A Bump in the Road

“We’ll just play some party games with them,” the other room mom said to me when I called her to help plan a party at the Son’s school. “You know, games everyone plays at parties.”

“Oh. Right. Those kinds of games.” I had no idea what she was talking about. I knew of a few drinking games, but as alcohol was a necessary component of those games I doubted they were what she had in mind. “Tell you what,” I said, “why don’t I get the prizes and you can bring the games?”

We lunatics run up against this sort of thing all the time. Our cultural references are far different from those with a more traditional background. This is particularly true of parties. We simply are not a party people. Sure, Father frequently declares, “Boy, it’s a real party”, but this generally only means there is a visitor so cheese and really thick coffee are on offer. One of my earliest memories is returning home from one of the Golden Child’s (Sibling #2) summer track meets with a watermelon that we had picked up somewhere along the way. And due to the presence of the watermelon, I remember the atmosphere was festive and Father declared it a party.

So, when an actual, more traditional party is called for, we are generally at a loss. We stumble through the proper steps, but there is always something not quite right. So we prefer, instead, to avoid such events. Besides that, we often don’t get the point. Being one of six, you develop the mentality of, well, yes, of course it’s your birthday. Isn’t a birthday at some point rather inevitable? The same goes for things like graduations. Shouldn’t it just go without saying that you’ll graduate? And weddings.

The last thing I wanted was a wedding party, hence the unannounced trip to the basement of City Hall one Saturday morning where the then boyfriend and I made it all very legal. I was amazed at all the crazies there, actually dressed up as brides and grooms, with photographers and flowers and family. I was probably the only bride there that actually looked suited to the dismal basement wedding as I was sick as a dog from the cheap champagne my co-workers had poured down my throat the evening prior.

Anyway, after this momentous occasion, I foolishly allowed the Mother-in-Law to coerce the Husband and I into having a reception. It started off on a slightly askew foot to begin with when people began calling in confusion over the invitation on which it simply said we were celebrating Lucifer’s purchase of a pair of ice skates. (The now Husband had been around for seemingly ever prior to the trip to the basement of City Hall.) Naturally, when the event finally happened, as I was untrained in the art of party etiquette, I mostly hovered nervously around the single (not quite full) table of my family members, wearing my $12 antique store dress that Brother-in-Law #2 likes to refer to as my “Alice in Wonderland Dress”. The Groom was decked out in velvet pants and a velvet cloak his co-worker had made for him.

Sibling #4, on the other hand, happily planned a wedding party for herself. Interesting, really, that all of the dark haired siblings have thrown parties for themselves at some point. The First Born, the Golden Child, the Whirling Dervish of Trouble. The lighter haired, more sane siblings shy away from the attention such events create. A psychoanalyst would have a field day with this little tidbit of information.

When the day of Sibling #4’s big wedding happened, some sort of major sewer crisis occurred at the building Father owned. Whether he knows how to fix the problem or not, Father fixes everything himself. A sewer problem on the day of his daughter’s wedding was no exception. Naturally, digging down to the sewer line delayed him quite a bit. We all had to express pretend outrage at his not being there on time for his daughter’s wedding, but really, we would have been shocked had the sewer not taken precedence. We were, perhaps, even secretly envious that he wasn’t there. It was a long drive out to the far northwest suburbs in the middle of the winter at lunch time when we all could have been doing other things aside from getting all dressed up. (One of the nephews recently happened upon a photo of his mother and one of his aunts from this wedding and asked, in all seriousness, “Who are the drag queens?”) Looking back, the sewer problem seems almost prophetic now, as this particular marriage ended up in the tank.

This past August, the parents had their 50th wedding anniversary. I won’t say they celebrated it, as I’m not sure they even made mention of the occasion when the date rolled around. Dark-haired Sibling #4, however, decided the event was momentous enough to throw a party. She gave us lots of advanced warning, and we would periodically call each other up and say, “Is she still planning on having the party?” Then we’d sigh and wonder about the madness of it all. Like all things, acceptance eventually won out.

And it really was a proper party. We had organized group gifts, home-cooked food, and all the siblings managed to be in attendance without so much as a quibble between us. There was even a beautiful bouquet of flowers thoughtfully sent by the seemingly more normal California branch of the family. Of course, being a party thrown by lunatics, there was just one small hitch. The guests of honor were not in attendance.

We waited, hungrily eyeballing the food, and waited some more. Then, we debated how we would go about finding them, if the need arrived. They carry no cell phone, and their chosen route can be very unpredictable, particularly as Father’s sense of direction is, well, let’s just say it’s limited. So really, they could have been lost and broken down anywhere within about a hundred mile radius of their home. Fortunately, in the midst of our discussion, the van bounced its way to the curb in front of Sibling #4’s house. And I do mean bounced.

Apparently, the van lost a shock absorber about fifteen miles earlier. Despite a horrific thump every time the axel turned, the passengers arrived safely. Dick, occupying the front passenger seat he now views as his rightful place, was the only one of the group that looked completely nonplussed by the horrific ride with the blown shock. He jumped out of the car and happily ran off to frolic with his dog cousin.

I was surprised to see the California Uncle emerging from the back of the van along with Mother and Sibling #6. He had very kindly flown in for the event and apparently he had been unable to rent a car so he had to share the bench seat with his sister-in-law and niece on the long trek to the party. As I already said, Dick the dog had dibs on the front seat. Mind you, the California Uncle is a physician that is highly respected in his chosen specialty. He has written various medical tomes and will soon be officially honored by the government of Vietnam for his assistance in advancing the state of medicine in that country. I’m guessing, though, that he’ll remember the van journey to the party, stuffed between homeless looking family members as the vehicle literally bounced down the highway, a lot longer than the official honors bestowed on him in Vietnam.

Upon exiting the vehicle, Sibling #6, perhaps far wiser than she frequently lets on to be, proceeded to soothe her frazzled nerves with a few glasses of wine. Father and Mother, while jostled, took the journey in stride. This was not the first time they encountered car trouble while out on the road. And, as Father refuses to drive anything newer, it likely won’t be the last time. I can’t help but to wonder how life would be different if the protesters at the ’68 Democratic Convention hadn’t completely destroyed his brand new car. Perhaps, if he had not left his police hat sitting in plain view on the front seat of the car (the police were wearing their riot helmets), the car would have been spared. Maybe, just maybe, he would have arrived to his 50th anniversary party in a brand new Caddy. Right, probably not. That would be like saying Sibling #4’s now ex-Husband would have actually converted to Christianity if only Mother had secretly sprinkled him with a greater quantity of holy water.

Anyway, the guests of honor had a great time. And the van eventually got them home. It took a while as they had to take streets instead of the highway due to the broken shock. Oh, and the flat tire they got a few blocks from home. And of course, the police detained them for a while. Yes, that’s right. They were detained by the police. As they bounced their way through one of the western suburbs, the police pulled them over. Not because the van was an obvious road hazard, but because the police mistakenly got it into their heads that the parents with Sibling #6 and Dick in tow (the Uncle had wisely opted to take the train back to his hotel) had been hanging around a cemetery and the police wanted to know why. After separately and repeatedly quizzing each occupant of the van, except for Dick who fortunately did not maul any of the astute officers, as to why they were in the cemetery, the van was allowed to continue on its interminable journey eastward. We may not be a party people, but it’s always an adventure.

