Some families are a little more tightly wrapped than others. Even the best of families though, have a member or two who aren’t let out in public without a leash, or a minder. Jimmy Carter had beer-drinking Billy. George W. makes Jeb Bush seem like Mensa material. These are the folks that we can look at (and snicker) and think of Jeff Foxworthy’s line. “Compared to them, why, we’s dang near royalty.”
The recent publication of my Sunny Disposition Flash Fiction reminded me of the couple who inspired it. In my family, it was my sister – half-sister actually. My Our Mom moved to Detroit, and got married and gave birth. Mom’s husband cheated on her, and when his daughter was born, abandoned them both.
I never met the man, so it’s hard to judge the nature/nurture ratio of her psychoses, but the totals were impressive. They started when Mom took a divorce settlement, moved 200 miles back to small-town Ontario, and bought a house for them to live in.
By age 8 and 9, she was accusing Mom of “hiding her away from her Father,” despite the fact that her ‘loving father ‘ stood outside the house one day while she was at school, after his most recent girlfriend had dumped him, but didn’t have the nerve to knock on the door. He knew where she was, but didn’t care.
It was strange that, when Mom remarried, she didn’t resent the new husband. In fact she treated her stepfather better all her life than she did her real mother. Then Mom gave birth to me, and three years later, my brother. Soon the oft-repeated line was, “Wasn’t I enough?! Why’d you have to have them?”
After my brother’s birth, a sickly child, requiring a lot of care and personal time, the new mantra became, “Those damned boys! Those damned boys!” Interesting language for a 13-year-old girl, in the 1940s.
Always headstrong, and constantly craving attention, she acquired a 21-year-old boyfriend and told Mom that, if she wasn’t allowed to marry, she’d just get pregnant and elope. As the least of several evils, she was allowed to say “I do” a month before her 16th birthday.
She pumped out five children and a miscarriage in eight years. The last, a 13 pound, 8 ounce Butterball baby boy fortunately sterilized her. Children having children??! She was far too immature, insecure and needy to raise kids. She was manic/depressive back before ‘bipolar’ became the politically-correct description, and her co-dependent husband wasn’t much better.
“Up”, and drinking and having fun, and then, sometimes within an hour, one or both of them would crash, and they’d be fighting like two cats in a sack. Both of them often sported bruises, cuts or scrapes. She had to put four brands of Lite beer in the beer-fridge. They were having too many ‘lost’ weekends. She failed one suicide attempt. After about 12 years of a WWE marriage, they moved into a house directly across the street from my parents – a blessing, and a curse.
One or another of the children would run across the road and yell, “Grandma, come quick, Daddy’s killing Mommy!” (Or Mommy’s killing Daddy – however the wind happened to be blowing that day.) Mother would trudge across, and separate the combatants.
One night, the seven all sat down to dinner. One of the adults(?) said, “The sky is blue,” the other said, “Fuck you,” and the screaming and yelling started. He said something objectionable, and she tossed the contents of a water glass at him.
He threw a plate of meatloaf and potatoes at her. She threw the gravy boat at him. He threw the bread basket at her. She threw….he threw….she threw…. The kids wisely scattered. The oldest daughter came running across for the referee. “Grandma, they’re wrecking the house!”
Mom said that, by the time she got there, the tornado had blown itself out. He was sulking in the living room. She was leaning against the dining room wall, trying to catch her breath, and surveying the wreckage.
There was ketchup on the 10-foot, white ceiling. There was mustard on the hardwood floor. There was bread tangled in the chandelier. There was butter on the outside wall, and peanut butter on the inside wall. Pickled beets were in the floor vent, and broken glass and dishes were everywhere.
As often happens with tornadoes, there was an undamaged jar of Cheeze-Whiz, inexplicably still sitting on the table. My half(wit)-sister dourly looked at it, and surveyed the chaos. “Well, you might as well join the rest of them,” and threw it against the kitchen door-frame. “Now, we can clean up!”
And so, a 100 word Flash Fiction was born unto me – the normal one. Don’t you feel superior now?
#461
Whatever your motivation, we’re glad you write.
