Tag: Family

My sister finally died (for real)

~ Christi

My sister’s been dead to me for years, but last fall she decided to finally make it official. Funny, it wasn’t the decades of abusing crack and heroin that did her in after all. She slipped in the shower, broke her ribs, and came down with pneumonia in the hospital. (Like mother, like daughter, if you know the story.)

I was ready for the call; hell, I waited for it for, what — 23 years. Still, it hurt to hear my sweet niece tell me that her mom had died. The funeral was outside, graveside, underneath gnarled trees shedding fiery leaves on a glimmering fall day. It was painfully beautiful. There was a rabbi, a gaggle of old relatives, and a surprising number of more recent friends. My niece, Sarah, and her fiancé, Dan. Kim’s third child, Zack, with his adoptive family. An old black guy who sat in front, pouring his eyes out. Me, Geoff, and the kids, wide-eyed to be at their first funeral, for an aunt they barely even knew they had. A fresh hole in the family plot and a coffin on rollers.

Kim’s cousin Randi did the eulogy. She called me Chrissy. She talked about growing up with Kim in Baltimore, about the art projects she and Kim used to do with my mom. About sleepovers at their bubbie’s house, when Kim taught her to French kiss using pillows. She made us laugh, which I didn’t expect to do.

If I had done the eulogy, I’d have probably told the story of how Kim pierced my ears with a sewing needle when I was nine, overtop of her kitchen sink. I would have told how she dyed my hair blonde when I was eleven, and how it took me two agonizing years to grow it out. She was the one who taught me to shave my legs, the one who’d come get me for sister time and take me shmying at the secondhand shops, the one who’d ask me about my crushes, the one who’d always encourage me to be bold. I would have reflected on the good bits – how probably more than anyone else in my life before or since, Kim taught me to experiment with this life of mine. To try and see.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I would have talked about how heartbroken I was at sixteen, the day Kim came to tell my mom and me that she had just done heroin with her new boyfriend. The day we begged her to stay, but she left anyway. Forever. I wouldn’t have lied, like her cousin Randi did, and said that Kim was a good mom. She wasn’t. She bailed, to gradually worsening degrees, on all four of her kids. On all of us. Including herself.

I’m glad that I didn’t do the eulogy. I needed time to let myself feel, and it took me awhile. Now that I’ve had a few months, I’d like to go back and visit Kim’s grave. I’d talk to her, let her know that I’m glad to finally know where she is after all these years. I’d tell her I’m sorry that I shut her out. I’d tell her I wish we’d had the chance to turn things around while she was alive. I’d tell her I’ve missed her all this time. That I forgive her. That I love her still, despite everything.

kimily
Kim, circa 1979.

I met a guy

~ Christi

I met a guy at a party last weekend, at a writing conference in Michigan. He was hot, but don’t worry, he’s married with kids, and plus, he’s a pastor. Still, I was attracted to him, in that way that I can’t explain except to say that we didn’t arrive together, but within minutes, we were. We met over a table of stickers with adjectives on them, where we decorated our name tags with descriptions of our writing. He chose dark, I chose twisted. Five minutes into our conversation, he told me how he watched his ex-fiancée spiral into drug addiction in L.A.

Here’s what’s bugging me. There I was, at a party, excited to be mingling with a room full of writers, ready for anything to happen. Five minutes in, almost without any effort, a hot guy opened up to me about what was probably the most difficult experience of his life. It could have been just what I’d hoped for, a deep connection. But in the moment, I thought only about a dear friend of mine who lost her husband to the underworld of drugs. Still a connection, but without any emotional risk of my own. I don’t think I even mentioned my friend. In the moment, I laughed and made a joke. To make him feel better, I thought.

In the moment, I forgot all about my own, very similar story, about how my big sister went on crack when I was sixteen. Standing next to that guy at the party, Kim never even crossed my mind. It was like I couldn’t access my own memories, or worse, like I didn’t even know the memories existed.

The guy and I chatted for a bit, then we drifted apart. The next morning, he sat several rows ahead of me in the auditorium. The collar of his sport coat was sticking up, and I imagined folding it down for him. We bumped into each other before lunch, and he almost but didn’t quite ask me to eat with him.

That’s it. We didn’t get a chance to talk again. He cut out of the conference early; I saw him walk out of the auditorium but didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t think much of it until my drive home. In the privacy of the car, my memories came rushing back to me: the time I begged Kim to stay with us (she left anyway, and never came back), the insomnia that plagued me through my twenties (lying awake at night, wondering if she was dead), that feeling of utter helplessness (at the pain of losing someone I loved).