Tittering

A couple of the nephews are heading out tomorrow for homecoming. Apparently, homecoming is quite the affair these days. I was hoping to witness the spectacle by seeing off the nephew that lives in the area, but was told by his mother, Sibling #3, that it “wasn’t a good idea”. In other words, the nephew didn’t want me there, even though I’m the cool aunt, despite what Sibling #4 may think. I could understand if he didn’t want his mother there. After all, his mother's prone to sudden, maniacal outbursts of laughter.

In fact I believe his mother was one of the siblings laughing maniacally when my junior prom date fell down our front steps many years ago. As if the whole affair isn’t already cringingly awkward when you’re fifteen, but then the date had to go and fall down the stairs! As I expected, I heard Mother first. It was the deep and guttural laugh that escapes when she is doing her best not to laugh. I should add that her best attempt at not laughing at someone else’s misfortune is a joke in and of itself, but I’m afraid we’re all afflicted with this particular evil. In the time it took for the poor date’s face to turn as farmer’s market tomato red as mine, Mother had lost all control and was simply erupting in side-splitting, tears running down her face, bellowing laughter. Need I add that whichever siblings were lurking behind the door watching us were quick to follow with their own raucous bellows? And so began our evening.

I was dressed in a 1920s flapper dress that Mother had bought for herself at a garage sale many years prior. It was very short and not at all the style at the time which was all long, puffy gowns. My hair was, well, like it always is - - a frizzy, bulbous mass. My face was a shocking red, not just because of the horrid behavior of the family, but because I had spent the entire day at a track meet, running all of the four hundred meter races for the team. I had to run all of the races, even though I was not exactly a stellar track athlete, because the good runners that were supposed to be running them left the meet early to prepare for the prom. As I had no idea how one was supposed to prepare aside from showering and getting dressed, I played the part of the loyal teammate and was almost roasted alive because of it. Incidentally, I still haven’t figured out the mysterious ritual preparations one is supposed to undertake prior to an event of any magnitude.

Perhaps that would explain the caliber of my own homecoming date sophomore year. After the dance, the date would call me up and talk endlessly about absolutely nothing. Mind you, this was when the only phone in the house was in the kitchen where the whole family would suddenly decide to gather while your extraordinarily boring date prattled on about nothing. As the week after the dance wore on, I became increasingly agitated with these phone calls and ever more disgusted by the memory of his sweaty, fleshy hand trying to hold mine. When he said in all seriousness during what became our last phone conversation, “I bet my mother makes better pasta than yours,” I knew I had no choice but to end it. One would think, considering the state of my hair at the time and utter lack of beauty school skills, that I might be a little more tolerant. I’m afraid tolerance for people is not something we lunatics do well. Laughing at completely inappropriate things, however, is something that Mother, at least, has elevated to an art form.

The first time I threw out my back, I was barely able to walk with a bent over stance, let alone in proper biped form. When Mother saw this, she literally collapsed onto a chair, crying a river with tears of laughter. Hoping to silence her by demonstrating the agony I was in, I showed her how my torso was no longer positioned directly over my hips as it should have been. “Look,” I cried, “I’m crooked.” Had I not been in such a pain induced mental fog, I would have realized this would only entertain her even more. She took one look at my circus freak crooked alignment, and laughed so hard that no sound came out of her, like when a baby cries so hard it is momentarily silent. Eventually, she managed to gasp a wholly unconvincing, “oh, that’s terrible!” while wiping at the stream of tears flowing furiously down her cheeks.

Another time, I arrived home to find Father sitting at the dinner table dabbing at a profusely bleeding gash in his head. “What happened to you?” I asked him as I took my place at the table. He was only a few sentences into his explanation of how he managed, yet again, to whack his head on the exposed screw on the interior roof of the van, when he was drowned out by Mother’s peals of laughter. Actually, it was less peal and more howl. Laughter is contagious so soon whatever siblings happened to be there also were in hysterics. The situation would be made all the more funny by the fact that this wasn’t the first time Father had almost scalped himself on the van. We’d laugh each time his scarred and banged up head was dripping with blood from the screw in the van. Usually, Father would look at Mother and say, “Fucking Bitch Woman” and then begin laughing himself, which wasn’t the best way to get a giant gash to clot. It never actually occurred to any of us to go out to the van and tape a bit of padding over the exposed screw.

Just the other day, I found myself fighting back a terrible fit of the titters. The Daughter and I were at church, when I realized that a woman was kneeling on the floor directly behind us. We were in the last pew in case we had to flee should the demons that sometimes possess the Daughter make an appearance. Perhaps the kneeling supplicant sensed the demons, or my sorely lacking parenting skills, and that is why, despite the fact that all the other pews at the back of the church were empty, the woman decided to fervently pray on her knees mere inches from the backs of our heads. Naturally, my first reaction was to laugh out loud at the woman. Evil of me, I know, as the woman could have been in the midst of any number of crushingly horrible crises. But I simply couldn’t help it. At least I managed to catch myself before the laugh escaped, but I had a hell of a time keeping it in.

Of course, the kneeling woman reminded me of a different kneeling woman that would have the siblings and I crying at church in our youth. She was an elderly, yet very flexible, woman that just showed up at our church one day and she seemingly never failed to sit anywhere but behind us. That is, when she finally made it to the pew. It would take her a while as she would spend a large amount of time lying prostrate in the aisle behind us. We siblings couldn’t so much as look at each other or all would have been lost. As it was, we were shaking so much that one might think we were in the earthquake pew. Things only got worse as the mass progressed. By the time communion came around, we were all so giddy Mother would be throwing elbows as fast as she could while trying to hold in her own titters every time she looked at the woman lying in the aisle. The woman would slowly sort of crawl her way up to the priest and lie before him for quite some time before she finally raised herself up enough to receive communion. As if that wasn’t funny enough, the priest would be shifting legs impatiently and letting out audible sighs of disgust which only added to our mirth. Eventually, the prostrate woman would painstakingly begin the long journey back to the pew and take her place behind us, unaware that her antics were absolutely killing us. It didn’t help that in the midst of all this, Sibling # 6 would emit a retching noise so loud that it echoed throughout the church. (She no longer makes this noise, but it literally took her years to overcome her intense dislike for the taste of the host). Fortunately, mass would be just about over at this point as we would now be tittering uncontrollably. (Tittering, of course, is Motherspeak for the giggles.)

I know we’re all lunatics, but as I learned in sophomore year religion class, “Laughter doeth good like medicine, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones.” So maybe we’re not so crazy after all. Just don’t make the mistake of tripping in our presence. Or lying prostrate in church. Or hurting yourself. Or having your lip swell up from a bee sting. Or. . .

The Passenger

I vividly recall my alarm one long, hot summer day many years ago when Sibling #4 began coughing uncontrollably. After agonizing moments of nothing but the sound of her increasingly desperate coughing, she finally found relief when she coughed something up into her napkin. “Oh, God,” she cried out in horror, “look, I coughed up a blood clot.” My heart stopped beating just long enough for me to realize it was cherry season and the witch had been storing a pit in her chipmunk cheeks, just waiting for the perfect moment to terrorize me with her “oh, look, I coughed up a blood clot” routine.