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Coming up four years of free therapy, I write to inform and entertain, and will continue as long as I can. 😎 🌯
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Wow. Your sister makes my brothers seem like saints. Thanks for sharing.
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LOL… and these are just the calmer events in her life, Aunt had a way of going industrial crazy as she got older.
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Sounds like there are lots more stories that can be shared. Please? We all love other people’s crazy relatives.
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After a life of cigarettes, coffee and beer, as she got older, she came more unglued. I’ll huddle with LadyRyl and see if there are any other stories that we can tell without WordPress censors stepping in. Ten years older than me, she died some years ago, so the statute of limitations has expired with her. 😛
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I don’t know if, as Jim Wheeler suggests below, there was a genetic component to her problems. Her father was never a good citizen, good husband or good father. My parents were both calm, practical, straight-thinkers. 😀
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Well your nutso half- sister could try what my dad did once. He “peeled” a potatoe by using an electric drill with a wire brush. Potatoe bits were all over every square inch of the kitchen, including the ceiling. It wasn’t a mistake. It was punishment ( even though she hadn’t done anything). He was was that mean. He then had her clean it all up. Sadly, she did.
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Like Jim Wheeler, below, I am a critical thinker, occasionally attending Free Thinker meetings. It is sad but true that far too many people act on false, imaginary assumptions. It is particularly bad when the level of false beliefs causes pain and suffering to innocents. I hope you survived your childhood with minimum scarring – emotional, psychological and physical. 😳
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Genes are strong. Something of my paternal grandfather is in me which occasionally moved me to irrational anger when I was young. My grandmother divorced him and remarried when my father was about 15. They sent him away to a “military school”. Feeling abandoned, he ran away and made his own way in the world of the 1920’s. Such roads taken are irreversible.
My inclination to anger became much more subdued as I aged and came to understand its nature. Fortunately, I do not see it in my descendants.
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I understand how powerful some compulsions can be. We can ‘just say no’ to Nancy Reagan’s impractical solution. Like the preceding Yenta post about gossip, I feel it’s a character flaw if you’re aware of the problem, but don’t try to ameliorate it. You can’t just throw up your hands and claim, “That’s the way I am. You just have to live with it.” We do live with it, in fear, until we die from it. Some go to hospital. Some go to jail. Some go to the mortuary.
In the scheme of things, my sister wasn’t one of the worst, but still raised three damaged daughters – illegitimate pregnancies, divorces, alcoholism, bankruptcies. The two sons – the oldest, and the youngest – seem to have managed to escape the worst, and make something of themselves. 😳
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This moved me quite a lot. Thankyou for sharing.
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You are quite welcome. Thanx for stopping by. 🙂 Best of luck to you.
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My husband is bi-polar and wouldn’t take medication. He wouldn’t admit he had it so there were many problem episodes. He’s now 84 and broke his hip so has a caregiver who makes sure he stays medicated.
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My wife is bi-polar, but sought help. She ‘usually’ takes her meds, until she reaches tolerance levels, and they change her to a different, newer formulation.
A couple of times she’s stopped taking pills, because they made her feel ‘all dull and cloudy’, probably what the rest of us endure normally. After a good screaming match like the above, she relents and medicates. 🙄
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There are times that families are fucked, you grin and bear it, get help, send someone off somewhere or whatever. Still they are family.
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Yeah, grin and bear it, but from a safe distance. Maybe I’m unlike most people. I just don’t buy into the “they’re family” shit. If I wouldn’t put up with actions and attitudes like that from strangers, why would I forgive and permit, simply because someone shares common ancestors?
If they don’t care enough to play nice, I don’t care to play at all. My brother, myself, and my parents quietly withdrew, and had nothing to do with her – until the next dreaded 4:00 AM drunken, abusive phone call. 😯 😦
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I agree completely, I have one brother that I haven’t spoken to in years. I’m fine with it.
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We choose our friends because they’re not family. I have a wife and sister that have the issues. Fortunately no flying cheese whiz yet.
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So you’re not living in Dodge City yet. 😛
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No but not sure what the name of the corral next door.
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Damn. And I thought my husband’s family was crazy.
😳
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Maybe they still are. Some people just handle it better. 😉
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