When I think of Kim, all these years later, I’m left still asking the same questions I asked back when I was little, long before she became a crack addict. How can someone whom you’ve poured your love into choose to waste that love, and instead head down a path to ruin?

Now I realize that we all make mistakes. We go through life on the surface, moment by moment, sometimes without access to our deepest memories. We choose what makes us feel good instead of what helps us grow. We miss connections that might make all the difference in our lives, simply because we don’t risk our emotions.

I haven’t spoken to Kim since our mom died almost a decade ago. Yesterday, she popped up on Facebook and asked to tag a photo of mine. It was a shock to see her, but I said yes.

 

Two posts in one week, guys. This is huge!

My kid has a demon

~ Christi ~ 6 Comments

A month ago I started taking my six-year old to a therapist. He’s shy, and with the onset of first grade, he was talking less than ever. Pretty much his only means of communicating with his new teacher was by whispering into her ear.

When the threat of no recess (hers) and even the offer of a new LEGO set (mine) only seemed to make Gabe more anxious, I complained to another mom, who came to the rescue with a therapist recommendation. This isn’t the first time I’ve weighed the possibility of taking one of the kids to a therapist. In the past I’ve always decided against it, thinking that paying too much attention to the problem would only make it worse. This time, though, Gabe seemed genuinely fraught about going to school, so I called the therapist and Gabe and I have been visiting once a week since.

This week his therapist began with some art therapy. She handed Gabe a sheet of paper and a box of markers, and asked him to draw his worry as if it were an animal or a monster.

Gabe started to draw right away. He drew a devil engulfed in multicolored flames, and even before he finished it I was almost crying. “This is a worry demon,” he whispered into my ear. “He talks to me. He tells me he hates me, he’s stronger than me, and he’ll beat me up if I talk at school.”

I nodded, trying to figure out the questions that would help more than harm. While I was choosing my words, the therapist asked Gabe to draw a weapon that he could use against the worry demon. He turned to another page and drew a red and blue rocket. “This is a worry blaster,” he whispered triumphantly. “Whenever I talk, it blasts the worry demon into ashes and he DIES,” he explained into my ear. “The worry demon’s flames set off the rocket,” he finished, clearly proud of putting the demon’s flames to good use.

Gabe is only six years old. He and the other kids have had a relatively calm childhood so far, and play fighting with his sister and brother is his only actual daily torment. Yet, still, Gabe is living with a demon inside him. He, thankfully, has no idea that mental illness runs rampant on both sides of his family: schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and dissociative personality disorder, to name a few. No, thankfully, he has no clue that demons are a thing beyond television and Halloween. Hopefully I can protect him from that harsh reality for a very long time.

Yet something about the way he dove into his drawing, so sure of his worry demon, just breaks my heart. Something about the worry rocket, fueled by his demon’s flames, strikes me as uncanny.

The human mind is a mysterious place.

worrydemon

It’s been awhile since I posted something personal, I know. This demon thing has really gotten to me.

I hate money

~ Christi ~ 1 Comment

I know that sounds ridiculous. Maybe you don’t believe me; I mean, money has never been a huge concern for me as an adult. I owe a debt of gratitude to Geoff for working so hard to make that possible.

But trust me when I tell you that money is a struggle for me. Or, rather, it used to be a huge concern. I grew up dirt poor. Because of her anxiety, my mom couldn’t work outside the home. She didn’t much go outside the home, remember? She received disability, food stamps, Section 8, and occasional gifts from my Bubbie. She sewed small things for a lady with a craft shop.

I grew up poor to the point where not-money had a lot of power over me. I carpooled to school because my mom didn’t have a car, and I lived in fear of being left behind. I was embarrassed about receiving FREE lunch at school. I never had any new clothes unless my Bubbie bought them for me. I missed field trips because my mom had no money for them.

My mom did an amazing amount with the small bit of money she had every month. But the fact was that every single grocery item got tallied up before getting in the checkout line, and the fact is that paying too much attention to money to this day makes me panic.

When I was a kid, I never starved but I did go hungry. There were no snacks and meals were small. My mom did her absolute best. She did better than that. She made our bread, she made all sorts of things from scratch. My mom showed me just how much you can make from almost nothing.