Like with so many other things, I should have known better. It had only been a week or two prior that the same wicked Sibling #4 had crawled up the back steps, calling out for me to give her a hand. Her knee was all puffy and bruised and she was having trouble walking. After getting her comfortable and situated with a pillow under her leg, I proceeded to wait on her for the next hour or so, until she couldn’t suppress her glee any longer and confessed to having put make-up on her big, fat, uninjured knee. Not long after, though, in a real-life boy who called wolf teaching moment, Sibling #4 really did hurt herself. She had broken a bone in her lower leg and now really did have to crawl up the backstairs. (It was unfortunate that she had already used up her quota of being waited on by me.) Not only did she learn not to cry wolf, but also that if you are going to break something, you shouldn’t do it when both of your parents happen to be out of town at the same time. Mother was in Ireland and Father, who very rarely traveled, just happened to be in California. The hospital has a policy that, regardless of how many underage siblings accompany you, unless you are eighteen you can’t sign yourself out. It took some doing, as this was long before the age of cell phones, but Sibling #1, the only sibling of legal age at the time, was tracked down. And, despite the blue streak that remained in the hospital long after he departed, such was the strength of his cursing, Sibling #1 proved by showing up to sign Sibling #4 out, that perhaps he really does care.

Aside from deriving great entertainment from faking injuries and blood clots, we also would laugh for hours at our imitations of Uncle Louie. (Obviously, this was long before sports camp and band camp and every other type of camp that has taken the endlessness out of summers.) Actually, Louie was our great uncle and it was his walk, in particular, that filled us with such mirth. I think I had the walk down the best. And, I now realize, that was probably because that is the walk of my future.

Uncle Louie didn’t so much walk, as he did a sort of weeble-wobble crashingly off-balanced rolling type of locomotion. He’d usually be yelling about something as he stumbled his way downstairs to his apartment. I’d be upstairs, observing his gait, while everyone screamed at each other. My father and his people are Italian. When we visited, they’d frequently spend most of their time screaming at each other, only to break bread together as happy as clams moments later. I was always a practitioner of the grudge so it used to make me crazy. Anyway, we’d go home and I’d do my Louie imitation and we’d all be in tears. I’m not really laughing now.

In fact, the other day, as I hobbled through the house, all bent and crooked and unable to walk straight, it occurred to me that maybe I had it coming. Poor Great Uncle Louie was all crippled up from a combination of bad arthritis and a crooked spine probably the same way mine is crooked. And sure, I hadn’t been following up my runs with any yoga or Pilates so I should have realized my back was on the verge of being wrenched out of shape. But I can’t help but wonder if my wrenched back isn’t my very own, albeit many years delayed, boy who cried wolf teaching moment. Or perhaps Louie was more practiced in the art of the grudge than I realized and he’s found a way to transcend the grave to repay me for my youthful transgressions.

Another of these transgressions was to pick up his ashes. I was the only one home when the funeral home called and said that we needed to send somebody before they closed that same day to pick Louie up. I don’t know what the big hurry was, it’s not like he was going anywhere. Anyway, the wrong box had apparently been checked - - the box indicating that we did want his ashes as opposed to the box declining the ashes - - but, being young and stupid, it never even occurred to me that maybe I really didn’t have to pick him up. Regardless, the bag was surprisingly large. Apparently, you have to pay extra for an urn; plastic bags come free with the ashes. I was creeped out by the whole thing so I put him in the trunk for the drive back home, despite the nagging worry about the potential damage to my karma that the trunk mode of transportation might result in. I certainly wouldn’t want to be driven around in the trunk. Even if it was in a car with a fancy sounding name - - the Pariessiene.

Things didn’t get a whole lot better for Uncle Louie after the trunk of the Pariessiene. As we were all somewhat disturbed by having him in the trunk, Father took him out and left him in the garage. This was after Father asked me why I had to go and pick Louie up in the first place. Father didn’t have a whole lot of time for properly disposing of the ashes, seeing how he worked all the time, and he really didn’t see what difference it made anyway. He figures that once you’re dead, you’re dead. Father is, not surprisingly, the author of the oft repeated family catchphrase, “just burn my dead ass”. Sooner or later, Sibling #3 discovered the location of the ashes. She had to park the car in the garage late at night when she got home from work and she became rather agitated by the discovery. We never had paper towels at our house so this was before she turned to them as a source of comfort. And as Sibling #3 already suffered the night terrors, Father moved Louie into the van which was kept out on the street, not in the garage.

We soon found ourselves working the fact that Louie was in the van into our conversations as a type of running family joke. For example, the parents would arrive at one of the sibling’s homes for a rare family gathering, and someone would say, “Where’s Louie?” And because we are crazy people, we’d all laugh at the fact that our dead great uncle’s ashes were sitting outside in the van. (Yes, this was years later and Louie was still in the van.) It took a while, but eventually Louie’s ashes finally did make it to a more suitable resting place.

Dick is now Father’s latest traveling companion. The two year old daughter is a particularly big fan of Dick. “Dick! Dickie” she shrieks in absolute glee whenever she sees him. In truth, we all smile gleefully when we see Dick. He is just so lovable with his over-sized head that almost knocks us down in his excitement to see us. Dick is Father’s American Bulldog. Just like with Louie, anywhere Father goes, Dick now goes, too. Unlike Louie, however, Dick gets to sit in the front passenger seat. Mother and Sibling #6 have been relegated to the back.

The Lunatic Goes to Hell

It occurred to me the other night that chances are really good that I’m going straight to hell. I had been sitting at a meeting, contemplating the dark side of the Special Olympics, when the words pan-faced bobble head popped into my head to describe the person sitting in the meeting across from me. Granted, if the bobblehead possessed more human decency and less baseless arrogance, the term likely wouldn’t have popped into my head. Still, I regret to admit that when I got home and very cattily and with great relish relayed to the Husband the utterly foolish comments made by said bobblehead at the meeting, I couldn’t resist adding, ‘and you know, her husband’s got that gross giant beer belly.’

I can just hear the devil doing the introductions. “That’s Pat the rapist. Over there is Tina. She poisoned her family.” At this point the devil will look over at me knowingly, as he can tell that I’ve entertained such thoughts on occasion. Despite the heat, I will blush at having been found out. The devil will go through the remainder of the crowd, describing the atrocities they committed as if he were describing the weather. Then he’ll get to me. “Amongst other common evils, our newest member of Hell entertains dark thoughts about the Special Olympics,” he’ll say, slowly, almost deliciously, drawing out the words to savor them. Then, he’ll laugh in glee at the horrified expressions on the melting faces of those around us. While I contemplate if I should cringe at the devil’s pride or simply claim my power as a dark leader, good ol’ Lucifer, as he will tell me to call him, will whack me on the back and say, “Welcome to hell! It’s not often I get someone so deserving. Even this lot,” and he’ll gesture with a foul smelling, smoking arm, to the small crowd that has pushed against us in wonder to get a look at me, “is incapable of feeling anything but all warm and fuzzy inside when they think of the Special Olympics. But you,” and he’ll look over at me and I swear I’ll see tears of joy in his eyes, “have actually cursed the one above instead of celebrating the glorious victories of the special athlete.”

