Family Ties

It would be wonderful to be a part of a real family. I have brothers older and younger than myself, spread out over several states, and hardly is there any effort on any of our parts to get together or see one another. Even though we are well into adulthood, when we do speak, it is as if we were small children again. Even as adults, we remain in the hierarchy that we were placed in as kids. My mother's love for her youngest son knew no bounds. Whatever was his pleasure, it was my duty to provide. Today, he has a flourishing profession, yet he communicates with no one. He did with me for awhile until last year when he kept telling me he had sent my daughter a birthday gift two months late. When I told him I still had not received it, he deduced that is was irrevocably lost in the mail and that he would have to go out and buy another gift card, since it was impossible to trace. I told him not to bother. That was the last I heard from him.

His success he keeps to himself. His greatest fear is that we may ask something of him that he has made abundantly clear that he is unwilling to give. To that, he remains anonymous, hidden from everyone except his wide circle of friends. I do not blame him for his distaste of us.

That is his choice, to be sure. Our mother, who loved (as much as she was capable of) some and despised others, certainly is not counted among one of his chosen. Boys were for the most part, good. Girls, (I was the only one) were whores just waiting for an opportunity to shame the good name (ha!) of the family and to entice all males within whistling distance into lurid sexual encounters. It is interesting to note that when I was about sixteen that I learned that my mother had indeed, had her first child out of wedlock. Worst still, my father was not his father. My father himself told me that he had married my mother when he returned from the war in Europe. The man who had impregnated her was long gone. As awful as we were told my father was, she still managed to have five more children by him.

I never knew any uncles or aunts on my father's side. We were not allowed to know them. My mother told us that my father was deeply involved in a sexual relationship with his sisters and therefore any direct contact with them was forbidden. To say that my mother's preoccupation with the sex act in all it's unnatural forms was revolting is an understatement. It makes me wonder even more deeply about her upbringing, what she may have done or witnessed or worst, been forced to be a part of. I do know however that her mental illness must have been at it's peak by the time I reached puberty. A girl blooming into a woman sent her into neurotic fits of fury. She would make me pay for being young and innocent. Neither state lasted long.

My daughter is currently with her cousin and friend at her cousin's house. It is an opportunity for me to try and get some things done that I normally don't get to. In a few days we will pick her up and I will return to being the taxi available at a moment's notice, the ATM for the mall, the hostess of weekend slumber parties. Then we will all be off to Florida to stay with yet another cousin. We will spend time together, eat, play and most importantly have fun. That's what families do.