Need advice from my peeps! Part One

I was going to post about two things I'm not quite sure how to react to. However, as I wrote the first one, I realized I couldn't be brief as I had intended. I'm a little long winded, if you haven't already figured that out!

Friday night, after an enjoyable day at the casino, my mother asked me I thought she and I had a good visit. She and I had already discussed in the car on the way home from the casino that she had had a good time, on and on ad nauseam. She cannot stand silence, she has to fill it with chatter. So her asking me this just a fishing trip, the way that I think about it. I answered her honestly by saying that I did enjoy her visit, especially as we get along better a few days at a time.

Later that evening, out of the blue, she asks, "why do you kids hate me?". My reaction was an incredulous, "WHAT?". Where the fuck did that come from? She responded that my sister, Bouf, had said something a couple of years ago, and her daughter Meg always says mean things to her, and that she and I had had a "problem" over the summer, and she wanted to know why we hated her, what was wrong with her. I honestly told her that I do not hate her. I then informed her that I would absolutely not get into it with her and ruin the last night of her visit, nor could I speak for anyone other than myself, anyway! I suggested that maybe I could write her a letter when I would have time to think about what I wanted to say and would be able to articulate myself better. She accepted the brush off and let it go.

Knowing my mother the way that I do, I have to assume that:

A) She really doesn't want to know
B) She will actually forget asking this
C) She'd be happier with her delusions that nothing is wrong
D) I cannot make a leopard change her spots
E) If I actually wrote the letter, And Sent It, she would wonder why I was attacking her

So, looking for advice on problem #1. Should I just write the letter and not send it? Or, should I send it and break an old woman's heart?

This is where I get it from

I tend to put my foot in my mouth more often than not. I'm one of those people that can always be counted on to say the wrong thing at the right time and make an ass out of myself. If you're one of the people on whose blogs I randomly leave stupid comments that make no sense, then you may have already guessed this about me.

I recently read back one of the comments I left and wondered, "what the fuck was I talking about?". If I was wondering, I'm sure he was, too. On another lady's blog, I almost incited a riot when her sister wanted to kick my ass over an inappropriate comment I made about her daughter (that I thought was funny as hell, but her sister didn't get). I've actually decided to back off on the commenting so much because of these and a few other goofs, and especially not commenting while drinking. But that is not the reason for this post, just setting up the story that helps explain that I come by this honestly, it's in my DNA.

This is my mother's story, I'm just borrowing it.

After my parents divorced, my mother was still invited to all of my father's family's functions. My mother and her sister had sort of grown up with my father and his siblings and she counted my father's sister as one of her best friends. When my father started getting serious with the lady I call Bee, he decided he needed to introduce the two of them in a neutral setting. He took them both out to dinner.

My mother was understandably extremely nervous. My parents had been married for almost a quarter of a century, and she had never loved another man but my dad. She didn't date after the divorce, either. Now she was going to meet the woman my father was moving in with, a woman at least 10 years younger, and have to face this woman at every family function in the forseeable future.

They got to the restaurant and made nice-nice, small talk. My father can be charming when he wants to be. They ordered a round of drinks and continued chatting politely about nothing that mattered. My mother was still nervous, and slammed her first drink. My mother is not a big drinker. My father seemed very surprised by this and asked her if she was ready for another. Apparently my mother was just as surprised, because she looked at her empty in astonishment and replied, "Oh my, I think I have a glass in my hole".

This broke the ice for the rest of evening, and has become a classic example of the verbal dyslexia that runs rampant in the family.

Happy 70th Birthday, Esther

70 years ago today, a Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine and a Protestant immigrant from Ireland, by way of Canada, had a baby girl. They decided to burden her with the name of Esther Agnes.

Here's to you, Took, Polly-Esther, Testy-Esty, Saggy-Aggy, and the many other nicknames we've come up with for you over the years that I can't put on here.

I love you very much. We know how much we have put each other through. It has not been an easy relationship for the past 30 years or so. We have mentally haggled, tit-for-tat. Although, anyone who knows you knows you win the tit part.