And I won’t be able to deny it. Every year, Sibling #6 wins gold in her now signature Special Olympics events, the 400 meter race walk and the softball throw. And every year, Mother chooses me to be the recipient of the annual Special Olympics phone call. In this phone call, Mother describes in painstaking detail the horrible officiating done by the volunteers, or the ‘long-legged one’ that was running and not walking and should have been disqualified, or any other number of injustices committed seemingly on purpose to thwart Sibling #6’s herculean efforts. Then, she inevitably chokes up as she describes how Sibling #6 “put on a burst of speed at the end to pass the long-legged one” or threw the ball “a mile past where that big one threw it”. I roll my eyes, sigh deeply, curse the siblings, and mentally begin uttering phrases that would greatly please the likes of Lucifer.

When Sibling #6 was born, Mother was told she would likely never walk due to the extra chromosome she received. Mother paid them no heed and Sibling #6 was walking a lot earlier than most kids with the standard 46 chromosomes. So you might think it a normal thing for a mother to get all choked up when the child that wasn’t supposed to walk goes on to win gold. If only that were the case. Mother, you see, suffers from an extremely virulent form of competitivitis. The choked up tone has nothing to do with Sibling #6 overcoming herculean genetic odds, and everything to do with Sibling #6 being crowned the best. All the better if the competition was utterly humiliated in the process.

I am very pleased that I must only be a carrier of this particularly vile disease. At best, I am only slightly competitive in a team atmosphere and generally could care less when participating in a sporting event as an individual. I have very few medals or trophies to put on display, were I to actually display them. I used to have my finishing certificate for the one and only marathon that I ran on a mantle in my front room. I displayed it not to advertise the fact that I had run a marathon in the extremely slow time of five hours and one minute, but to irritate Mother. Sure enough, one day when she was over she happened to see it. She studied it for a long moment and I could see that she was trying to bite her tongue. Alas, because of the disease, she couldn’t help but to spit out in a bitter tone, “If I had run that slowly, I’d be embarrassed to put it on display!” It warms my heart to think of it.

I suppose I should just be glad she had given up running marathons by the time I ran my marathon. As a youth, the siblings and I spent most of our Sunday mornings at the finish line of the marathons the parents were running in. I vividly remember a family friend approaching Father at the end of one such marathon and saying about Mother, with complete seriousness, “If she were my wife, I’d kill her.” The friend had been having a good run and then, he hit the figurative runner’s wall. When Mother came upon him half sitting/half lying on a curb somewhere around mile twenty, instead of stopping to help him out as Father later did, she gleefully recalls how she “couldn’t help but to laugh and put on a burst of speed” as she ran past him. Mother has always been fond of bursts of speed.

As far as I can recall, there was only one runner in Mother's age group that she couldn’t break with one of her famed bursts of speed. The “ol’ horse”, as Mother derisively called her, was Mother’s racing nemesis. Mother and her floozy group of running friends would hold serious conversations about whether or not the ol’ horse, who was in her sixties, was into steroids. Mother once came home from a race and announced in a conspiratorial whispered voice, “You know, Leo thinks the ol’ horse is really a man.” Leo was one of Mother’s running buddies. He had a Doberman running companion that liked to bite women in the ass.

I am sorry to report that at least one of the dark-haired siblings, Sibling #2, is homozygous for the competitivitis trait. Like Mother, she, too, is afflicted with a serious form of the disease. This sibling, unlike me, has a giant box of trophies at the parents’ house. These trophies, along with Mother’s numerous running awards and a skimpy scattering of awards won by the rest of us, sat on the piano in the front window for the whole world to admire for as long as I can remember. Whenever a passerby would ask about them, Mother would choke up as she described the athletic prowess of the original golden child, Sibling #2. (Sibling #6 has now taken over the role of golden child, but this has in no way tarnished the parents’ view of Sibling #2.) One day, in a fit of jealous rage at the shrine built to Sibling #2, Sibling #4 gleefully swept all of the trophies off the piano and boxed them up. She chortled when she called to tell the other siblings what she had done. This is yet just one more issue to be worked through in therapy.

I know it is silly to blame the Special Olympics. That is like blaming the makers of alcohol for the drunken antics of an alcoholic. It can’t be helped, though. Mother’s serious competitivitis has ruined it for me. Although, after her recent heart surgery, I have to say I almost took her to watch the state competition down in Normal, Illinois this year. That’s right. The state competition for the Special Olympics is held in Normal. But then, I thought about the potential animal like behavior of the daughter and son on the long car ride to Normal. I envisioned an over-heated and over-tired daughter flinging her furious self down onto the track repeatedly or simply running off into the throngs of people, causing serious harm to my heart and possibly undoing all the good the open heart surgery did for Mother. And I remembered a past state competition that I had driven Mother down to watch. In particular, I remembered how I had to drag Mother away from a volunteer official after she threw poor Sibling #6’s fifth place finishing ribbon back at said official in protest. The official did not disqualify the overjoyed competitor that won the event by illegally running, creating a domino effect of walkers that began to illegally run to catch up. Sibling #6 knew better and remained walking. Hence the fifth place finish. Aside from the tossed ribbon incident, storms had been forecast for the day of the competition. Both the son and daughter quake in fear at the mere possibility of a storm.

So I came to my senses and did not drive Mother down to watch the competition. While the guilt for not doing so was strong, it was less strong than my innate sense of self-preservation. I’m not sure the eternal gate keepers will fully appreciate this line of reasoning, though. At least, I suppose, the majority of siblings will likely be there in hell with me. Not surprisingly, this thought doesn’t comfort as much as one might expect.

The Sensitive Lunatic

It’s hard to muster a nonchalant tone when the hair is standing on the back of your neck and you need to fight hard to control the urge to shudder. “You didn’t recognize her,” I say in my best attempt at a calm voice. “And she hasn’t been back since so I wouldn’t worry about it.” The phrase oh fuck plays over and over again in my mind. “It’s probably just all that medicine you have to take,” I say in an attempt to reassure Mother, although I know this isn’t the case.

When she’s tired, Mother’s memory isn’t so good and she seems a bit out of it. This is not unlike my normal state during the Daughter’s sleepless first two years. On this particular visit, though, Mother couldn’t have been more lucid. As I prepared to back out of the alley to leave, she stood at the car window as she always does. Instead of waving to the Daughter and laughing to herself at the inappropriate comment she makes to the two year old, usually something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry - - you’ll be as good looking as your brother someday”, she instead says to me, “I need to tell you something. I didn’t want to tell your father because I don’t want him to think he is going to die.” She says this in the type of tone that normal people likely use when discussing matters of a very serious nature, a tone that we never use. We simply ignore matters of a very serious nature until they have us by the throat. Then we either joke about the issue, rely on viciously bitter sarcasm, or simply turn on each other like a pack of rabid dogs. But very rarely, if ever, do we have a serious conversation about it. Mother’s tone alone is enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.

I shift into neutral and roll the window down all the way. “Last Thursday, when (Sibling #6) stayed at your house, I had a visitor in the night.”

