The Reason

(November 05, 2007)

This isn't going to be funny or poignant or, probably, interesting to most of you. But I'm not sleeping again and I guess if I don't write it...well, there's no non-douchey end to that sentence. So I'm going to write it down and then I'm going to climb into bed in the fresh new sheets Joe put on, cuddle up next to him and try to rest.

Proably also it's going to go on for like ten pages. It's free writing too, probably I should do it somewhere else but it would only feel like a shadow of itself unless I do this here and now.

I was just up, online reading something my friend Jonny wrote. Jonny was jumped outside Bill's Bar last month and has been trying to find a way to piece his life back together after a skull-crushing head injury that almost killed him. He gets a lot of shit for drinking too much and being obnoxious, but I have a connection with this guy that's just there and can't be explained. Michelle says I've a crush on him, and he's definitely a really sexy dude, but that's not really it. JOE'S sexy and he's in my bed already and I love him more than life.

Jonny wrote, in part, that he knows he is lucky and that he has an amazing family. When I read those words I had the same reaction I have when I read Jess' Blog posts about phone calls with her mother (her family is pretty cool), and when I read what McC's mom writes on McC's Diary (always punctuated with a "honey" that is clearly sincere and not just for show). I read about Jonny's amazing family and I just stare. At the word. Family. I look at it until it loses all meaning. Fa.Mil.Y. Fam.ily. Just a little nothing of a word that somehow carries a lot inside it. Too much, an impossible amount. It's like a clown car. It's a blip. But it stands for whole lives. Generations. It's too small to contain as much as it does. Six letters like a blobble of goo that falls with a plop..

(I apologize for this entry in advance, I am not even reading this over but I see from glancing upward that I've just come up with "blobble of goo" and that makes...yeah, no sense at all. Sorry guys, I'm all cruddy right now.)

The reason.

The reason that I don't speak to anyone in my family anymore is that, for my entire life, they've acted as though there was just the one kid in our family. My brother was all that counted. I may as well not have been there. So now, I'm not. Simple as that. It didn't take any time at all, just snip snip, I'm out.

Before I explain the day that started "the beginning of the end," some ancient history that feeds the present day:

A few people who were around when we were really little (teachers, neighbors) bore witness to the gross lopsidedness of our family and actually talked secretly to me about it, several times. I guess it was just SO obvious that I'd have these adults take me aside and say "Are you okay, honey? Is there anything you need?" My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Jones asked me one day why I was always so "somber." I had never heard the word before. But by the gently questioning probe of her musical voice, I gleaned the meaning. It had something to do with sad and serious, I said to myself. You don't use that tone if you're asking a little girl about something happy. In eighth grade, Mrs. Dorozinski told me that I was doing so well in every other subject that the only explanation for my abysmal math skills was that I'd missed some earlier concepts in fifth, sixth and seventh grade that were needed as building blocks to understand the eighth grade brand of "high school prep" math (I realized later she meant algebra).

I didn't tell her that every day as soon as I got home from school I had to do all the chores. All of them. It was hours before I could get to my homework. My brother just watched TV and played outside. Then when I was finished feeding the dogs, washing the dishes, vacuuming, sweeping, laundry, I would set up my books to do my homework on the table and, invariably, right away I'd get kicked out because it was dinner time and I had to "get all this shit off the table." I remember the same inner fury, the impotent rage that it was not "shit," it was my homework and it was important. I never got to homework until very late, and then I would do the fun stuff first (I could write essays and read my history books for hours and I loved science) and I would save math, which I hated and did not understand, for last. I would scribble in any old numbers in my workbook and go to sleep.

So I asked my mother why I had to do all the chores all the time and can't my brother do some too.

Her answer was, and I'm quoting word for word, "Because you're a girl!"

I won't ever forget that because she screamed it at me, shrieked it really, out of frustration for having grown sick of me asking. I wish I had taped it. I really wish I had that on tape. Another time, in answer to the same question, she threw her hands up in the air and screamed, "He's a BABY!" We were in the kitchen, and when she said "baby," kind of like cutting the air with it, like a whip crack in two parts, "bay-bee." Her meaning didn't sink in at first. The word "baby" hung there, matched with a small pink crying thing in my right-brain definition of "baby." Stupidily I looked at my brother, a fully functioning, jumping, running, baseball playing, tree climbing boy who could easily carry a laundry bag or push a vacuum cleaner or empty a dish drainer. I just stood there gaping. We're only three years apart and I was doing all these chores since I'd BEEN his age. How old are eighth graders? Twelve? If I was twelve, then the "baby" was nine. What about when I was nine? I was a baby then? I was struck speechless and have no idea what happened next. To this day the scene is so sharp and clear that I can feel the pink and gray rubber tiled kitchen floor, the honey colored wood and black handles of the cabinets and my brother, with his sort of bowl haircut just standing there looking back at me. To his credit, he was not smirking or anything like that. This wasn't a boy who was trying to get a away with something. He didn't understand, he just knew that what you do after school is watch TV and play outside.

