Now, I’m going to need to get your medical background. Does anyone in your extended family have a history of diabetes?
No.
Cancer?
No.
Heart disease?
Nope.
Anything else we should be concerned about?
No.
Well…
Except for depression and divorce and racism and sexual abuse and religious fanaticism and betrayal and lying and lying and lying and violence and does repeatedly buying into pyramid schemes count? Well, financial squandering then, and alienation and mistrust and selective ignorance and censorship and suicide and hate and always the secrets.
*****
Family history clings like a spider web this time of year. It comes with the clouds, draping over me like shreds of rubber cement. Or maybe it’s just this week, which has kicked my ass Chuck Norris style. Or maybe it’s this coming Sunday, Easter, which has always ranked as my least favorite of all least-favorite holidays (President’s Day and Take It In The Ear Day* coming in close behind).
*****
(Lapse in thought here. Both girls have decided to cry rather than sleep this afternoon, and the kitchen that was finally(!) clean(!) for twenty(!) whole minutes this morning has taken revenge by sprouting wok-shaped mold, and the computer I’ve been using since my laptop died has belatedly joined the writer’s strike, and I’m TIRED. Chuck Norris, etc.)
(I’m sorry. That turned out much more like stream-of-consciousness whining than the excuse-my-disjointed-thoughts disclaimer I intended. I’m off to take an absolutely necessary nap, and then? Please excuse my disjointed thoughts.)
*****
I know everyone’s got a messed-up family to a degree, and some of you are laughing right now because your family could SO take my family in a fist fight. But my history–the gnarly fabric of generational flaws–is plenty difficult for me to shoulder. I want it gone. Undone. Far, far away from me and my dear husband and my precious little girls. I often wake from nightmares, eyes wide as oceans in the dark, praying that I could just bleach out the stain of my name.
Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, and it probably shouldn’t. Their mistakes, stark and magnified in my perspective, have taught me a lot of ways not-to-be. And Easter, that holiday reeking of ugly lace dresses in frigid, too-early mornings, of confiscated baskets full of candy I wasn’t allowed to taste, of back-to-back-to-back church activities and lengthy descriptions of Jesus’s death that I was far too young to handle? I have the chance to do it right with my new little family, and if not right, at least better. We can have giggly Easter egg hunts and celebratory meals with friends and sleeping late in a cozy, cuddly nest and so much love our minds will spin out into the stratosphere, far beyond nightmares, pain, and this inherited human stain.
—
* December 8th. Look it up! Or don’t.
You seem like such a strong person, and so determined to make your life better and the life you have with your family as wonderful as you can make it. It sure seems to me like you are on the right track.
My butt’s been kicked this week/month/year (so far) too, so you have my sympathies.
I think this is what we (from the broken, screwed up, shameful family club) all strive to do, to break from the past, to make our lives better than theirs. I think you’re right in that we learn a lot of ways not-to-be. You are strong and brave and honest and I am certain a good and loving mother and wife. You are not their history. You are your present.
Remember to breathe!
Thoughts and hugs!!!
xoxox
My life has been relatively happy, but I have been the unwitting transmitter of a gene (or combination of genes) for bipolar disorder, which I recognized was in my father’s family (4 of my cousins and an aunt), but it never occurred to me, until my only brother developed it, that it might have anything to do with me. But it did: one child developed it, three grandchildren are affected by it.
Talk about a family stain!
Lizardek – Wanna kick back?
Frankie – ::inhales:: Thanks for the reminder!
Granny Smith – I’m sure that’s tough, surviving amongst BP. It sounds like you all are fairly close, though, and loving family support can make all the difference.