This is where the goose bumps kick in and a knot of dread begins to form in my stomach. “What?” I ask.

“I woke up in the middle of the night,” she continues, “and a woman dressed all in white was standing at the foot of my bed. For a minute I thought it was (Sibling #6) that had woken up and needed something. Then I remembered she was at your house and I realized it was some strange woman standing there. The woman turned and walked out of the room so I got up to see where she went. I followed her into the kitchen. She turned and looked at me. It was a woman I didn’t know with a big, round, moon face and then she just disappeared.” The repetitive oh, fuck begins to play in my head, the speed of its repetition an equal match to my now racing heart.

At this point I attempt my best calm voice and try to reassure her, but I can see it isn’t working. She is convinced the woman was a summons and as Father is due to have surgery, she assumes it is for him. After I pull out, I begin the calls to the siblings. Visions are on par with hospitalizations; everyone needs to be notified. I call Sibling #3 and we discuss it in unfamiliar serious tones. She is not pleased that I chose to share this information with her when I knew her husband would be working a night shift. She fears the night terrors will come calling. I call Sibling #4 and she attempts to joke about it. I remind her of the picture hanging in her house and the laughter dies in her throat. The conversation continues in very serious tones.

Sibling #4 has a few pictures of Father’s relatives hanging in her home. We don’t really know who any of these people are as we had limited contact with Father’s relatives growing up. Much of his family was involved in a lifestyle that makes for popular Al Capone type movie plots, hence the very limited contact. These family pictures are all from the 1920s or earlier and everyone is dressed very formally with equally solemn expressions. A man in one of these pictures has always stood out in my mind. And, although I’ve only seen the picture a handful of times, I could describe the man perfectly. He stands out from the other people in the picture because he has a big, round, moon face.

Sibling #4 gasps audibly when I mention the picture of the guy with the round face. “Oh, my God! I know exactly which person you are talking about! He does have a big, round, moon face.”

“Look,” I say when she falls silent, considering the implications of this, “I have to go to work. Call Sibling #2 and warn her.”

A normal person would see this as a highly irrational response to what is likely only a nightmare brought on by pre-surgery stress. Despite our lunatic tendencies, my siblings and I tend to be fairly rational and have chosen careers that require a high degree of rationality. We count among our numbers an engineer, a lawyer, a law enforcement agent, an occupational therapist, and an archaeologist turned teacher that has even taught college level scientific methodology courses. We are not too arrogant to recognize, though, that the universe is vast in its mysteries and science has yet to unlock many of them. Mother’s visions are one such mystery.

A day or two before her brother died suddenly of a heart attack, Mother’s already deceased sister appeared to her in a dream. We all remember this vividly because Mother was so disturbed by the dream at the time. Then she got the phone call telling her she needed to get on the next flight home for her brother’s funeral.

Sibling #4 has a similar ability. She was living across the country from the rest of us when she got a sudden vision of our great aunt. She called home, only to find out that the great aunt had been rushed to the hospital, underwent emergency heart surgery, and died on the operating room table. This is the same sibling that was walking up the steps of the stage in high school to collect a raffle prize she had just won, only she was about thirty seconds too early as they hadn’t actually drawn her name as the winner yet. So, when one of the lunatics gets disturbed by a round faced woman appearing to her in her sleep, we all take notice.

It seems to be only the dark haired siblings, well the girls at least, that have inherited this sensitivity. Perhaps that is why they are frequently such witches. I don’t know if the brother, who is also dark haired, has this ability. If I call and ask him, he will likely utter an unspeakable oath and then hang up on me, something he has done to my siblings and I in the past when we purposely taunted him with details of our love for Obama during that historic election season. The brother lives in a red state.

Sibling #2, the eldest dark haired girl, once had an interesting exchange with a new therapy patient at a nursing home where she worked. The new patient was a blind woman from the Deep South. After spending a few moments with Sibling #2, the woman looked up at her with her unseeing eyes and said, “You’re sensitive, aren’t you?”

Taken aback, Sibling #2 could only respond, “What?”

The woman nodded her head and smiled. “I know, honey. I can feel it. You’ve got the sensitivity.”

Sibling #2 moved into Nanny’s house after Nanny had died and the stories Sibling #2 would tell of sudden presences and her dog frantically barking at and following such a presence as it moved from room to room, frequently raised the hair on the back of my neck. Sibling #2’s sensitivity isn’t so much the dreams, but the actual ability to see or feel ethereal presences, if you will. At her horse farm where she does hippotherapy, horse therapy for handicapped children, she has become friends of sorts with the reclusive artist that owned the property some time before her. He has been dead for many years. One afternoon, one of her clients, a small, handicapped boy of about six, was being a real pain in the ass and giving her a hard time. She had him stand on the cement square, outside of the riding arena, to await his turn while she held the reins of a horse another handicapped child was riding around the arena. She had to cut the ride short, though, when the child waiting for his turn began screaming. He was, inexplicably, sitting in the barrel of water that is left out on the cement square for the horses to drink from. Due both to the height of the barrel and the nature of his condition, it was simply impossible for him to have gotten into that barrel by himself. No one else was at the arena and the child had no idea how he had gotten into that barrel.

Father’ s surgery proved to be uneventful. Sibling #4, meanwhile, has located a woman dressed in white with a big, round face in one of the family photos she has. We are not sure who this woman is. We have since learned, though, that Father’s cousin, a relative with a big, round face that Father looks after because she is mentally incapable of caring for herself, was admitted to the hospital the morning after Mother’s woman in white appeared. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Not even a tin foil hat can protect us from some things.

The Lunaticistas

A man came up to me at Friday night soccer the other day and said, “You know, I’ve finally figured out who you remind me of”. He’s a middle-aged dad that I make small talk with to pass the time while we both wait for our respective children to finish playing. He stares at me for a moment before continuing. Actually, he appears to be staring at my hair. It is particularly bulbous and bozoesque after yet another bad haircut by yet another stylist not trained in the art of bush trimming and I self-consciously reach up and attempt to tame it with my hand. “It’s your hair,” he says. “You look like Amelia Earhart. “ I stare back at him, unsure how to respond. Then I can’t help but to laugh when he adds, “you know, I was quite taken with her when I was a child. She had that bob like you’ve got.” He is merely stating a fact and it is clear that he is in no way hitting on me. Naturally, he is a bit of a whacko.

Of course, I call one of the Siblings to report this. I do not call Sibling #1 who, demonstrating his typical style of brotherly love, frequently referred to me as Romaine when I was at an impressionable age. Yes, Romaine, as in the lettuce, as in my head looked like a head of lettuce. Instead, I call Sibling #3 who suffers the same hair fate as me. “Oh,” she says when I tell her this, “She looked like a nun.”

I can’t help but to find this even more disturbing as Father has apparently referred to me as ‘the nun’ to my other siblings on numerous occasions. Sucker, more like, as I’m the one that deals with all the day to day madness that frequently besets lunatic parents. I won’t go into the details. Suffice it to say, lunacy only gets worse with age. It comforts me to know that the majority of the siblings, being much older than I, will reach that frightening place that is the future much sooner than I.