Once, I set up the tape recorder at dinner to see if I could catch anything. We had this hoosier cabinet that always had a lot of junk on it, so the big 1980s cassette recorder didn't look out of place or noticeable just sitting there. The tape recorded all of one side of dinner conversation and then went "click!" when it stopped. causing and my father to say "Was that on!?" I played dumb, saying I dunno, someone must have accidentally bumped the button.

I didn't get anything good on the recording. I cannot tell you what I was hoping for. Another outright admission that I was the slave because I'm a girl? A fight? I don't know. I just had a sense of...un-realness and maybe I just wanted to listen back and say "this happened, then that happened."

So that's how life was. I was a gloomy, okay Mrs. Jones, somber little girl who rarely smiled and never once, ever connected in any way to the princesses in Cinderella, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. I didn't feel pretty, I wasn't doted upon by anyone, I was no one's favorite. What was I even doing alive? I used to mull for hours over that.

It wasn't just that I was overly relied upon for housekeeping and babysitting. It was also the...everything else. I just...got...nothing. No good Halloween costumes. No allowance. Seems the things my friends all chattered about, I had no idea about. Allowance?

And yet. And yet...

My brother was getting the same swarm of information from HIS friends too. There were things to do, places to go, and he wanted it, all of it. When everyone was wearing high top white leather Nikes with the white swirl, he got those. (I got canvas ones, with a black swirl). Light gray Members Only jackets became all the rage. He got one of those too. Big brass belt buckle like Madonna had made famous. So if there were to be sleepaway camps, cool computer toys, wishes granted, accoutrements required for hobbies or sports, that would all go to my brother.

One day he was home sick from school, and when I got home they'd all gone out during the day --I never did find out where -- but I came home from school to find him decked out head to toe in a new cowboy outfit. He had spurs. He had chaps. He had a hat. He had a holster and a big silver six-shooter. He played all night at cowboy.

When I was sick, I had to beg to be taken to the doctor. My father would yell at me whenever I was sick. What he would yell is "ARE YOU SICK?" I got stomach aches all the time, I would throw up for no reason, and I had weird respiratory issues. It seemed to me that nobody would do anything about it if I "only" had a cough, even though my chest would be aching like something was stuck into my sternum. Odd since I found out later that I'd almost died of pneumonia when I was two. Wouldn't you want to take care of a kid who said please take me to the doctor? Once in adulthood I said that to my mother, why did we never get check-ups, and she said the same thing she has always said, every single time I have ever tried to resolve any of these old issues.

She said "Oh please."

That was usually the end of that conversation.

When I'd finally get to the doctor, feeling embarrassed and guilty because mommy didn't drive and it would mean some relative would have to take me, who'd pretty much make me feel like shit, I'd invariably get some medicine because hi, I was always right, I HAD something. The only anwer to the stomach aches and throwing up was "Don't give her any milk in the morning." Okay, whatever that meant (they didn't use words like "lactose" then or something). I would get raging cases of all-over hives that would last for three or four weeks at a time. No cure or cause for that ever materialized.

Once my cough got worse instead of better after seeing one doctor, so they took me to a differnt doctor. "What's she taking now?" he asked my mother. "Oh...I don't..." she muttered vaguely. I have this scene too, a fixed picture in my head. She was wearing lavender pants and a darker purple top, her olive skin and mass of dark curly hair vibrant against the purple and the white of the wall. She was so pretty. And she had no idea what kind my cough medicine was. None. But I'd memorized the label. Some complicated word for a little kid, but I'd sounded it out and learned it. My mother said "Oh...I don't...uh" and I said "Dextromethorphan." The doctor looked at me like I'd grown an extra head out my navel. I gazed up at him, and I can tell you exactly what I was thinking. Clear as if it had happened yesterday, I was thinking "I knew you would ask and SOMEONE has to take care of me."

