tell anyone she had sent it and a previous email she send back in November, since the people whose personal business she broadcasted across the Internet were displeased. Mind you, she asked this after she updated us all on the personal business she had previously disclosed.

Of the six siblings in my mother's family, my mother was the only one I would categorize as sane. The rest cross the entire spectrum of crazy, from Sweet and Endearing Crazy (her younger brother) to Spiteful Crazy (her second oldest sister) to Stark Raving and Not Ashamed to Admit it Crazy (her baby sister, Sue).

One of the problems with Aunt Sue is that she has no concept of nobody else's business. She will tell her problems to the world and if she finds out about your problems, she will tell them to the world as well. Fortunately for me, she does not know any of my problems.

Her own daughter, my cousin Frankie, is not so lucky. It's hard to hide from your mother (who babysits for you) the fact that your husband, Albert, is in a drug rehabilitation center. It shouldn't have surprised Frankie when her mother started a prayer chain for she and Albert at her church. I think it was the prayer chain across the World Wide Web that pushed poor Frankie over the edge.

There is a story in the family about the time that Frankie drove through their hometown with Aunt Sue clinging to the hood of her car. They were having an arguement in a parking lot when Frankie said she had enough and got her her car to drive away. Aunt Sue threw herself against the windshield, grabbed hold of the windshield wipers and refused to let go, leaving Frankie no choice to make her way home with her mother hanging on like a tenacious roadkill. Because she is tenderhearted, Frankie drove slowly and carefully to ensure that her mother arrived in one piece. I think that now Frankie is wishing she'd drove a little faster that day, and perhaps hit the brakes a little harder.

To be fair, the family grapevine had long been abuzz that Albert had a "problem" of some sort. Crack was world on everyone's lips. The grapevine tends to favor the melodramatic, and crack cocaine is the sort of thing to work it into frenzy. Personally, I think it was something else, because Albert is awfully chubby to be a crackhead. Whatever his bad habit was, it's something that doesn't suppress his appetite like cocaine would.

"He's selling all of Frankie's stuff and using it to buy crack. He's even pawned off things that belong to her father. She's talking about throwing him out," the rumor went.

Frankie is not the sort to air her dirty laundry, making her a rarity in the family. To make up for this, other family members, especially her mother, are willing to dig through her dirty laundry and air it for her.

In November, Aunt Sue decided the world needed to start a prayer chain to help poor Albert conquer his demons and to help poor Frankie cope. I did say a little prayer, too. I prayed that Frankie would not find out about the email and kill her mother, because the police would then haul her away and leave her year-old son in the care of his drug-addled father, and I figured that would be bad.

This weekend, Aunt Sue sent a follow-up email.

To Whom It May Concern:

Several weeks ago I sent out an e-mail asking for prayer for Frankie. Frankie was at her wits end, trying to help Albert. She had taken him to a rehab center in [West Texas] for help. I am proud to announce that Albert is doing great. He has accepted the Lord, doesn't curse like he use to, and is now being a really good guy. He loves Frankie, and he adores [their son]. He is going to his meetings every day, and I am very proud of him.

However, I told him that I had asked that a prayer chain be started for the both of them. He can't get over that I told my family that he had a problem. I tried to tell him that as Christians, we pray for the ones we love, but he still is very angry with me. Please don't say anything to him about this e-mail, or the other e-mail, as he has his feelings on his shirtsleeve, and he is embarrassed about all of this. Thank you for everyone that prayed for him."

I read the email to Jeff, who put his hand over his face and shook his head.

"Some people just don't get it, do they?" he groaned.

"Not in that side of my family, they don't," I said with a grin. "And they never will. Tell you what, it's a good thing Albert found God while he was in rehab; I bet that's the only thing that kept him from punching his mother-in-law in the face when he got out."

"No doubt," Jeff said, "If it were me, I don't think I could have resisted the urge."

From what I know about people in recovery, Albert is operating on the idea of taking it all one day at a time. Each and every day, he has to remind himself that he isn't going to do drugs, or sell his wife's property without permission so he can go out with his friends, or swear like a pirate and, most of all, that he isn't going to punch his mother-in-law in the face.

Poor Albert. Knowing my Aunt Sue the way I do, I suspect that last one has to be his biggest temptation.

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* Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the clueless and the victims of the clueless.