Aside from Father referring to me as a nun, the siblings have, on occasion, said I dress like a nun. Now, this is really more than just a little rich for them to comment on my style of dress. Sibling #2, for example, has always had a penchant for tight, short, flashy clothing. Her clothing style, at times, was less nun, more street walker. She would wonder why the married pig that lived across the street from us growing up would pull up alongside her as she rode her bike, stick his hairy hand out the window of his car and pinch her ass while making animal-like sucking noises at her. This was before she was old enough to get a gun license.

This sibling has an even worse mouth on her than I do. I had called her once and instead of saying hello like a normal person would do, she says, ‘Hold on. Some mother fucker,’ and she’s now shouting this part, ‘thinks he’s gonna mother fucking come up to my car. That’s right, keep on walking you asshole, keep on fucking walking asshole.’ Then she reverts back to her non-attack voice and continues with no explanation at all, ‘ Yeah, what’s going on?’ Normally, the language she would direct at someone that had just pinched her ass, regardless of how short her shorts happened to be at the time, would prevent further pinching. But the man that lived across the street was an immigrant without a very good grasp of the English language. Or perhaps he was just a big fan of Queen and wasn’t going to let some potentially non-idle threats get in his way.

Sibling #2 likely inherited her fashion sense from Mother, who was always fond of showing more than a little leg. Although, Mother liked to add a little militant activist to her dress on occasion. During her pro-terrorist days, Mother had a special t-shirt made up for all of the races she ran in. It had printed on it in blood red letters, ‘English Pigs Get Out of Ireland Now.’ Fortunately, this was before the government watch list or I probably would have had to undergo cavity searches anytime I traveled abroad, complements of Mother. Sibling #3, on the other hand, really imitates Father in her particular clothing style.

Father has always been a uniform type of man. At work, he wore his police uniform. Now that he is retired, he only wears his home uniform. This consists, unfailingly, of a white t-shirt, a pair of khaki Dickies, and a flannel, depending on the weather. When he would run races, he wore his running uniform. A pair of white shorts and a pair of Chuck Taylor’s. No shirt, regardless of how many degrees below zero the temperature was. Eventually, he replaced the Chuck Taylor’s with actual running shoes and he discovered at some point that if you cut a knee-hi stocking in half and wore it on your shaved head like a hat, it served as a good barrier against frostbite. His head, of course, is always shaved bald. Another aspect of his uniform.

Sibling #3 wears her own version of the white t-shirt and khakis uniform. She wears a black t-shirt and jeans. In the summer, she’ll swap the long jean pants out for jean capris or jean shorts. She is the exact polar opposite, when it comes to fashion sense, of Sibling #2. Perhaps this comes from an incident that occurred many, many years ago that Sibling #3 really needs intense therapy to help her overcome. Father seemingly took both Sibling #2 and Sibling #3 downtown one day. Before the day was done, Sibling #2 was purchased an expensive pair of white go-go boots and Sibling #3 returned home with nothing. Only when Sibling #3 retells this tale, as she frequently does, she refers to herself in the third person as “the fat one”. Like I said, intense therapy. (It should be noted that Sibling #2 remains, to this day, for reasons as mysterious as the Holy Trinity, the golden child.) Johnny Cash once sang that he dressed in black for the poor and the down-trodden. I think Sibling #3 dresses in black because of go-go boots.

I never got white go-go boots, either. In fact, I was eight years younger than sibling #2, the eldest girl. Imagine how out of date the clothes were when they were handed down to me! I painfully recall being forced to wear a lemon-yellow, bell bottomed jumpsuit to a roller skating party when I was about seven. My hair, against my wishes, had been done in formal ringlets down my back and a waterfall on top of my head like a two year old would wear. Did I mention that lemon-yellow, bell bottomed jumpsuits had been out of style for almost ten years? Utter humiliation, even if the party was for the girl next door that we all hated at the time. Incidentally, she and her other friends, the ones that were invited by her and not by her mother, were all wearing leg warmers. Not a single bell-bottomed jumpsuit in sight. Although, I do recall noting that the grown man with the scary mustache that skated around with his hips and arms swinging to the beat, rapidly weaving in and out of those of us that had to push around with a walker, namely me, had on skin tight bell bottoms.

Oddly enough, I can’t really recall Sibling #4’s clothing style. You’d think I’d remember this as we were closest in age. I believe she favored Mother’s rather loose woman type of clothing. I know she favored Mother’s terrorist stage of dress, only it wasn’t reflected in her fashion sense but in her actions. I’m sure it’s because of her whirling dervish terrorist acts that I can’t remember her actual clothes. Ask me how much she charged me to get a large black ant off my back, and I clearly recall that. In fact, I vividly remember my young little legs making a mad dash up the back stairs, with the ant on my back, to get the exorbitant five dollar fee for ant removal before the ant took up permanent residence in my hair. The lunatic wing of the old people’s home where our children will dump my siblings and I is going to be a very interesting place.

Stubborna Defiance and the Alley Witch

       As if the angry Italian gene wasn’t already in evidence, when the woman accused me of taking my child into an alley for the sole purpose of abusing her, I truly understood the blood lust that makes it necessary to not just do in the individual, but also their entire family. Had the said child, the daughter, the only person I know who is more stubborn than me, not already had me at my wits end, perhaps I would have just let the comment go. Chalked it up to the fact that the woman glaring over the fence at me was obviously a malicious, old, crazy witch. But my blood was boiling.

       When we happened upon the witch, the daughter was standing in the middle of the alley, her bike lying where she had just tossed it, screaming at the top of her lungs. The dog, as stubborn and seemingly untrained as the child, refused to heed my command to sit. Instead, he demonstrated his annoyance to the fact that he was attached to a leash by lunging at every smell he could uncover in the alley, effectively pulling the arm out of me. The daughter, as she always does, had insisted on taking her bike. As she is only two, we make it a short walk. One block from home, regardless of how long or short the walk is, she usually throws her bike to the side and begins screaming wildly when I refuse to carry her and her bike home while trying to control the heedless dog. I never seem to learn. But that is yet another unfortunate family trait. None of us ever quite seem to learn.

       We stand there at loggerheads, the daughter and I, and despite the fact that this is all my fault for allowing her to bring her bike, I am ready to throttle her. And while I’m not quite sure what throttling entails, it sounded horrible enough when my mother threatened us with it to effectively reign my siblings and I into compliance. I straighten the daughter's bike and tell her I’ll push her home, all she has to do is sit on the thing. She gives me a look that tells me in no uncertain terms what she thinks of that idea, then knocks the bike over again. To further demonstrate my stellar parenting skills, I cannot help now but to goad her. “Fine,” I say, “just leave your bike there! Some little girl that will appreciate it will hopefully find it and take good care of it.” Even I don’t expect her to hop right on and keep riding after this comment. She screams even more hysterically and digs her heels in even deeper. Enter the alley witch.

       As I stand there, completely defeated by a two year old, trying to decide what a proper parent would do that would result in everyone walking home calmly and happily, the old witch pops her head up over her fence. She stares at me, long and hard. Likely giving her the same look the daughter is giving me, I shout over at the alley witch, quite pleased with the admirable restraint I show in my choice of words, “Is there a problem?”