When I was a kid, Bubbie would periodically swoop in and take my mom and me to restaurants or to the mall for shopping sprees. Money was how Bubbie showed her love. She redecorated my mom’s apartment twice. On my birthday every year, she’d buy me a large savings bond, until she stopped.

Bubbie made me hate money. She didn’t mean to, but it happened anyway. She made it so I still don’t trust people giving me money. To this day, I’d much rather give a gift than sell something. And I only buy what I absolutely need. I hate the mall, hate shopping. I barely ever make a grocery list, let alone count up what I’m buying before I get in the checkout line.

Luckily, I have a fairly good, but not perfect, sense of what I need, of what my family needs. I kind of emotionally gauge my purchases and I resist many of my urges to buy things. It’s not a failproof system. But I have kind of insulated myself against money.

In my dream world, there is no money and everyone barters for what they need, because I like to negotiate and I hate money.

I used to have a cellar

~ Christi ~ 5 Comments

I don’t want to freak you out, but there was a time that I used to store dead bodies down there.

Not just any bodies, don’t worry. And not so many, only three.

I live in an old house with a full-height cellar. In the last few years, we’ve had the basement waterproofed and finished. Now it’s colorful and neat, and you’d never suspect what it used to be like.

But that cellar was once dark, damp, and irrational. It held an ancient hulk of a furnace and a solitary toilet standing in one corner. Pipes snaked over the ceiling. Our cellar used to be frightening.

When we moved into this house, we brought the cremated remains of our first dog, Theo. We had trouble letting go, so we stashed his little wooden box in the cellar on the pantry shelf.

A few months later, my mom died, and we jokingly set her remains on the shelf next to Theo’s. Theo would guard her, we rationalized, until we could find the appropriate time to scatter their ashes.

breakingbad_skylerwaltmoney

Several months passed and I hired a company to clean out my mom’s storage locker. You know, the sort that Walt and Skyler used to store their cash. Late one afternoon, I got a call from the owner of the company.

“Ma’am, I have something important here,” I think the gentleman said.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Do you know Dorothy B–?”

“Yes, she was my grandmother,” I said, still not catching on.

“Well, ma’am, I have her remains here,” the owner cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Of course I laughed. It had been three months since my mom had died unexpectedly, and just three weeks since I had learned the horrible truth about Mike the used-car salesman. Of course Mike the used-car salesman had stashed my Bubbie’s remains in the storage locker and pocketed the cash that he was supposed to use to hire a boat and scatter her ashes. It was perfect and all I could do was laugh.

The nice gentleman from the estate liquidation company overnighted Bubbie’s ashes and I put her on the shelf with Theo and took to letting the laundry pile up.

When Mother’s Day finally rolled around again, we took a trip to the lake and set everyone free. Soon after that, we hired a basement contractor to hide the evidence.

25 songs, 25 days

~ Christi ~ 5 Comments

Well, I did it all in one day. Thanks, Twindaddy, this was fun!

Day 1: A song from childhood

I Write the Songs by Barry Manilow. I remember waking up very early to the sound of this one from the kitchen.

Day 2: A song that reminds you of your most recent ex-boyfriend

It’s been awhile, but These are Days by Natalie Merchant always takes me back to the summer after high school.

Day 3: A song that reminds you of your parents

For my mom, it’s You are my Sunshine, which she used to sing to me when I was a kid. I don’t have any songs for my dad.

Day 4: A song that calms you down

Hallelujah. I like all the versions, but Pandora plays me Jeff Buckley the most often.

Day 5: A song that is often stuck in your head

For a while there it was Let it Go. I’m glad the kids finally let it go.

Day 6: A song that reminds you of a best friend

Walk Like an Egyptian. If you can name the friend, then you know me really well.

Day 7: A song that reminds you of the past summer

Counting Stars by One Republic, so awesome until the kids found out about it.

Day 8: A song that reminds you of your “first love”

Everything I Do by Bryan Adams. Accent heavily on the quotes. Listening makes me hang my head in shame.

Day 9: A song that makes you hopeful

Tripping Billies by Dave Matthews. Do I really need to explain?

Day 10: A song by your favorite band

I don’t have a favorite band. There are too many good ones.

Day 11: A song on the soundtrack of your favorite movie

Son of a Preacher Man. Go ahead, name my favorite movie.

Day 12: The last song you heard

Does a Bach concerto count?