To your credit, you laugh at those kind of jokes. You laughed at a lot much more than I would have, and you still do. That takes a special kind of crazy.

On that note, mom, I hope you found this card funny even though I meant every word of it.

Happy Birthday. Here's hoping you have many more. From many hundreds of miles away. Now can you please stop having heart attacks and quadruple bypasses and getting into car accidents? Because I'm really busy on the internet right now.

Love,

Your favorite daughter
Fancy

The importance of wearing a seat belt and locking your car door

One of the many places we lived when I was growing was on a very busy street. I loved this house, I still do. It was on the market recently, and I would have bought it in a heartbeat if I could have afforded it. It was set way back off a dirt driveway, surrounded by overgrowth and trees. It was a raised ranch with 4 bedrooms, 1-1/2 baths and a fireplace in the living room. At the time it was a dump that really needed a lot of work, but I remember it with fondness.

This was where I got my purple Schwinn bicycle with a push button horn that my brother taught me how to ride down the big hill in the front yard. This was where my brother taught me how to play baseball in the back yard. As there were only two of us, we had to say, "ghost on first", "ghost on second". This was also where the little creep shot me in the leg "by accident" with his BB gun. I have a lot of great memories, there. I spent much of my time outdoors, exploring in the woods, often with our German Shepherd, Schnitzel, who was probably my best friend at the time.

My mother had a big blue Rambler. The back seat was a bench seat, and seat belts were unheard of at the time. It was kind of fun because if my mother took a really hard turn, we'd all go sliding across the back seat and crush each other on the door. It was like the amusement park ride that goes really fast in a circle and you can't keep yourself from crushing the person sitting next to you, depending on which way the ride is going.

One day when I was probably 7, my mother piled four of us into the car to go to the grocery store. I don't remember who was sitting next to whom, but I was on one side of the back seat and Bouf was in the middle. Mom was taking a left onto the very busy street and she gunned it because there were cars coming. We all went sliding across the backseat toward me, which should have been fun - until the door popped open. I fell out of the car onto my knees with a line of traffic coming at me at anywhere from 40-60 miles per hour.

My adrenaline must have kicked in, because I remember getting myself up and over to the side of the road, and then when the traffic eased, getting back over to the side of the road that our house was on, while my knees were bleeding down my legs. And waiting and waiting for my mother's car to come back. She didn't realize at first what had happened but finally registered Bouf's hysterical screaming that I had fallen out of the car and turned around to come back for me. I think to this day that Bouf may have been more traumatized by this incident than I was. She saw me falling out of the car and couldn't catch me!

I got an honor position on the couch for the rest of the day with a blankie and everyone treating me like a princess. Bouf even walked up the store and bought me a stuffed animal, Bimini, that I treasured and slept with for at least a year before he was stolen from me on a cross-country bus trip to Las Vegas.

I always locked my car door for at least 10 years after that.

For a long time I couldn't understand how my mother didn't know I had fallen out of the car until I was writing this and started to think about it. A couple of years ago, I was driving my son and two great-nieces to the mall. I often tuned out the younger niece's screaming, because it was almost constant, and I'm the kind of person that really needs to concentrate on my driving. It had started raining, and I closed the rear windows. My younger niece started screaming, but I ignored her because I assumed she was just upset that I had rolled up her window. My son starting yelling, "Mom, Mom!" but he was in such a panic that he couldn't get the words out. "MOM - HER FINGERS ARE STUCK IN THE WINDOW!". Wow, did I feel like a loser! Thankfully, no harm was done to the poor baby, or her fingers.

When is this "you're turning into your mother" shit going to stop?

My mother almost got us kicked out of Monkey Jungle

When I was about 8 years old, my parents took us on a trip to Florida. My father had an old Citroen station wagon that I thought was the coolest car. It had a hydraulic lift system, and jump seats in the back. I really loved that car. It never looked as good as the following picture, it was a dull white (probably spray painted!) with a green hood.



In the end, it looked a little more like the following picture. My father never could get rid of a car until one ex-wife or another sent it to the junkyard. He's a bit of a pack rat.