       “I heard the baby crying,” she responds, still staring at me with her evil witch gaze. “I wanted to make sure she’s alright.”

       “She’s fine,” I respond. “Just very stubborn and not too happy at the moment.”

       “I guess that’s why you’re in the alley.”

       “What?” I ask, not understanding witch speak.

       “No one takes walks in alleys unless they don’t want to be seen abusing their children.”

       To hell with admirable restraint in my word choice. I was so incensed that I cannot recall what exactly my response was, I only know that it was extraordinarily vulgar and likely suggested she partake in acts that even an alley witch would find offensive. And while I realize such language is inappropriate in front of a child, I deemed it more appropriate than demonstrating to the child how to rip the tongue out of someone.

       I doubt normal people get accused of hanging out in alleys because they are good places to abuse their children. But I’m not surprised this has happened to me. I must give off some sort of lunatic pheromone that attracts crazies. I once had an overly ripe smelling man choose to squeeze himself on to the seat next to me on a mostly empty #8 Halsted Bus. He then proceeded to describe Lenin’s home and furnishings to me in painful detail. Another time, a homeless man not quite right in the head blocked my path and offered to go to the bathroom with me. Then, a man at the swimming pool in a hotel outside of St. Louis, much to the delight of my siblings, approached me, touched my Bozo like hair, and told me how beautiful it was. If that wasn’t crazy enough, he then asked my siblings if he could marry me. I should add, this was at our second hotel of the night. We had to flee the first one after discovering that our rooms smelled like rotting corpses. Something else that I imagine doesn’t happen to normal people.

       Surely there must be something to this lunatic pheromone theory. Growing up, we didn’t know a whole lot of normal people. Our family friends had names like Don the Coupon Man, Ralph the Junkman, and Crazy Joe. We were friends with Crazy Joe's daughter, too, and she was by no means the picture of sanity. She happened to be at a turkey trot we ran in one year and as she knew us, she ran most of the way with Sibling #3 and I. She was in mid-sentence, jogging along next to us, when she suddenly just went sprawling. It’s a mystery what she tripped over, as the ground was perfectly level. No matter, she hopped up as if nothing had happened, and just continued on with her sentence, no mention made at all of the fact that she had just been kissing the sidewalk. When we realized she was unhurt, my sister and I began running again and Crazy Joe’s daughter fell instep alongside of us. Only, instead of running, she was doing this slightly Monty Pythonesque loose-legged, fast walk. Then, after a couple of minutes of this, during which I was turning blue as I couldn’t breathe from trying to hold in the laughter, she just started running again, her story still in progress. Suddenly, with no explanation at all, she began to skip. A really exaggerated, arms swinging high, type of skipping that you can’t help but notice as you drive past and think to yourself, “what the fuck?”

       So, having grown up around people that would likely have to check “other” on a form indicating level of mental stability, I do know it really is best to keep a calm, level head when confronted with the mad ravings of a crazy alley witch. Yet, as she continues to stare and expand upon her theory that only parents that want to abuse their children walk in alleys, I continue to bombard her with phrases that would make the most foul-mouthed trucker blush, as I finally pick up the child and her bike and allow the dog to drag us down the alley. When we get home, my arms slightly shaky from the effort of carrying the child, her bike, and a pulling dog, I put down both the child and her bike. She gives me one of her well practiced looks that make it unerringly clear what she thinks of me, and then hops on the bike and speeds off down the sidewalk. As the dog pulls me after her, I contemplate changing the daughter’s name to the more fitting, yet still feminine sounding, Stubborna Defiance. And, yes, I know that she has won. Again.

The Lunatic Goes to the Doctor

“So,” the doctor said to me, in the soothing, gentle voice he likely reserves for the crazies, “I can see coming to the doctor makes you anxious. What else causes you anxiety?” Boy, he’s really good at this, I can’t help but to think. I’m there about my foot, but he realizes perhaps my mental stability is a more pressing issue than the foot, which gets tingly of late for no apparent reason. Of course, I assume the tingly foot can’t possibly have anything to do with an old, untreated tendon injury that involved the dog, the dog’s stretchy leash, and my riotously funny husband. Surely it is something far more serious, hence, my visit to the doctor’s office.

Doctor visits can be very stressful if raised lunatic. “Well, doctor’s offices, obviously,” I reply. “And airplanes,” I add. “Really,” I say, “I’m not normally like this.” Like this meaning trembling slightly while a cold sweat runs down my back, my pulse races, and my blood pressure is so high I’m surprised my veins are not all puffy raised surfaces on my skin.
I’m not sure he’s buying it. Regardless, he lets it go temporarily to tell me I have peripheral nerve damage in my foot, possibly due to the old injury. I nod and say, “I thought so, but figured I’d better get it checked out in case it’s something more serious.”

“Oh? Like what?” he asks. I can tell he is again probing my mental stability with this question. But that’s okay. Who can blame him? I am not exactly the picture of calm as I sit there. I once had a very opinionated doctor tell me that I should really take something to overcome my fear of medication, just because I told her I didn’t like to take allergy medicine as it put me in a fog and I’d rather be slightly congested than in a fog. I much prefer this doctor’s softer approach to mental health.

Granted, just the mere thought of having to take medication daily is enough to make my head feel, well, drugged. Another lovely family trait. The doctor senses this when I ask about my blood pressure. “I don’t think we need to treat it yet,” he says. “But when the time comes, it’ll be just like taking a vitamin every day.” Just like taking a vitamin. That almost sounds pleasant. Like I said, he’s really good.

As I leave the doctor’s office, I feel such tremendous relief to be out of there that it occurs to me, as it often does when my inner lunatic takes over, that we are all completely fucked. We, meaning my siblings and I. And it’s no wonder really.

Growing up, we never really went to the doctor. I’m sure it was very expensive and I don’t think there was such a thing as a co-pay back then. You’d have to have tripped and split your head open with a nail, just barely missing your eye, or have had a face that was half paralyzed from some bizarre virus before you were taken in to the doctor. And when you got there, Mother would sit perched nervously on a chair, her pulse likely racing, her blood pressure sky high, while cold sweat ran down her back. And she would be so tense that she likely couldn’t follow what the doctor was saying and never asked questions. Instead, she would say every so often, in a tone reserved for that of a bishop, “yes, docther” as the nerves would bring out the Irish brogue in full force. Mind you, she once said of the bishop’s mistress that she happened to spot walking about her hometown in Ireland one year, the mistress that had fathered the bishop’s illegitimate child, “ah, sure, they ought to stone the bitch”. So revered was the bishop, that she felt he was clearly without blame in this situation. It was that sort of reverence my mother felt was required in the presence of a doctor.

Never going to the doctor, we generally never took medications. Though we should probably all be taking some type of drugs now on a regular basis to combat the lunacy, either prescription or recreational, we generally avoid them at all costs. Not surprising really as we grew up putting “dandelion juice” (the white milky secretion from the stem) on warts to get rid of them. (And yes, it really does work when applied repeatedly.) We ate “anti-Aids” spinach that was grown in our backyard. Although, I’m not really sure why my mother felt we needed anti –Aids spinach, being fine young Catholic girls. Perhaps she did actually notice what can only be described as the wanton behavior of certain siblings when they were being dropped off at home by their beaus. Really, though, you’d have to be a blind mute to not notice what was happening in the car that had pulled up to the curb mere feet from where you stood watering the grass on a hot summer’s night. So maybe it was a good thing we were fed anti-Aids spinach. As genetically and mentally fucked as we are, none of us are in need of anti-virals.

