Nearer My 'dog To Thee

(June 05, 2004)

"Did Uncle Vinnie call you?" my mother asked tonight on the phone.

"Yeah, a few weeks ago. He left voicemail. I didn't call him back because his tone implied that he'd called me like, ten times and was like, waiting for a return call. But, this must be the first time he has called, EVER. That kind of passive-aggressive shit annoys the fuck out of me."

I don't respond well once annoyed. And I didn't want to return Uncle Vin's call because, like Grandma Maggie, I was sure he only wanted to revel in the awesome hugeness of my colossal financial problems, offer inane advice and ask me when I'm moving back to Connecticut.

I just don't understand my family. It's like not one of them has ever learned to be supportive and empathetic without resorting to lecturing and transforming uncontrollable things (acts-of-God) into events brought about by me. Having diverticulitis is not my fault. Having my intestine rupture because of the disease was not my fault. Every person walking around on this planet have can have compromised diverticula. YOU could have it right now. The primary school of thought on the condition is that the tiny seeds, like in tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, kiwi can't be properly digested by people with diverticulitis, so the seeds get caught in the intestine in certain spots, causing soft pockets of bacteria that can actually rupture. Which mine did. There is no way to see it coming. When I lost 30lbs or so by cutting out most carbs and dairy, of course I increased my veggies, fruits and nuts. Actually I've always eaten a lot of veggies. But what does Uncle Vin advise? "You should eat more vegetables." Listen, know-it-all, you have no idea what you're talking about, this whole intestine thing probably would never have happened if I ate FEWER vegetables. Eat more vegetables? Fuck off. I know, I'm cranky. But I don't WANT to talk about my problems with family members any more, they just seem to be enjoying it. My family has a way of being impressed by tragedy, wanting to hash it out again and again, going over the same details and raising the same pie-in-the-sky possibilities. "Maybe you could...." and "How about if you..." No, talking about how large the medical bills are, back rent, current rent and how much I owe the IRS with each of them twice a week, listening to the useless platitudes ("As long as you're happy" and "life has a way of working out" bla bla bla) is not my idea of a good time. Yes, I'm broke. I'm working. I'm sane. I'm basically happy. Things could be a million times worse. I could be in Connecticut.

I am sure Maggie is telling everyone she knows, and putting her own spin on it. She's probably telling people her fat granddaughter ate too much and exploded, some Swiss magician put me back together and I'm now running from debtor's prison. Maggie has...an imagination. Also never listens.

So why's Uncle Vin calling? I don't care, unless some long lost relative died and left a fortune. Great. Otherwise, endless picking at the wounds is harmful to my sanity and I need to take care of myself right now.

So now here is my mother, with news. Picking over my bleeding carcass is not apparently what Vinnie wants.

"Well, here's what he wants..."

Backstory: In 1969 my grandma Maggie, who had years earlier once thrown a cat out a third floor window, didn't want to keep the stray kitten my mom brought home. My mom said "If the cat can't stay then neither will I" and left home. There was a lot more that led up to that day, some of which includes an LSD-crazed brother who became violent unless properly sedated and some other weird stuff. But the cat thing was the last proverbial straw. The cheeky, slender flower child left home for good and ended up crashing at some guy's house, a friend of my Uncle Vin's. Ralph Something-Italian. A while later, she had a kid. Me.

That was pretty much the last that any of us thought about Ralph Something-Italian. Lots of people are here because of sperm donors.

"Vinnie was telling me a few months ago that he's been gigging out again. So this week he calls to say, 'You know how I was saying that I was playing again? Well I didn't know how to bring this up...' and then he tells me that his gigs are with your biological father's band. And that he wants to meet you."

"Ha ha!" I cracked up. Had I been drinking something, there would have been absolute snarfage. My bio-dad? And here I thought today was only going to be interesting because Ronald Reagan died and it's Hub's birthday. Now my bio-father wants to meet me?

I have to say, it never once occurred to me to look him up. Oh, we have always known his first name and where he lives, because my uncle still hangs out with him, so it's not like it would ever have been hard to call him. It just seriously never crossed my mind. I don't, I guess, give much thought to the idea of "father." I've been thinking about it tonight...what does "father" mean to me?