Anyway, Kouf got to stay home because she was old enough, so my parents loaded the four younger kids and all of their wordly possessions into the Citroen. As my mother couldn't really read maps, Horhay made poor Bouf sit up front and be the map reader. I've done the trip to Florida with my father as his map reader as an adult, and it was brutal. As awful as that job was, however, there was another one that was worse. Because the trunk was piled so high that my father couldn't see out the back window, they smushed Jimmy in between the luggage and the hatchback door so he could see if it was okay to change lanes. For 3 days down and 3 days back, in the middle of winter, where no heat could reach him.

And what a trip it was! On the way down, Virginia and the Carolina's got hit with an ice and snow storm. Apparently in 1979 they shared one plow and one sand truck between all three states. And no one had ever taught anyone in any of those states how to drive in precipitation other than rain. Oh my god, do you mean to tell me that it can freeze? I remember hanging on to my mother for dear life in the back seat while my father stubbornly forged on in his trusty and reliable Citroen, dodging cars that were at a complete stop in the middle of a lane on an interstate highway!

I truly do understand that they were woefully unprepared for what turned out to be a devastating storm for them. Why would they be prepared for something they never expected to have happen? And really, why would they be prepared for Horhay to be driving through it like a mad-man, not willing to stop until "the next planned stop" on our itinerary, dammit?

He carried around a little notebook, and marked down gas prices and mileage, and how long before we were allowed to go to the bathroom, again. I'm sorry, but a little act of God like a major ice storm just didn't fit in with how many miles we HAD to travel that day.

So we got there, all in one piece, and I think we all actually enjoyed ourselves. My father's parents had a trailer in Jensen Beach at the time, and we visited with them, and did a day at the beach. Then we went on and did Disney, and Parrot Jungle and Monkey Jungle.

I remember Parrot Jungle being fun, I have pictures of myself and my siblings posing for pictures where they line the parrots up and down your arms. I was actually a little terrified, I had no previous experience with birds, and quite frankly - they have sharp little beaks and are not against taking a nip out of you. Birds have too much free intellect, and are just a different species altogether. Give me a simian over an avian, any day.

Monkey Jungle was right up my alley. They had many habitats that were wide open, except for nets overhead . The whole thing was amazing to my 8 year old eyes. The best part, however, was that they had people walking around with monkeys. Nowadays, they try very much to show you how cute and cuddly the animals are, but don't let you touch them. Mostly for the animal's sake, but also because of liability issues. Back then, however, they were much more interactive.

We came across a man with a baby spider monkey - In A Diaper! I thought I had died and gone to HEAVEN. This was better than any Betsy Wetsy doll Santa had ever brought me. This was a real live baby monkey, and I wanted to love it, and hug it, and stroke his hair backward and name him George. This was my first real estrogen rush, and I could have easily sacrificed every estrogen rush in my future if I could just bring this baby home with me. Apparently, I was not the only one. Look how happy my brother, Jimmy, looks in this picture.




(And really, good lord, get a hair cut, Mr. 1979 monkey keeper! Barry Gibbs you are not!)

After this picture was taken, the baby monkey kind of crawled up my arm. I don't know whether he was tired, or hungry, or what, but he started sort of suckling my arm. I didn't know what was going on, I was 8. It didn't hurt or anything, it sort of felt like what I later realized a hickey would feel like. Not a big deal, to me. But to my mother, holy crap!

Apparently she thought the wild crazy monkey was trying to eat her youngest daughter. And She Started Hitting It! Hitting and slapping a baby monkey in a diaper, yelling, "get off, get off". Which is why they probably don't let their patrons touch their animals, any longer.

My mother is probably the only person in the history of Monkey Jungle not to get kicked out for slapping their baby monkey while yelling, "get off, get off". And if any one is here because of a really dirty search - HA-HA on you, you pervert.

James Hoyt

CNN ran a story today about an unsung hero, James Hoyt, who died as quietly as he lived. When he was 19, he was one of the four men who discovered, and later helped liberate, Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1945.