The problem, though, is that now we feel hyper, sleepy, sick to our stomachs, or just not right whenever we do have the misfortune of needing to take medicines produced by pharmaceutical companies. I don’t know if it’s because we didn’t build up a tolerance in our youth to such substances, or if we have overly sensitive metabolisms, or if it’s due to utter madness. Regardless, it makes it really hard to get sick. Then, of course, there are the warring ideologies of invincibility and certain death that hijack our brains when a bug does strike.

Like my tingling foot. It couldn’t be from all the running, or the pain I still feel from the dog leash incident. It was more likely due to a blood clot that would soon move out of my leg and into my heart, or some sort of rare, horrible disease that starts out as a tingling in one’s foot. Madness, I know. But I am the queen of bizarre illnesses. I try to procreate (a really bad idea when one considers the genetic implications of this for our species) and instead of a baby I end up with a type of pregnancy cancer named after a small burrowing mammal (a mole). When I was a sophomore in high school, I got not only the mumps, but also Bells Palsy (hence the paralyzed ½ face). So is it any wonder, really, that I assume the worse? And with my track record, there’s no doubt that the heinous imagined disease that was causing my foot to tingle would, of course, have an absolutely humiliating name.

On top of actually being prone to weird illnesses, I was conditioned to always believe the worst. I spent the better part of a vacation one summer coughing violently in a futile attempt to breathe. That happens, apparently, when you have asthma. Of course, the word asthma never came up when I was finally taken in to the doctor. The doctor diagnosed some sort of bronchial infection and gave me antibiotics. Naturally, the antibiotics didn’t actually help the asthma so I still couldn’t breathe, but my mother and uncle (we were in my mother’s homeland at the time visiting her now dearly departed brother), were able to rest easier knowing that I did not actually have a hole in my lung as they had deduced.

I frequently couldn’t breathe as a child. I remember my siblings being put out by this as sometimes they’d have to wait for me, as I rested, bent over with my hands on my knees, futilely trying to get air into my lungs. I had a great grandfather actually die of asthma and my uncle on my father’s side is a pulmonologist. Odd, really, that no one ever considered the fact that maybe my frequent inability to breathe wasn’t necessarily because I was a nuisance that had somehow managed to puncture her own lung, but rather because I had inherited asthma , along with disproportionately short legs and bad hair. But that’s where the invincibility part comes in.

For us lunatics, the trick to being sick is to simply not accept that you are sick. My mother was having a massive stroke and instead of heeding the doctor’s advice, she signed herself out of an emergency room. She ended up spending a total of six weeks in the hospital for both treatment and then rehab. One day when I went to visit her, I had the son, a mere six months old, strapped to my chest in a baby carrier. We were both all bundled up against the cold when we got on a crowded elevator that would take us up to the sixth floor of the hospital for a very stressful visit watching my mother wail as she tried to regain her ability to walk. It should go without saying that the elevator got stuck. Did I mention that it was hot, crowded, and I had a baby known for his tendency to suddenly begin screaming bloody murder secured tightly to my chest? Thinking back on it, the miracle of it all, really, is that I now don’t spend the day rocking back and forth while staring at a blank wall.

My father’s attitude toward illness is possibly even worse than my mother’s. Well, I guess that depends on how you look at it. In my mother’s case, at some point panic takes over and the sense that death is surely imminent eventually silences her belief in her invincibility. Not true, however, of my father.

My father is highly allergic to bee stings. When Sibling #4 would swell up after eating fish or rubbing up against a tomato plant, he would wax poetic about how a bee would sting him when he was in the army. He’d be out in the middle of nowhere in Texas, tarantulas and rattle snakes everywhere, when a bee would bite him and he’d swell up. As he tells it, he’d go about his normal business of survival, sleeping up against a tree so as not to be crushed by the rampaging herds of wild cattle, and would just ignore the aftermath of the bee sting.

I came home one night, many years ago, to find him sitting on the couch, ignoring the said aftermath of another bee sting. His head had swollen to enormous proportions. His lymph nodes were visible as large, blue, golf ball type protrusions all over the exposed portions of his body. “You look awful,” I said. “You need to go to the hospital.”

“Ha!” he laughed. “You think this is bad, you should see my groin.”

Eventually I convinced him, the whole while trying to sear the groin comment from my mind, that when he fell asleep, his bronchial tubes would likely swell and he’d suffocate in his sleep. I vaguely recalled reading that somewhere and while I think it’s true, I hoped it would alarm him enough to make him go to the hospital. “Look,” I remember saying, “you can die if you want but you sure as hell aren’t dying in this house.” We all tend to be a little spooked by talk of ghosts and spirits and the like. So, off to the ER we finally went.

Back home the next day, he mentioned that the E.R. doctor had told him he should thank me for saving his life. I could tell he was momentarily humbled by this thought. Then, reality quickly kicked back in and he reminded me of Texas, where he’d spent many a night, avoiding rampaging cattle and ubiquitous tarantulas, all swollen from a bee sting and nothing bad had ever come of it. (He repeated the nothing bad ever coming of it part of the story numerous times for emphasis.) I made a mental note to just let nature takes its course when the next bee sting occurred.

And while that may sound rather harsh, such is the mentality one develops growing up lunatic. Take, for instance, Mother’s recent open heart surgery. I imagine normal families might gather by their mother’s side to comfort her in her time of need before the surgery and then hover nervously in the waiting room while the surgery occurred, occasionally breaking into spontaneous hugs. In our family, we bickered amongst ourselves, sarcastic text messages flying. On the day of the said surgery, the only available sibling was the one that had earned herself the title the Undertaker, Sibling #3. This is the sibling that Mother has never been overly fond of. When Sibling #3 visited her in the hospital, Mother asked her if she had gotten fat, while Sibling #2, who has always been revered with a doctor-like status , and who had actually gained some weight over the years, was told she looked as if she’d lost weight. So, it fell to the Undertaker to be the sole comfort for our inconsolable mother who clearly felt she would soon be breathing her last. I can only imagine how much worse it was for Mother to know that she was conceivably spending her last waking moments with the least favorite of her offspring. Not one for tolerating histrionics, however appropriate they may have been, Sibling #3 was quick to ask the anesthesiologist when he walked in to check on Mother a few hours prior to the surgery, “Can’t you put her under a little early?”

To her credit, despite the stress of the situation, Sibling #3 did not need to don a protective tin foil hat. At least not in public. Although, there did seem to be an inordinate number of paper towels in use at Sibling #3’s house, possibly proving an earlier supposition that Sibling #3’s paper towel usage rises in direct correlation to her stress levels. And Mother, I should note, is now home recovering. She’s sent away all the nurses and therapists. The invincibility has set in. As for the siblings, I imagine at some point we’ll be able to speak to each other again without our now well practiced “go fuck yourself” tone of voice. Surely we all know that we can’t help but to be lunatics.