Knowing Where You’re Going

I have a friend who grew up in a small, rural town. When she and her friends visited anywhere new…a travelling football game, a restaurant in the nearby city…they would say to each other to “act like you’ve been somewhere.”  When she would tell me the stories, I could picture them, all awkward teen girl nervousness, putting on airs to belie their small town roots. Yet, as I get ready to head home for the holidays,  I find comfort in the exact opposite.  There’s something to be said for being with people who know exactly where you’ve come from.

This week, I’ll get together with family and friends who watched me grow up. While I haven’t lived in that city for the better part of 20 years, I’ve been fortunate to keep in touch with a close group of friends.  I’ve written about them before.  In the 4^th grade, a group of us bonded together…boys and girls…but mostly girls…and though our lives have taken us all in different directions from the time we split up to go to different high schools because of school zoning, private school choices and parents relocating for their jobs…we still have a bond.  Whenever any of us run into each other, plan a visit or attend an event together, it’s as if no time has passed.  We have all grown, married/divorced, lived very, very separate lives but, when we see each other, something kicks in.

It could be chalked up to nostalgia…and for the core group’s outlier friends…that’s much of what it is, but when you get into the 5-10 of us who stuck together all those years, it’s more. It’s an understanding of what shaped us…of what set us on the path where we’ve landed today.    Because, you know, whenever anything major takes place in my life…or even minor, like a business trip to some unexpected place…there’s still a part of me who is that silly, unsure “one normal girl” of my childhood living inside the body of “one normal woman.”

I find it funny when I come across people who pretend they are only from the place they currently live.  New Yorkers are famous for this.  I work with them daily and they harken from all over the place…Florida, Alabama, California, New Mexico, Minnesota…but, if asked, they proudly say they are New Yorkers and openly tell you they’d never claim those other places as their own.  I love that they have found their place, a place that speaks to them, but I want to say…come on, you’re still that Florida girl somewhere in there…don’t hide from that.

My sister is one of those people. She escaped to New York when she graduated high school…full of big dreams of stardom…they didn’t pan out and she didn’t live there all that long, but, even now, living in rural South Carolina, where she’s lived longer than she did in New York, she tells people she’s from the Big Apple.   Maybe it’s because that’s where she found herself….or based on her history with drugs and life crisis…lost herself. Regardless, it’s likely because it’s where she found her “group” – the people she bonded with the most in her life…the people who know what has shaped her.

I, for one, am excited to see a few of those people in my life this week.  We’ll laugh…at ourselves, our past and our current circumstances…and we’ll catch up on where we’ve all landed now, meeting the people who have become the biggest parts of our lives in this stage.  We’ll have some drinks…legally…since most of our time together might just have been spent enjoying some drinks not so legally years ago.  And, we’ll leave, if we’re lucky, feeling better for it.

I know everyone is not like me…they don’t feel a need for these connections to continue forever. They can easily let relationships come and go.  And, that’s their way.  It’s not mine though…I feel like I need to remember where I’ve been so I can know where I’m going.  With that… I’m going home for a bit…and I can’t wait!

Crazy Schmazy — All Wrapped Up in a Holiday Bow

I finally got up the nerve to mention to my Mother that I was writing a blog.  Not sure why I had to work up nerve…she’s pretty supportive of my dreams, success and goals.  I guess it just made it all too real that I’d taken this step toward writing again.  Or, it could have been because of this….

 …the conversation went something like,

 Me:  “Hey Mom, a street psychic pulled me aside in New York recently and she told me that she saw me writing and that would open the world for me…it would take me places.”

 My Mom:  “What kind of writing?”

 Me:  “Well…I’m starting with a blog.”

 My Mom:  “Oh…are you really planning to do that?” (asked warily)

 Me:  “I’m already doing it…weird, huh? How’d she know that?!”

 My Mom:  “You are? What’s it about….bad stuff about me and our family, isn’t it?”

 Me:  “No, Mom…just about stuff…I wouldn’t do that.”

 My Mom:  “You’ll get a following and say bad stuff about us…we were crazy!”

 Me:  “Mom, you’re the best Mom ever…you know that.”

 …and so on and so on and so on.  Truth be told, we are crazy.  And, not in a good way.  I mean this whole conversation started because I was drawn to some strange homeless lady who wanted to read my palm on the streets of New York…how sane is that?!

 Yet, my family…the one who raised me and grew up with me, puts me to shame.  My loud Italian father and very dramatic sister often screamed and carried on.  My Mom was often sad and I often tried to dodge it all.  It wasn’t a picture perfect life. It was highly dysfunctional and ended with a drug addict sister who has a broken life, divorced parents and several estranged relations.  I could go on and on, but why?  Many people have had lives like that.  Many people also did not have the many, many good moments I had with my family.  Tennis with my Dad on Saturdays; watching Wizard of Oz with my sister when it aired on TV each year; starting the summer by tuning into Jaws together as a family…strange, but fun; Shopping Saturdays, Italian dinners and movie nights each time my Dad got his quarterly bonuses; birthday celebrations planned by my Mom and the special ornament she gave each of us each Christmas season when we decorated the tree so we’d have our “own” collections. There’s much more…too much to name. So, it is what it is…a crazy, whacked out family full of dysfunction, but, still lots of love, even if, at times, estranged love.