Buchenwald was an equal opportunity concentration camp. "Jews and political prisoners were not the only groups within the Buchenwald prisoner population, although the “politicals,” given their long-term presence at the site, played an important role in the camp's prisoner infrastructure. Recidivist criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and German military deserters were also interned at Buchenwald. Buchenwald was one of the only concentration camps that held so-called “work-shy” individuals, persons whom the regime incarcerated as “asocials” because they could not, or would not, find gainful employment. In its later stages, the camp also held prisoners-of-war of various nations, resistance fighters, prominent former government officials of German-occupied countries, and foreign forced laborers."

I have a fairly cushy American life. I often don't even remotely think about the things that my grandparents or their parents had to go through to get to this country. My mother's grandfather came over from Ukrainia a long time before the Holocaust, about 4 years before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He worked in New York and slowly sent over money to bring his children and his wife over, one or two at a time. The rest of his family may not have been so lucky. After the holocaust, no one ever heard from them, again. For all we know, they are buried in a mass grave at Janowska.

For the most part, I have been raised as a Catholic, by a Jewish mother. There is no end to the guilt that I feel. I have to say, though, that I never forget my Jewish heritage. Which is weird, because my mother never really taught that to us. She only pulled it out of her bag of tricks when she felt it was necessary. (How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb? "That's okay, I'll sit in the dark.")

Maybe as the youngest, I was less forced into going to church with my father, I was the only one who never made my first communion. I know I floundered about for something to believe in for a long time. I still do flounder, even though I chose to raise my son Catholic. I chose to do that mostly because that was all that I knew, and also because of the educational choices in the town we live in.

When I was 18, I worked with a woman who was first generation, her parents were born in the Ukraine. I naively told her my mother's father was from a village outside of Kiev. I claimed to be a "Russian Jew". She haughtily corrected me. I wasn't Russian, or even Ukrainian. I was Jewish.

I had no idea at the time that no matter where a Jew lives, their religion trumps their nationality. I came to embrace my Jewish background after that. I don't practice the religion, but I feel that it is part of me, the way that I am also Irish, and Scottish, and German, and French Canadian, and Oh My God I Am Such A European Mutt!

When I see an article on someone like James Hoyt, my heart goes out to him. I cannot imagine my son seeing the things that he did, at such a young age. And I cannot imagine the other side, having to go through those things or having my son go through those things just because my mother's father was born a Jew.

Shoufie

Shouf was born special. At first, they just thought she was a difficult baby. She would scream like she was getting paid to do it. If my mother left my father in charge of the two babies (Kouf was already 15 months when Shouf was born), Shouf would pull the pacifier out of her mouth and throw it. I swear that was her way of saying, "okay, the gloves are off", then she would arch her back and scream until her face turned purple and she couldn't catch a breath. I think this is why my father left her alone in later years, he was kinda scared of her. (You go, Shouf! Yay for you! If the rest of us had known your secret, we would have done it, too!)

My parents had "Irish Twins". Shouf was born in January, 1962, Bouf was born in December, 1962. When Bouf started crawling before Shouf did, they knew they might have a problem on their hands.

The doctors started testing Shouf, but it took a couple of years before they gave a vague diagnosis. Mom won't talk about it, and I cannot find any information on the term I remember my father telling me. Whatever they called it, it meant Shouf was special.

What was happening was that something in my sister's brain was not wired correctly. Visualize a punch card that is not getting punched in all the right spots. It definitely punched on things like vocabulary, words and letters (she will kick your ASS at Wheel-of-Fortune!), but did not punch on things like reasoning, time, math and depth perception. Not unsimilar to Savant Syndrome, but she is not autistic.

The doctors told my parents that the best course of action would be to institutionalize her, she would never be able to function in the real world. Thank God my parents basically told them to go fuck themselves. They brought her home and treated her like all the rest of us. They never told her she was different, so she never thought she was. The only reason I don't agree completely with this decision is because she didn't understand why she couldn't always do the same things as the rest of us. She never fully matured emotionally past the age of 12 or 13.

They enrolled Shouf in the same grade as Bouf and they graduated high school together. The school didn't have a "special ed" program, but they somehow managed to coddle her and teach her at the same time. My parents put them both in driver's ed, but Shouf didn't pass, which was hard on her. Also, Shouf didn't understand why Bouf was so wildly popular, and she wasn't. It didn't matter, my mother made Bouf bring her everywhere she went, unless it was a date.