Day 13: A song that reminds you of a former friend

That’s What Friends are For, Dionne Warwick. Back in the days when I used to be obsessed with radio dedications and before a best friend of mine died young.

Day 14: A song that reminds you of your husband

Faithfully by Journey

Day 15: A song you love to sing along to

Here Comes the Sun

Day 16: A song that has made you cry

Fire and Rain by James Taylor. Actually it makes me cry every time.

Day 17: A song that makes you want to dance

Short Skirt, Long Jacket by Cake

Day 18: A song that you love but rarely listen to

Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam by Nirvana

Day 19: First song alphabetically on your iPod

ABC by the Jackson 5

Day 20: Last song alphabetically on your iPod

Numbers are coming up last, so I’ll give you 99 Luftballoons in German. There’s a Z in there somewhere.

Day 21: My favorite song

Lately, Pompeii by Bastille. But I have a long-term relationship with What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies.

Day 22: A song that someone has sung to you

Nightswimming by REM, 20 years ago at a duck pond in the rain.

Day 23: A song that you can’t stand to listen to

See day 22.

Day 24: A song that you have danced to with your best friend

In the Mood by Glenn Miller, first dance at my wedding.

Day 25: A song you could listen to all day without getting tired of.

Down to the River to Pray by Allison Krauss

Want to participate? The full list is at Melanie Jo Moore’s blog. Melanie, good luck rebuilding your playlist!

 

Fear is a wild ride

~ Christi ~ 2 Comments

I went on a waterslide this weekend, several times and of my own free will. This is a big deal for me. I had an accident on a waterslide as a kid and I steered clear of them until the last year or so. For roughly the last 30 years, I’ve been too afraid to try watersliding again.

It took me watching Gabe, four years old at the time, to even consider setting foot in the waterslide line. My kids have lots of fears, but hurtling themselves down slippery slopes into water isn’t one of them. I’ve accompanied them, my heart pounding, nearly hyperventilating, and with my eyes closed. I’ve gone with my kids in the not-too-distant past, but I didn’t like it. I would say that I faced my fears, but I wouldn’t say that I had fun doing it.

This weekend, the waterslide was fun. I think it was a combination of a gentle descent, a good raft, and a spectacular kid who was thrilled to be doing it with me. I mean ME. We went to the water park just the two of us for his birthday celebration.

Something about this combination gave me permission to enjoy myself. I opened my eyes and looked around as we zipped around, the green tunnel walls wooshing by, and all I can say is I was really there.

I didn’t face all of my fears, just one. I didn’t walk a narrow alley at night, I didn’t travel alone to a Middle Eastern country. I didn’t survive cancer or reduce myself to dollars and cents. I didn’t do any of the big things, just a small one for a small boy. But I did figure something out about fear: Fear longs to be pushed, and when you give her what she wants, she yields to incredible joy.

Go ahead, give it a try. Hurtle yourself down a slippery slope, eyes open. I dare you.

Consciously uncoupling

~ Christi ~ 3 Comments

I could be divorced right now. Well, separated, at least. Before you freak out, let me tell you the truth: I’m still married. I suspect I’ll always be married until, as they say, death do us part.

I love Geoff in some kind of irrational, passionate way that I know without a doubt that I’ll never find with anyone else. I guess you could say I’m crazy about him. The thought of life without him doesn’t add up. It’s annihilating.

That doesn’t mean anything about our relationship. We’ve struggled for a while now, and at times things have felt impossible. I’m sure that Geoff would agree. Have you ever been in an impossible situation? It feels dehumanizing. It feels like I imagine it would be like to be in solitary confinement. I hate it.

The funny thing about impossible situations is how much they make you change. Just when you think you’re stuck, a tiny secret passage opens up somewhere and the impossible becomes possible. For Geoff and me, this struggle has made us more aware, more deliberate. It’s made us question everything we ever thought we knew about each other, and it’s been good for us.

I like the term conscious uncoupling. It’s easy to interpret it in a literal way, two things coming apart, separating. I prefer a more metaphorical sense. I’m consciously uncoupling from Geoff. I’m thinking about what I want to experience, and I’ll admit it, I’m giving myself space to be selfish about it. I’m questioning things, seeking, and finding answers that are not his. I’m consciously uncoupling from other things too. I’m uncoupling from my old ideas about myself. I’m uncoupling from the status quo. I’m uncoupling from boringness.

