December 5, 2008

• Happy Holidays! Here’s your dirty laundry.

  The last time I spoke with my dad was Christmas Day 2007. We don’t talk much. I wouldn’t say we have a bad relationship. We have no relationship. We just have a dirty history.

  Details aren’t fun and its suffice to say that once 9th grade hit, I realized that most of what was happening to me at my dad’s house was not normal. My mom’s house wasn’t a paradise just because she fed me and I wasn’t a shitty person who didn’t deserve to be fed. During my first semester of High School, I learned new words. Child Neglect. Emotional Manipulation. Substance Abuse. I didn’t speak to my dad for nearly four years. Life felt better without him.

  For whatever reason, my dad broke the silence at the end of my senior year. I had a bit part in the High School musical. He showed up to my last show with his parents and a dozen pink roses. And while he didn’t know me well enough to know that I think roses are cheesy and lame, he was able to figure that nothing would suck me back into the vortex of guilt and self-hate than to approach me with my now elementary-aged cousin pushed in front and displayed like a platter of what-I’ve-been-missing. I’ve always been a sucker for kids, especially innocent ones who need saving from shit-heads. I put on a gracious and friendly act. I took my roses and excused myself to join my cast mates backstage. As soon as I was out-of-view, the stench of flowers made me dry heave and pass out in the hallway.

  In the nine years since, I’ve had a relatively small handful of similarly awkward and horrible exchanges with my dad’s side. That’s not a relationship. It can’t be.

  I tried to stay connected to my dad’s side of the family for that little cousin’s sake.  I thought that a concrete example of normalcy, nurturing, and love would make a difference. But things don’t work that way. Not when your everyday reality is intrinsically fucked. Once my cousin hit high school, some of the the saddest, most harrowing things that could ever happen to a girl happened to her. Think of the absolute worst. Now tripple it. Shove it in a black hole and take it out to see how warped it can really get. Now, I’m just another person who let her down in life. I’ve been across oceans, over state lines. I am just another absence.

  I decided to forego contacting my dad’s side of the family over the November holidays. If they wanted to talk to me, they could initiate. The other sides of my family and my friends are just so loving. Its hard to extract myself from all that love to just to feel like shit for a few hours.

  Last Thursday, I was feeling great. Shaun and I have a bad habit of over-thinking things during our trips home to see family, leaving us feeling disconnected and with a sad, misfit sense of “otherness.” I’d decided to knock that shit off and it was working really well. I’d run the 10K Detroit Turkey Trot in the morning with Shaun’s sister and her husband. I was enjoying everyone’s company. I was having fun.

  I was having a conversation about plagues with Shaun’s uncles when my mother-in-law joined us to tell about a recent trip to my grandpa (on my dad’s side)’s restaurant.

  Here was her story:

  At the restaurant, my in-laws thought they spotted my grandpa in the kitchen. My mother-in-law mentioned to the waitress that she just wanted to say hello to my grandpa and tell him that they’d enjoyed themselves. The waitress went in the back to tell my grandpa, who had no idea who my in-laws were (they’ve met before) and in a moment of serious social awkwardness, asked the waitress to ask them their names. (I should mention that my grandpa can’t even remember Shaun’s name. He calls him John.) The waitress did and went back to tell my grandpa. My grandpa never came out. The waitress made a lame excuse and mentioned that my grandma wasn’t there because she was grieving the loss of her mother. That would be my great-grandma Pike. And that was how I found out that she died.

  While I was not there to know grandma Pike when she lost her marbles (she really deteriorated during her last 4 years of life), she is a part of my history.  My older cousin Sheri and I went to a horrible Southern Baptist church with her every other Sunday. We were bad little girls at church. We did impersonations of the pastor and church ladies. When my Sunday school teacher said that dinosaurs were just chicken bones glued together to make scientists rich and famous, I professed my desire to be a paleontologist and my cousin defended me. We were sent into the hall, where we escaped to the bathroom and sabotaged everyone by crawling beneath the doors and locking them. In the stalls, we removed the toilet paper rolls and bit them, chanting: “Bite them in the butt! Bite them in the butt!”

  After church, Grandma Pike took us to Taco Bell if we were good. We were rarely good.

  One Sunday, at grandma’s after church, Sheri and I snuck into grandma’s bedroom and stole a big pair of her polyester pants. Each of us got inside a leg and we hopped up and down the stairs, singing in a southern accent: “Grandmaw’s Pants! Grandmaw’s Pants!”

  We were whopped. Not hard. Never hard. But whopped. This did not stop us from asking, every Sunday, if we could play with grandma’s pants.

