ninanevermore

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I took my 6-year-old son to see the animated film Rio last weekend. There was one line in the movie that made me laugh to the point that I almost fell out of my seat, but it didn’t strike the rest of the audience as all that funny. When I realized I was the only one laughing, I tried to keep quiet, but my shoulders still shook with silent laughter as I sank down in my seat with my hand clasped tightly over my mouth so that no sound would escape.

( Art Imitates Life )

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I need to boycott any and all events on my side of the family when my stepsister will not be there. When she and her family show up, it is easy to forget that my family is not actually fun. They are good people, mind you, but the kind of good people that bore you to tears.

Let’s take, for example, a typical gathering involving me, my two brothers who do not consider me to be the living dead, and my stepbrother. Mostly, they will all stare the TV watching what ever kind of sport is in season or maybe Fox News (which my dad watches when there is not a game that he cares about being broadcasted). Any conversation that takes place will happen during the commercials, when my father will try to convince me that America is in a state of decline and it is mostly my fault because sometimes I vote for Democrats. I will smile and make a comment about the weather, and my dad will say that no, I need to listen to him because…and then the game will come back on and the conversation will have to be continued during the next commercial.

Hours go by, and the pattern repeats at commercial intervals until I feel I have done my time and I can make an excuse to leave. But when my stepsister is there, the TV may not even be on. ( Even if it were, you couldn’t hear it over the ruckus. )

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To my dear niece,

I have not seen you since you were 11 years old, I think. It was around Christmas and your family was visiting your grandfather’s house. It was the last Christmas that y'all would visit that house when the rest of the family was there. I heard that your parents brought you and your siblings around a couple of years ago, after your grandfather got out of the hospital after being treated for the pneumonia that almost killed him, but it was done on a day when the rest of the family was around. I have missed half your life and am now a complete stranger to you.

( You used to be a beautiful baby, and baby look at you now… )

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Finding the an old family photograph of my mother and her maternal grandparents last week got me thinking about family trees and the branches that grow off of them. My mother once told me a story about a branch of her father’s family tree – or at least the rumor of one – and how she may have brushed up against it one day when she was a teen-aged girl. My mother liked to collect stories, and she liked to tell these stories to her children. On a few occasions I asked some of my cousins if they had ever heard about this particular story, about this possible forgotten (severed?) branch of the family, and none of them had. Their mothers were not like mine, though, and even if they had heard the story they would not have told it to their children since it involves what would have been a scandal at the time it happened.

( I guess they were married in God’s eyes. )

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My Aunt Jo, who goes by her first name Leslie with everyone but her family, is recovering from a heart attack. She is the mother of my late cousin Carol, who went by her first name Leslie with everyone but her family. Since I considered myself to be a friend as well as family to her, I always called my Cousin Carol “Leslie.” I would love to hear my cousin Leslie’s take on her mother having a heart attack and not telling anyone in the family that it happened. She’d be fuming, but when she fumed she was catty and sharp-tongued and it was always entertaining to hear. Of all the things I miss about Leslie Carol, I think I miss her fury the most – she expressed it so much better than anyone else.

( Deep Dark Depression, and Excessive Misery. )

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When I first learned I was pregnant with my little Sweet Pea, I knew in my heart of hearts that my baby would be a girl. I felt it in my bones. I knew I was having a daughter because a daughter was what I wanted. This baby was a one-shot thing: an unplanned, high-risk pregnancy. Of course God, or the Universe, or Fate, or Lady Luck (what the Hell; I assumed all four of them) had no choice but to give me what I wanted. Besides, my husband already had a 15 year old son; what did he need another boy for? I grew up in a house full of boys, as the lone daughter in a family with three sons. My childhood had taught me that little boys were nothing but trouble.

Mostly I wanted a girl because it had been almost 20 years since I’d been a part of a mother-daughter relationship and I longed for that relationship back. My role would be reversed from what I had before my mother died, but having a daughter would allow me to retrieve a bit of what I’d lost when I was 15. When I was four months along, the first of two high-risk specialists I would see did an ultrasound and asked if I wanted to know the sex of my baby.

“Sure!” I said, excited to have my heart’s desire validated.

“Looks like a boy,” the doctor said.

I was crushed.

( You Can’t Always Get What You WantYou Can’t Always Get What You Want )

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"You know, I'm gonna stay up until midnight on New Years Eve not to see 2010 roll in," my brother-in-law told me as he nursed a beer on Christmas Day, "I just wanna see 2009 finally come to an end and be over with. This year has been lousy."

( Hey 2009, don't let the door hit you in the @$$ on the way out. )

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Thanksgiving Day started off with a phone call from my brother in law saying his wife wasn't feeling well and felt like she might be coming down with the flu. This meant that the Thanksgiving Day plans of his wife driving 50 miles out to fetch my mother in law from the nursing home and all of us meeting at my brother-in-laws house would have to be shelved.

"If she's got the flu, I don't want to expose Mom to that," he said, "and I don't want to expose [Sweet Pea] to it, either." I agreed this was wise, and woke up my husband to discuss what we should do instead.

"We can't just leave Mom alone for Thanksgiving," he said, "I guess we'll do what we were going to do in the first place and take a Thanksgiving dinner up to her."

The turkey was already cooked, carved, and ready for transport. Jeff had wanted to cook a turkey since his German born sister in law saw nothing unreasonable about serving bratwurst as the main dish for Thanksgiving Day. But the rest of the feast had to be cooked and assembled, since we were now providing side dishes as well. I had already bought some yams to take over to my brother-in-law's house, since Doris likes them and neither of her son's do. Jeff made some instant mashed potatoes. I assembled a fruit salad, steamed some fresh green beans and made some gravy from the drippings of the turkey. I made some iced tea and put it in a jug, because in Texas and other parts of the American South that is what we drink with our nice meals. Jeff is not from Texas, and he would drink a coke, but Doris is a Louisiana-born girl and I knew iced tea would be a touch she would appreciate. We loaded all the hot food in a cooler and all the cold food in another cooler, and we hit the road about 1 PM.

( To Grandmother's House We Go )

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A strange thing happened last night as Jeff and I sat outside and talked about his brother. Jeff's anger and my dislike of Pete sort of dissolved, and we found ourselves feeling something akin to sympathy.

"He wasn't a bad guy," Jeff said, "I mean, he wasn't a good guy, but any means, but he wasn't…" He stopped, and seemed search the sky for the right word.

"He wasn't evil," I suggested. "He was a schmoozer and grifter."

"He was a conman, but he didn't have a malicious bone in his body. He wasn't mean. He didn't take pleasure in hurting people, I think he just didn't realize the damage he did. It honestly didn't occur to him that what he did was wrong. It never did, from the time we were kids."

( You can only get by on charm for so long. )

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I'm notorious in my family for not liking to have my picture made. I'm not as bad as some people are about it, mind you. I have a certain cousin who you have to catch by surprise to take her picture, because is she sees the camera before you take the photo, you end up with a picture of her hand blocking the whole lens. She's a big woman, but she's lighting fast when it comes to blocking a camera.

She's a big woman, but not as big as some of her sisters. She's a plain woman, but not ugly. She just has never liked having her picture made.

When I was a kid, I thought this was peculiar. That whole branch of the family is peculiar, though, so I marked it up as a just another quirk of that clan. Now that I'm grown, I am more sympathetic. In fact, I understand it completely. I'm not aggressive enough to put my hand in front of someone's camera and ruin their whole shot of everyone else. Passive as I am, I chose to turn tail and run instead. If I can't get away, my expression in the photo is either a pained smile or a pleading grimace.

( The Invisible Bride )