Had Shouf been institutionalized, even for a short while, I'm certain that she would never have had the life experiences that she did. She went to the prom. She moved out and was independent for years. At one point, she even managed her own money. She had multiple boyfriends. She had sex!

She started going downhill again in her late 30's. She was living in an apartment by herself (her long-time live-in boyfriend had left her). My mother decided to sell her house, close her antique shop and move to Florida. Shouf got a lot of stimulation from going to her part time job at a gift store. After work, she would walk to my mother's shop. Around the same time that my mother was closing up shop, the gift store went under. Then her landlords decided they could get more money for her apartment and raised her rent, which she couldn't afford. It was all a harsh blow to her.

Shouf always had a vivid imagination, and often confused dreams with reality. My mother had always maintained that there was nothing wrong with her, though, so we just attributed it to Shouf's quirkiness. She started telling stories around this time that just weren't right. Her landlords' friends had introduced the idea of the spirit world and astrophysics to Shouf, and she took the ball and ran with it. Really, she thought she was having "out of body" experiences and spirits living in the house were leaving her gifts. Not that I necessarily don't believe in those things, I think children or people who are child-like are more susceptible to seeing spirits. But what happened later discounted that this was really happening.

She and I, and my son, moved in together to save on living expenses. I guess I knew in advance that she was getting a little kooky, but I didn't realize how bad it was. She started smelling gasoline all the time, which kind of freaked me out because she was a smoker and home alone all day. I thought for sure I would come home one day to have the house burned to the ground. Instead, I got a call at work from Bouf's daughter telling me Shouf was at their house and I needed to come over right away.

When I got there, my niece said Shouf had called asking her to pick her up - from the business that was in the spot where my mother's shop used to be. Shouf wasn't making any sense, but what we got out of her was the she felt that one the spirits, Christopher, was talking very mean to her and was trying to set her on fire and she was so scared that she ran barefoot over a mile to the new shop. Thank God some of the people that worked there knew who she was and let her use the phone. I brought her home, and asked my other 2 sisters to come over and have a family meeting. When I got to my house, the doors had been left wide open, and the heat had been turned up to 90 degrees on a sunny September day. Shouf didn't remember turning the heat on.

She was hospitalized for a few days, and was put on medication for schizo affective disorder and manic depression. She was having auditory and olfactory hallucinations and would laugh and cry at the same time. The meds turned her into a zombie, but they worked.

When my mother came home for Christmas, she offered to take Shouf back to Florida with her for a few months. When they came home, she had "weaned" Shouf off of the medication. Apparently she thought this was a temporary thing and couldn't stand to see her daughter so doped up. Thank you, Esther.

My parents went back to Florida, again, and Shouf started having hallucinations, again. In our state, you cannot force an adult to take medicine unless they are committed. You can't commit them unless they are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. I kept telling her I would drop everything I was doing and take her to the hospital whenever she said she was ready. She really didn't want to go back on the medicine, I tried to explain in terms she could understand that the medicine was what was keeping the spirits away. I told her it blocked them from being able to get to her.

By Labor Day we were back at the ER. They had a full house so Shouf was strapped to a gurney in the hallway, screaming OW, OW, THEY ARE RAPING ME AND SETTING ME ON FIRE, OW, OW, IT HURTS, MAKE IT STOP! I was standing there next to her, holding her hand, with tears streaming down my face, begging them to give her a shot of Anything that would knock her out. How could they not see how much pain she was in? They kept her for nine days that time.

This eventually got better, but Shouf is like a zombie, again, and has reverted back to the mentality of an 8-year-old. I have told her that if she goes off her meds again, she cannot live with me any longer. It is like having another child in the house. A child that is an adult. One that you cannot or do not want to tell what to do, because they are an adult. And so, I find myself a single mother with 2 children, one who is older than me. She left for Florida with my mom a couple of weeks ago. I miss her.