I was dying for piano lessons. We had a piano in the house, but it was just for show. Not one of us could play it. I was dying to learn like my friend Jennifer who, I was shocked to find, grumped about having to practice. Practice! I told her "I would practice all the time" I wanted to play so badly I could feel a sort of future-memory ache in my fingers, like I would practice until they really felt that way in reality, not just in my thoughts. My mother's friend Laura could play and she taught me the opening to "Imagine" and some of Mozart's "Ein Klien Nach," and I picked it up easily. She said I had "good reach" with my surprisingly long and limber fingers. I also wanted to take gymnastics like my friend Suzanne. I'd go with her to the Y and sit off to the side and watch. Sometimes a nice lady would ask me where's my mother, is she going to sign me up? Whenever this happened, I floated up outside of myself and watched. When I think of going to gymnastics with Suzanne, I don't just see her in a line of other leggy, tittering little girls waiting their turn to vault. I see me, in a bright yellow turtleneck and green corduroy pants, sitting on the side on a stack of gym mats, trying not to cry because I'm bulky and fat in corduroy and they're carefree and leaping and somersaulting in leotards and tights.

Sometimes when the ladies would ask me if my mother was coming to sign me up, I would make up elaborate stories. Once I said that I go to gymnastics at another place, today I'm just watching my friend.

Though somehow there wasn't money to sign me up for piano or gymnastics, my brother managed to somehow get drum lessons. And a full set of drums. Baseball camp, hockey camp and soccer camp. I got either jack squat, or practical things. Medical things. After about two years of no sickness at all, meaning I hadn't seen a doc for awhile, I asked for a check-up. "What do you mean, you're not sick!" The concept of taking your kid for a regular check-up was lost. "You're supposed to take us every year!"

For one birthday I got new eyeglasses. Another year it was braces. Once, contact lenses. Rather than "necessary things you do to take care of your child," those were my special gifts. I remember using my own money for school shoes, but I couldn't go on the school field trip because it required a fee, and not only did I not even bother to ask my parents if I could go, around the same time I had to use my own birthday/holiday money for an operation the cat needed. (Bon Jovi got a hematoma on his ear from where he scratched himself from earmites, my poor baby). Because I know it was Bon Jovi who had the hematoma, I know that was high school, freshmen year, because of where we were living when we got Bon Jovi. And also because, um, I'd named him Bon Jovi. The other cat was Rio. As in her name is Rio and she's dancing on...yeah.

When we were older, any kind of major undertaking (like, say, college, vacations, rent and cars), same situation as the childhood stuff, except by then I was used to it. During high school, people asked about this crazy situation just like when I was little. Senior year my friends couldn't help but notice all the new clothes and ski trips and whatnot that I didn't have while my brother did. Mr. Winkle, a straight shooter if ever there was one, asked straight out "what's wrong with your parents?" The woman I worked for at a local farm stand practically became my big sister and I spent a lot of time at that farm.

I worked three jobs during college and, one year, went to Cancun with a group (not a wild trip, this was led by the prim, elegant Spanish Department head and focused on museums and pyramids and culture, we girls did just a few "nights out"). The trip was a package deal and I paid for it myself. All I had with me was forty-four dollars for the week for food and extra whatnots. Thank god my roommate had her mom's credit card and we got her mom's permission to use that, and we'd pay her back. It was hard. Yes, I was in Cancun but my stomach was in knots the whole time, counting out money each day, hoping I'd make it back to New York. By contrast, when my brother was in college he went to Jamaica with his friends using an American Express card that he never made payments on himself (he didn't work, so guess who paid the bill) and all the money he could spend.

Oh yeah, and they came to see me in college perhaps twice. When my brother was in college they constantly traveled there, at one point staying for three days. I measured the distance of the drive. I was closer.

You get the idea. There's enough further episodes and examples to write a hefty book. Put simply: my family could pretty much just give a fat fuck in a high wind if I lived or died. I took up space and didn't matter.

After college, I was busy with my own life and I put it all behind me. I let go, of all of it. I was with Hub, HE loved me best, I didn't need validation, I was on a health plan, could see a doctor anytime I wanted, and I took care of myself, thank you very much. I told myself that I COULD take care of myself because I'd always had to, and therefore all that came before just made me a stronger person in the long run. I had fun on the visits home and my crazy mother and even crazier grandmother, pothead father and shallow, self-absorbed brother became like extras in the movie of my life. Oh, there'd be shades of resentment. My mother's life still revolved around her husband and son, just like always. She would never visit me. She would never make any plans that didn't suit them first, me last. At holidays we'd eat what they wanted, when they wanted to, and always she wanted to just dote upon them, cook and clean for them.

I left that sad little girl back on the sidelines at the Y.

Or so I thought. I guess I didn't actually leave her. I can tell you now, guys, if you have shit to work through, just work through it. Don't repress the gloom, the sadness, the crying in bed at night, the scared feeling.

Because it all came back. All of it, in one breathtaking, nearly suffocating, moment. The day that started "the beginning of the end."