  One Sunday, Grandma Pike drove Sheri and I to Sears in her big mauve caddy. She decided that poor 5th grade Sheri needed to start wearing a bra. On the way, Grandma Pike needed gas but didn’t know how to pump it herself. Sheri and I did it for her and showed her how. She was impressed and presented us with red-striped peppermint candies, untangled from a rumpled Kleenex at the bottom of her big black purse.

  We could only be good girls for so long, though. Once inside the Sears bra department, Sheri and I made Grandma Pike madder than she’d ever been at us. While she tried to find a suitable training bra for my cousin, we poked all the padded bras in the department, collapsing them. We chanted: “Me boobs are dented! Me boobs are dented! Help! Help! Me boobs are dented!” Grandma told us that we were Vulgar Little Jezebels and escorted out of the store by our ears. We didn’t know what Vulgar Little Jezebels were, but from then on it was always a really funny name for grandma’s Barbies.

  Sheri and I hated Barbies (we liked Garbage Pail Kids), but Grandma Pike loved them. She had a handful of nappy-headed Barbies from the 1950′s that she knitted hideous outfits for. They were the only toys at grandma’s house (aside from her pants) and so sometimes we played with them. Mainly they would bitch-slap each other and make wild accusations of being Vulgar Little Jezebels before humping wildly.
   
  Grandma Pike bought me gross frilly pink dresses that I hated with all my being. She baked southern biscuits and chocolate pudding pies. She bought me polyester night gowns with lace detail and ribbons that I thought were grown-up because they were fancy and totally uncomfortable. Grandma Pike let Sheri and I eat Moonpies and cans of Pepsi for dinner. She had weirdly soft and vein-ey hands. Since I can remember, she had short steel-gray hair and an old lady perm. She wore owl glasses. She was fat, but not horribly so. She was racist. She was religious. She had her own bedroom. She liked pickled pigs feet and watermelon and butter beans. Once, I made her laugh really hard when I was blown over by a strong March wind. After wiping tears from her eyes, she helped me up off the ground and kissed my cheeks.

  Grandma Pike died this October. No one called me or let me know.

  I’d been in touch with my Grandma Render, who was taking care of Grandma Pike (her mother). I’d written Grandma Render a few letters, sent flowers a few times, and mailed her a copy of East of Eden. I knew she was having a shitty time of things, as her husband wouldn’t let her put Grandma Pike in a home. Too expensive. So Grandma Render had to shower and diaper her (very heavy) mom. Grandma Render did all this caregiving while recovering from symptoms of her own old age: a painful back surgery, an eye surgery, and crippling arthritis. I know that my letters don’t make me a saint but they shouldn’t have made me a pariah.

  Anyhow, I wasn’t upset or anything. I’m good at compartmentalizing. When my mother-in-law told this story at Thanksgiving, I was surprised but acted like it was just a funny story. (To be honest, if I over-thought it, I might have felt a little hurt that the story was told in such a public way. Says the blogger.)

  Last night, I called my cousin Sheri to confirm the story. Its true. Grandma Pike died on Halloween weekend. Sheri doesn’t know why no one called me. She didn’t go to the funeral.

  I’ve decided that this story isn’t funny. Its not sad, exactly. Its just there. Evidence of a dirty history.
  _______________________________________________________________________________
  Hey—on a completely and totally unrelated note: how many desserts do you think you’re allowed to eat in a week? My cousin says that its crazy that I eat a little tea cup full of ice cream most nights. This shocked my socks off. I eat totally healthy all day long and I just have this one after-dinner treat. I thought that was normal! Thoughts?

  I should mention that this came up because I weighed myself on my friend’s scale over the holidays, just out of curiosity, and was horrified to see that I’m 10lbs heavier than I thought I was. I’m trying to “diet,” I guess, but I’ve never done it before and I think it is freakish and weird. I went 3 days without dessert and thought I would die. No dessert is no fun. Plus, all my clothes still fit and I’ve not noticed I’m getting big or anything. Is it okay to just blame her scale? I had to cut back on excersise (doctor’s orders), so perhaps I have to start being better diet-wise. But I eat so freaking healthy! Its rediculous! There’s nothing, aside from my ice cream (and yes–I get the full-fat, hormone-free stuff because it is delicious and natural and has less sugar than that 1/2 fat shit), that I can cut! I don’t eat a shit-ton of carbs. I never snack, unless it is on fresh fruit or a wee handful of nuts. Vegitables, fish, legumes, herb tea, and water are my foods of choice. Can I not just have this one thing and be a little fatter for it? God damn it. Why did I ever think it would be fun to look at that scale?

  End of rant. But seriously. How many desserts is normal? How many desserts do you eat?

  • 12:40 pm
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