I bottle fed a baby raccoon

When we moved from Buffalo to Connecticut, we lived in a very old house in the middle of nowhere. My mother made friends with a lady up the road who lived on a farm. I don't know if they were friends before or after my sisters started dating the lady's sons, but whatever. I was only about four years old at the time, and I don't really care.

The farm had a hen house, and the hen house was being raided on a nightly basis. I don't know if just the eggs were being taken, or if it was worse than that. I do know that they were a blended family with at least 5-7 children to feed. It was not a loss that they could afford.

One night, the man of the house heard a ruckus in the hen house and went out with his shotgun. A huge raccoon was raiding the hen house and he shot her. As she was dying, she gave birth to a bunch of little helpless baby raccoons.

The man of the house was not a bad man, he was protecting the food that they needed to survive. He asked around to find people who were willing and able to take on the baby raccoons, instead of killing them also. My mother has always been a sap for babies and taking in strays, and we took two of them.

Wasn't I cute?

We bottle fed the baby raccoons. We were never able to domesticate them, they remained wild animals. One of them died, despite our efforts. The other one could not get along with our cats and dog. We gave him away to one of my oldest sister's hippie friends. This was 1976. I'll never know what really happened to that little guy. The story I was told is that the hippie friends had him in a car with the windows rolled down, and he freed himself while they were shopping.

Before we gave him away, though, I brought him to my kindergarten's Pet Day. My father and one of his friends brought him to my school that day, and I won "Most Unusual Pet". I also got my picture in the local paper. Thank god it was a very rural town - read "Very White Town" - or I think my family may have had some trouble afterward.

I honestly did not know any better, I was five years old at the time. When the man that was taking my picture asked me my pet's name, I told him straight out, "his name is Tyrone, Tyrone the Coon."

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for ensuring that the only time I've ever been in the paper in my life is when I am uttering a racial slur.

My bother, Jimmy

My brother, Jimmy, was a lot of things to a lot of people. He was a natural born comedian who hid an abusive past behind a wall of comedy. He almost never let his tragedy side show.

He was the kid who gave my uptight mother wet-willies, and she would laugh. He was the kid who told our mother that he was growing tomato plants in his bedroom in the middle of winter, and she believed him right up until those plants started growing stuff that didn't look at all like tomatoes. He was the kid that took care of both his older and younger sisters, because he felt he had to be the man in the family after my father moved out. He was the kid who took the brunt of my father's brutality before the bastard moved out.

I remember an exceedingly cold night in which my father had told my brother not to let the fire go out in the living room fire place. Jimmy could not have been any older than 11 or 12 at the time. When my father got home from the bar in the middle of the night, Jimmy had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, and the fire had gone out. He made Jimmy go out in the snow in his pajamas, bare foot , down a set of stairs, over the driveway and up a hill to get more wood for the fire. I can't put a number on how many other similar situations the kid had to endure.

Jimmy started getting into trouble when he was 12. He started using drugs and alcohol around the same time. They sent him to the military academy for ninth grade where my father had gone to high school. Jimmy hated it and made sure he got kicked out. That was pretty much the end of school for him. It turns out that not only do mental health issues run in my family, but also dyslexia. Back then, they just thought he was stupid. He used to ask me to fill out his job applications for him because his "hand writing was so bad." He was pretty much illiterate.



He was the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. He was funny, he was kind, he was generous. He loved kids, he loved wildlife, he loved to go fishing more than anything else in the whole world. He may have eventually looked the part of a dirty, greasy alcoholic who got into bar fights and did some time in jail, but he was never any of those things to us. To us, he was always the only sweet little boy in a house full of girls. "Excuse me, ladies, but I believe someone left their soiled panties to soak in the sink, and I would like to brush my teeth."





I pretty much adored him. Even when he threatened to break the thumbs of a much older guy who I thought would be dreamy to have for my boyfriend, when I was 13. He taught me how to play baseball and how to throw a football. He taught me basic self-defense, and gave me a knife to carry when he found out I was hitch-hiking.