I guess the holidays do bring the craziness to life though.  I had the pleasure of hosting Christmas at our home this year.  Every third year we stay home — a year with my in-laws, a year with my side of the family at their home (typically my Mom’s — my Dad always gets the shaft and celebrates with us before or after the holiday and my sister is typically in some vortex unable to reached during the holidays) and…lastly…thankfully..heaven on earth…a year at our house.  We sleep in our own beds, awake in our own house with our own Christmas tree that Santa had no trouble finding, and I get to cook and be all “1970s matriarch.”  I love it!!!

I build it up every time we get to do it — going to be the best holiday ever, etc, etc.  Why I don’t think a little more evenly about it, I’m not sure.  Past “home holidays” have included having to have my sister drug tested two days before Christmas, sick children, spousal arguments, and annoyed, needy step parents.  Yet, somehow, we always push through and only remember the wonders of the holiday.  This year was no different.

You see on the “first day of Christmas” — okay, okay…the first day of holiday break for the kids and my vacation — my daughter got sick.  Just a cold we thought.  “Take it easy today and you’ll be fine,” I said.  On the second day, she felt worse and wore her red flannel holiday PJs to pick up my mother and her husband from the airport.  She greeted them looking cozy in the PJs yet peaked in the face, pale and glazed over in the eyes.  We promised. “She’s on the mend.” Nobody worry!”  My step father’s response:  a hearty, chest cough that sounded like death.  “Are you okay?” we all asked him.  “Fine, fine,” he responded.

On the third day, my daughter headed to the pediatrician.  One quick (okay…very dramatic, gag-filled) throat swab and it was confirmed…strep throat.  “Bring in your son,” said the pediatrician.  “You don’t want him coming down with it on Christmas eve.”   I followed orders knowing, just knowing he’d be fine.  He was not….he, too, tested positive.  “Not to worry,” I said as I doled out medicine, built fires for my ever-freezing and always coughing step father and kept baking cookies and gabbing over champagne with my Mom.  “We’re fine. It’s still going to be a great Christmas. We’ll just roll with it.”

In the early morning of the fourth day — Christmas eve —  I quietly snuck out of the house while everyone slept to be the first in line at Urgent Care.  You see, my throat was burning, my head was pounding and I felt like hell.  The doctor said, “Oh…adults never get strep.  Don’t worry.  You’re fine.”  Five minutes later, he returned to tell me I had strep. He handed me antibiotics and, upon my request, a large number of rubber gloves and masks so I could keep cooking.  I said, “No problem…I’ll roll with it.  Anything you can give me to keep my cooking germ-free?”  He didn’t flinch, just handed over the goods with a look in his eye like, “It’s Christmas for God’s sake…keep cooking!”

I returned home where everyone sufficiently felt terrible for me and my husband — who by the way, missed his side of the family so miserably, was quietly texting and calling them every hour — also felt terrible for me and was working like a dog to keep things moving.  My Mom was coddling me while I struggled to maintain control and keep a happy face.  I insisted we get out in the hustle and bustle like we do every year and dragged myself around town with them.  We returned home for a quick nap, some champers, of course (nothing stops my Mom and me from a 5 p.m. glass of champagne together), and then I donned the mask and gloves to help set up the kids for cookie decorating.  No matter that the Christmas cookie dough I had made the day before and refrigerated in the night so it would turn out just like my grandmother’s did not AT ALL taste or even resemble hers.  We’d just roll with it.  No matter, that despite my illness, my stepfather needed constant care from me, my mother and my husband at all times — he was cold; he needed a fire; could he have some tea with honey? The list goes on and on.

My Mom saved me.  She let me feel I was in control and was being the mother I wanted to be at this wonderous (gag) holiday while quietly finishing the dinner I’d started, rubbing my shoulders, pouring me a drink, whatever I needed.  We had a great dinner, wrapped presents and got to bed early.

A Christmas miracle happened that Christmas Eve — the antibiotics worked.  We all awoke Christmas day feeling great.  We laughed, we enjoyed each other and our gifts, we had a relaxed day of cooking and friends visiting for dessert.  We had a wonderful time.  Of course, my father barely talked to me when I called him Christmas day and my sister managed to call my Mom but hung up before I could tell her I miss her and love her.  And, the following day, my step father was diagnosed with pneumonia.

Yet, it was still a wonderful holiday. That’s because errant sisters and clueless Dads, sick kids and overly needy  step parents are things that every holiday — every family, for that matter — has in some way, shape or form.  Some of it hits heavier some years than others.  You never have everyone in the room you want to have.  It’s never perfect.  It’s rarely close to a Norman Rockwell painting.  Truly, if it’s focused on the right things — those you love — it can’t be because nobody is perfect. People are flawed, but they are also what makes life interesting.

So, I’ll keep writing about my family — dsyfunctions and all — sorry Mom!  And, I’ll do it, not to upset anyone, but to help others see that perfect is a state of mind.  And, “we’ll be fine…just fine if we roll with it” is a reality.