It’s not all in my head, either. I’m trying new things, in reality. I’m putting myself in situations that used to be off-limits, and sometimes I drag Geoff along.

Geoff is doing it too. We’re doing it side by side, together. It’s messy and difficult, and pretty awesome. We’re finding hidden passages all over the place.

Consciously uncoupling. You ought to try it.

Celibacy sucks

~ Christi ~ 6 Comments

Let’s talk about my mom. It’s time, don’t you think? I’ve been putting this off for a while because, well, it’s hard for me to talk bad about my mom. But if you’re really going to know me, then you need to hear this. I’ve mentioned it once before, but my mom was a slut.

If you ever met my mom – you know who you are – you’re probably laughing right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay, okay, wipe the tears off your face and hear me out. It’s true, that doddering old lady you remember truly was a slut. I know, it’s not easy to comprehend. I probably sound insane to you.

Let me think. My mom grew up in the 50s, long before the women’s movement and the hippie years. She messed around in high school and barely began to explore her slutty tendencies before she married a jerk at nineteen. The jerk fucked around on her before he walked out and took their ten-year-old daughter – my sister – with him.

Now, if you’re still paying attention, this is when my mom made a break for the dark side. I wasn’t around yet, so I can’t give you the gritty details. All I really know, I learned from my sister on a gruesome night at the beach that began with an argument and ended with me lying awake on the floor of a scummy motel bedroom listening to the sounds of my sister fucking her girlfriend. So let’s take a detour.

Yes, the night began with a screaming fight. “You don’t know what it was like,” Kim screamed.

“What?” I asked. I was fifteen. I still trusted her.

“Mommy used to be different,” she always called her Mommy.

I stared at her in disbelief.

“She used to have men over every night,” Kim yelled. “I used to lay awake, listening to them. Yeah,” she screamed. “You have no idea. They used to come knocking at the back door late at night, calling her,” her voice was shrill. You know she enjoyed hurling those truths at me.

My sister hated me. It’s a truism and it’s beside the point. I mean, come on, if you watched your slut mom completely reinvent herself for your bratty little sister, if you watched her swear off men altogether, learn to put a dinner on the table every day, learn to keep a house, learn how to love for God’s sake, you would hate the object of her affection too.

My fifteen-year-old self had a lot of trouble handling the truth. See, my mom never fucked around while I lived at home. From when I was too little to remember until I went away to college, my mom was celibate. She threw the word around like a prayer. So from that night at the beach until I saw for myself how much men could destroy her, I denied the truth about my mom. I watched my sister walk out of our lives into the shady underworld of drugs and I was a little bit glad to see her go.

My mom clung to her celibacy until I left home. She avoided sex even while I didn’t, and as a parent I’ve got to admire that kind of dedication. But don’t you know that just about the minute I traded in my bedroom for a dorm room, she found a creep at Walmart and started fucking him? I was disappointed at first, and then it got worse. She found a – what do you call it – a sugar baby? Some black guy a good twenty years younger than her with a penchant for running up credit card bills and beating on old white ladies while he was fucking them. Yeah, great, I know. I kind of avoided home while that was going on. Then she found Mike the used-car salesman, and you know how that ended up.

So, you know, maybe I should love celibacy. Maybe I should be thanking my lucky stars. My mom’s celibacy gave me a normal life. I grew up thinking the best of my mom, never having to deal with the truth. But you know what? Celibacy just put a cork in my mom’s life, it didn’t solve any of her problems. In the end, my mom ended up dying for some guy she met in a phone sex chat room. Once a slut, always a slut. I hate self-denial.

Let me tell you a story

~ Christi ~ 3 Comments

Let me tell you a story about how I loved a boy once.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Let me tell you how I almost died before I even met the boy. How I fought my way back to life for him.

This story always comes back to death.

Let me tell you about how I loved a boy before I even knew how to speak. I gave him my first words.

My father scrawled this story in a notebook in a drunken stupor while I formed my love into a deep, dark question and hurled it at him.

This story is a puzzle.

I begged him to slip love around my neck like some heavy leather noose.

This story is my scar.

The only answer was my own echo.

Love is the reverberation of my own voice refused.

This story is infinite.

My son scrawled this story in the dirt on the elementary school playground.

Love is never heavy enough.

This story always snakes back on itself.

Let me tell you a story about a black belt in your hand.

This story ends with your voice in my ear.

Do you mind implication?