When I was 16 and finally had a much older boyfriend, he offered to give the guy a ride home. I found out much later that Jimmy had waited until they got to my boyfriends house, pulled out an unloaded gun and put it to the boyfriend's head and asked, "are you sleeping with my little sister?". Apparently, the guy nearly shit his pants, making my brother a much better judge of character than I was, in retrospect.

I'm not condoning any of the following behavior. It is the truth, and part of the story.

He had already had a couple of DWI's, as they were called then, when he got pulled over driving an unregistered, uninsured car, containing an unregistered, unloaded fire arm. Possibly the same unregistered, unloaded gun as above. He had picked up a hitch-hiker whom he claimed he didn't know was carrying a large amount of marijuana, which the hitch-hiker stashed under the seat. Possession is 9/10ths of the law and Jimmy got busted for it. He finally lost his license and was lucky enough to be put on probation. He then got caught driving without a license, this time with possession of cocaine. He got sentenced to two one-year jail terms, back to back. In our area there are very different terms you could sit out. Jimmy got sent to what we affectionately called the Brooklyn Country Club. It's like summer camp with dorms, but more barbed wire, and less swimming.

When Jimmy got out of jail, serving less than six months of a two year sentence, he really seemed to have changed his law-breaking ways. He never again got behind the wheel of a car until he had his license back. However, he and alcohol were never very far apart. We thought that he had kicked his love affair with drugs, but we were wrong.

He got steady work at a lumber yard. He and my father moved together into in an apartment. Jimmy sometimes spent weekends at my mother's house, and sometimes spent them at my oldest sister, Kouf's house. He was helping Kouf's husband turn the attic into rooms that they could rent out. He seemed to be a nomad, who was welcome anywhere he went. He was always the life of any party he found himself at.

After five years, the State of Connecticut agreed to give Jimmy his license back. I took the day off of work and brought him for his driver's test. He passed with no problems. From that point on, all we talked about was getting our motorcycle licenses together. I don't know why it seemed so important to us, but it did.

Maybe it meant to me that I had finally proven myself to him that I was an equal, that I could stand up to him, and his friends that he wouldn't let me date. I so wanted to be a bad-ass bitch in his eyes, I guess. Maybe for him, it was the same in reverse. He had taught his little sister to be a bad-ass who could stand up for herself in a world that he tried to, but could not always, protect her from.

Three weeks after getting his license back, we spent a Saturday afternoon together looking at bikes. Neither of us was ready to make any decisions, but we had fun with it. I dropped him off at Kouf's house. I had plans, and Jimmy was staying with her for the weekend. He hadn't yet gotten himself a car.

Kouf and her husband also had plans that evening. Jimmy apparently walked to a nearby bar looking for cocaine. We did not know until later that he had been shooting cocaine intravenously. From what we pieced together, he couldn't find any cocaine, so he decided to try heroin for the first time as it was all that was available. He bought a bad batch that killed 17 people in the Connecticut and New York area.

The next day, I was rather a bit annoyed with my sister, Bouf, for waking me up on a Sunday morning by banging incessantly on the front door at my mother's house. I was hung over and assumed she just needed to do her laundry and had lost her key or something. I opened the door, and was already half-way back up the stairs when she said, "Wait, Fancy, I'm here for a reason - Jimmy's dead". I literally cried like a fucking baby, sitting on the stairs, telling my poor sister that she was a liar. It could not be true, we had just spent the day together. We had plans, goddammit! Why was she being so mean?

My mother had worked a 12-hour shift the night before, 7pm to 7am. Bouf and I had to wake her up and tell her that her only son was dead at the age of 26 of a heroin overdose. That was definitely one of the worst days of my life.

Horhay

My father moved out when I was about 9. I remember my mother telling a social worker at my school about the impending divorce. The social worker was trying to be sympathetic and gave me a book about how I should be okay with feeling sad. SAD? Are you fucking kidding me? We were joyous! Why did it take my mother 23 years of alcoholic rage and abuse to get rid of him?

I don't remember a lot of things about my early childhood, I've been told I am "blocking" memories. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, as I was the youngest. I suffered the least of the abuse, next to Shouf, who was born special. My father, bastard that he was, tended to steer clear of Shouf individually, unless she was being included in the group. Of course, that doesn't mean that either of us didn't see a lot of scary shit!