As a child I never felt particularly close to Louie, who for all intents and purposes is my "dad." He and my mom met when I was only three months old. I don't remember any other man in the house. Yet we never bonded on a father/daughter level. Firstly, his family is a fucking nightmare--growing up, all but two of those Lombardi's made it super clear that I was an eternal outsider. I would say Sharon, an aunt by blood, and Linda, an aunt by marriage, were the only two of them that accepted me and didn't make me feel like shit. I was a bookish, fat, bespectacled and serious child, seen as a Part Two of the burden that was my young mother to the Eldest and Golden Child, Louie. What they must have thought when he brought us home! An underage hippie girlfriend with some ugly kid that wasn't his! Had I been less intuitive, I might not have realized all this, but I was very sensitive and I did realize it: they never got over us.

Aside from the whole iced-out-family dynamic, there was just...I don't know, he and I just never gelled. If he'd actually married my mother and actually adopted me, maybe. My friend Michelle (we were best friends from 5th grade on) was in the same boat -- brother by a different father -- but HER name was the same as her brother's, having been adopted by the guy, who actually married her mother.

But not Louie; he didn't marry my mother until I was twelve and his son, my brother, was eight. Every now and again they'd lamely speak the word. Adoption. But like a lot of plans my parents talked about, it was all fluff and crackpot notions. They never got fuck-all accomplished. I remember around age seventeen they started to get more earnest about adoption. Ever the practical one, I said, "Why go through that time and expense NOW, when I'm of age next year?" Pointless. I mean, Christ on a cracker, I'd already gone through the formative years on the outside, with a different last name and indifferent relatives. The time for saying "she's my daughter" would have been when it fucking mattered, when I was little. At seventeen I could give a shit what any Lombardi thought of me, I'd come to see the whole clan as the bunch of sad losers that they were. I mean hell, the "Mother's Maiden Name" box on all my college applications had already been filled in with my own last name.

Why didn't he do anything sooner to make me feel like family? I don't know. I don't think Louie ever quite figured out what to do with me. As the eldest in his family, he had all these young sisters and they were probably the only little girls he'd known, and my sweet lord was I ever NOT like those dunderheads. I won spelling bees.

There is one Christmas picture. It kind of tells the story. In this photo, Michael and I are sitting on Louie's lap, one on each side. My chubby little body is squeezed into a pair of ill-fitting, unflattering red long johns. Michael is in fuzzy feet pajamas. The three of us are nearly enclosed by a large beige wing-back chair, one of the antiques my parents were forever collecting. It was abundantly clear that my mother had arranged us in this chair with thought. She always dressed us in red on Christmas Eve. I remember sitting on Louie's lap, waiting for the photo to be taken. The whole time I was trying to defy gravity and make myself not feel too-heavy on his leg. I could feel his knee bones. I remember clearly TRYING to put a look of fondness on my face for the situation. But I felt fat and ridiculous. In an Herculean effort to "act as if," I self-consciously laid my head back on Louie's shoulder. But I wasn't comfortable. The shutter snapped, capturing that cringe-worthy moment forever.

I never got comfortable with Louie until adulthood when the burden of parental responsibility, something he just sucked at, was gone. SUCKED at, I'm saying. He just never "got it," what it meant to be a parent.

I never once heard him refer to me as "my daughter" to anyone.

But the experts would say, at least he was there. This Ralph guy, on the other hand...seriously, his name is Ralph? The only Ralphs I know are cartoons and sit-com characters!

So anyway.

"Why would he want to meet me? Why now?" I laughed again, it's so surreal.

My mother told Vinnie that it was up to me, but whatever he did, not to get HER involved. "Good God, can you imagine?" Can you picture Vinnie coming over one day, this erstwhile boyfriend from her teenage years in tow? Just how would THAT conversation go?

OH man. But wait...

"Does he have any money?" I asked, not at all kidding. Hey, I nearly died, got evicted, got my car repossessed...is this the deus ex machina I've been waiting for?

"Are you kidding? He's still a drummer," my mother said. After a pause, she comes up with a half-remembered fact. "I think when he's not gigging he runs one of those hot dog carts."

"Are you fucking serious?" I asked with total joy. "You think it's a hot dog cart? Oh please let it be a hot dog cart."

I love when things get weird. If my bio-dad is a drummer who runs a hot dog cart, how perfectly, ridiculously awesome is that? You can't make this stuff up. I started to laugh, she started to laugh, and I had to hang up soon after because my abdomen was killing me.

Well, so, no family legacy to speak of?

But on the plus side - free hot dogs!