April 2003 I went to Europe with a Boston-based rock band. While there, my intestine ruptured due to a condition that is much more common than I ever knew, but one I didn't know I had, called diverticulitis. (Kind of explains some of those stomach aches I used to get. Maybe next time I tour manage a band I'll figure out the hives).

Amazingly, my mother was going to come to Switzerland to take me home. I couldn't believe it. It was unprecedented, she'd never left the eastern seaboard before let alone FLY somewhere...let alone Europe! She got an emergency passport, and she came. Who would go with her, my brother or Hub? We'd broken up by then but were (are) still friends. Hub came.

I couldn't believe they were coming to get me.

My mommy. Suddenly all I wanted was my mommy.

The day they were due to arrive, I woke up thrilled, I was using all the French I knew to tell everyone my mother was coming. I had catheters stuck directly into my abdomen in many places and a startling new addition -- a colostomy bag.

I really wanted my mommy.

They came in the door and I saw her first before I saw Hub and Christine and Cathy (they'd gone to the airport to pick up Hub and my mom).

"Mom!" I cried out, feeling like a little kid. She rushed over and hugged me, I remember her coat was still cold from the outside. She didn't say anything yet and when we released from the hug, I could see why: she was crying and too choked up to talk. Her face was pink, streaming hard and hot tears, and she gulped out the words in a kind of strangled sob.

What she said was: "I miss daddy!"

I wrote earlier that this was a suffocating moment. I'm not even close to kidding. I hitched a breath and it just stuck in my throat. Like...I'd inhaled to cry along with her "I didn't die, mom, I'm okay, I can't believe you came..." I don't know what was going to come out, but as soon as she said the first and foremost important thing on her mind...time like sort of stopped and did a weird thing. I can't explain it.

I hadn't yet exhaled and the thing that time was doing was holding, because with my next breath...my whole life would change. I do believe that if I didn't look up and see Hub, I may have turned a bend and gone insane in that moment.

What came at me was the summation of my entire childhood, as complete as if it had been a present wrapped with crisp corners and a bow, not even any tape showing. Just 'plop,' here's your truth:

My mother's whole entire life revolved around her husband and her son. My only reason for existence was to help take care of them. It didn't matter what I needed, what I wanted, what were my dreams, what were my talents, skills and gifts. Can she sing, can she draw? Can she play piano? Is she graceful on the balance beam, doesn't she seem to show skill with Play Doh? Maybe she'll sculpt. Did she finish her math homework, did we tell her about menstruation?

I had nearly died in a nightclub basement in a small town in Switzerland.

Though she did come there, the only place my mother truly wanted to be was home taking care of her men. I wanted comfort, but once again I was in the caretaking role instead and had to comfort her. She cried the whole time she was there, and called home constantly. She wished she'd never come and it was plain as day right there in her eyes.

I was honestly in a kind of mental paralysis from then on and don't remember much. She did stay with me for a week in my apartment back in Boston, helping me get around.

She wanted very much to go home but couldn't get anyone to come get her, and she's not good with trains. So I had to practically yell into the phone at my brother (in a quiet, hissing way so she wouldn't overhear and get her feelings hurt that he needed this much convincing,"Are you KIDDING me? This is your MOTHER, you get in that car she paid for and get your ass over here to pick her UP!" He wanted her to take the train. "Okay, okay, jeez" he said. He was at my place for about two minutes. My father never came.

My colostomy bag was in place for three months, and then the second surgery to remove it and re-establish my normal instestinal, you know, situation. The second surgery, in June, was about ten times more painful. Seems the old USA doesn't have quite the same pain management mojo as the Swiss.

Nobody in my family came, or sent anything.

When I woke up from the anasthesia, the first thing I felt was that my entire middle section was being mangled in a big giant meat grinder. I recall I kind of gasped my way awake from the pain. I was in a beautiful room, all dark oak and lovely curtains and couches (I don't know how I rated THAT room on no health insurance, but when he came by my surgeon just winked and said "they put my patients where I tell them, you just don't worry about it.") The first person I saw was Hub, and right after that, my first call was from Joe. When I got home, Chuck and Neil and Luke and Shaun and T Max all came by, mostly Hub and Neil and Chuck. Chuck saved my ass that summer.

No visit or concern from a single blood relation. Oh yes -- my grandmother called every week to yell at me and insist that I "move back home." She would yell until I would feel so bad I couldn't move. I would cry after every call. So I don't accept those calls anymore.

The reason I don't talk to anyone in my family anymore is that those people are not my family. They don't care about me, they never did. The only thing I want from them is retribution for that sidelined, turtlenecked, corduroy girl who used to fall asleep on a wet pillow. They can pay her hospital bills.

Thank you for reading.