One of my earliest memories is my father playing hide-and-go seek with us. You would think that would be a happy memory, right? But my father played a "Here's Johnny" version in the middle of the night while my mother was at work. He had woken us all up when he got home from whatever bar he was frequenting after his 2nd shift job. How it worked was we all got the chance to hide, and whomever he found first got beaten with a stick he found in the yard. Who the fuck knows what triggered his anger that night, it could have been anything. I don't remember the outcome, I was probably 6 at the time. All I remember is hiding under a bed with Shouf on one side of me and Bouf on the other. Bouf had one hand over my mouth, and the other hand over Shouf's mouth because we were both hysterical. Kouf, as the oldest, was probably hiding Jimmy. The only boy in the house always deserved to be treated as an extra special punching bag, it didn't matter if he was ten years old. I'm assuming Horhay* must have passed out that night before he found anyone, because I don't remember the outcome. Who knows, maybe I blocked it.

*Horhay is what we now call him. I do realize I'm not spelling it correctly, but Jorge just doesn't have the same look. He is now a sad depressed old man living in Florida all by himself. He is no longer scary, but I still don't want pretty much anything to do with him.

Early family history

I have three older sisters. I have to explain their nicknames, because I don't want to use their real names. When they were growing up, they had an imaginary club called the Kit-Kat club. I'm sure my oldest sister was in charge, but cannot say for sure as I was probably not even alive at the time. What I do know for a fact is they gave each other these nicknames, as I will give you in birth order: Kouf, 10/60; Shouf, 1/62, Bouf 12/62. My mother, god love her, had 3 babies in diapers at the same freakin' time.

It was four years after Bouf before another child was born.

According to the story, when my mother was pregnant with the first child, she swore if it was a boy she would call him David. Instead, Kouf was born.

When my mother was pregnant with her second child, she swore if it was a boy she would call him David. Instead, Shouf was born.

When my mother was pregnant with her third child, she swore if it was a boy she would call him David. Instead, Bouf was born.

When my mother was pregnant with her fourth child, she said (in a yiddish accent), "God, I promise if you give me a son, I will not call him David". And so Jimmy was born.

Her fifth child was me, four years after Jimmy. My mother was just lucky as hell that I was even born. She developed prenatal diabetes while carrying me, and she also slipped in dog poop and went down a flight of stairs and almost miscarried me.

Apparently, she had wanted six kids. Unfortunately for her, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy within a year or two after I was born.

Even God has his/her limits on the number of kids you are allowed to fuck up. Or at least a limit for my mother. My father eventually had another child, and fucked him up, as well.

My mother is crazy

Many people might think their mother is crazy. Many people might blog about it. The whole psychiatric community might depend upon people thinking that their mother is the root of all of their problems. I happen to know for a fact that MY mother drives ME crazy.

Please understand that I'm not saying that my mother is the cause for my extremely unstable mental health history. I know better than to blame a certain person, or certain episode. Although I'd like to thank my DNA for making all this crazy possible...

I also have to thank myself, my choice of friends and lovers, my choice of situations that I put myself in, and also that random bastard, fate.

I used to think that fate was on my side. I used to think a lot of things... Then I got blindsided by a slew of situations that were my own doing, or un-doing. I really hit rock bottom. Anyone who knows what rock bottom feels like will understand this. I did things that I am not proud of. I went to places that I never want to be, again.

Eventually, I crawled out of it. I started making better decisions. I started to make life-altering decisions about a better person that I wanted to be. I stopped being a person that I did not like, any longer.

I hate to say it, but I have to say it - if my parents had not moved down to Florida, around the same time, I probably would never have gotten over it. Distance from my mother helped save me. There were other factors involved. Anyone who knows me really well, knows what they are. That is another story.

Detailing my mother's crazy is another whole post, also. She's staying with me for the summer, and I'm counting the minutes until she leaves. I love her, dearly, especially after her recent health problems - but I've realized just how much she affects my mental health. Small doses are better - familiarity breeds contempt. Is that horrible? Maybe. But it is the truth, as I see it.