The Cryogenic Cat

                The temperature recently dropped to the single digits and the Son, not yet acclimated to Chicago’s new global warming winters, thinks longingly of the neighbor's ice rink and angrily questions the safety of having schools open on such a dangerously cold day.  I tell him that when I was his age, the temperature in Chicago was actually 27 below zero one January day, and that was without the wind chill.  That was the day that we found Radish, the cat, shivering under a pine tree when we were walking to the bakery a few blocks away for our Saturday morning sweet rolls.  As he was clearly a stray, we brought him home and added him to our collection. 

                The first cat we ever had was Mr. O’Toole.  I’m not sure where he came from, but he lived to be over twenty years old.   He was Nanny’s cat and she used to cook him three delicious meals a day.  At one time, he was so big (his white color made him look even bigger), that Sibling #1’s friend refused to walk past him on the stairs, referring to him as “that bobcat”.  When Nanny could no longer take care of him (i.e. cook him three meals a day), he came to live with us.  After him came a long string of cats found hungry in the streets or alleys: Midnight, Manhattan, Spy, Darwin, Darren, Boris, Star, Mother Cat, George, Pig, Slate, Quinn, Lil, Patrick, and probably more whose names I’ve forgotten. 

                Mother Cat was always considered Sibling #4’s cat.  Mother Cat is the most likely culprit that pissed on the box of donuts that had gotten knocked off the bread chair (the chair next to the kitchen table where the bread was stored - - our version of a bread box) and onto the floor.  I still chuckle when I think back to the day I discovered Sibling #4 eating one of the wet, mushy, urine filled donuts that she had retrieved from the box on the floor.  If you’ve ever smelled cat piss, you’ll wonder how it is that Sibling #4 didn’t notice the extraordinarily strong smell off the donut.  Apparently, gluttony knows no bounds.   

                Star was always my cat.  Not particularly fond of birthdays to begin with, I woke up on my 20^th to find Star lying stiff under a chair.  Star was the first of the Russian Blue cats to live with us.  Boris joined the family shortly after.  He liked to jump up on unsuspecting people’s shoulders and sit there, much like a trained parrot would do.  We always found it hysterical when he'd jump onto someone's shoulders and they would become completely terror stricken.        

  

                Ivan is the latest Russian Blue to live at the family homestead.  And poor Ivan is the source of the family’s most recent misadventure in insanity.   A few days ago, Mother called me sounding breathless and in a panic.  About a week prior, Ivan had gone missing.  Mother called to tell me she had just found Ivan, unable to move its back legs, lying in the basement.  She moved him upstairs to a comfortable spot and called me.  I went over, alternately sighing and cursing the entire drive, as I had both offspring with me due to an early dismissal from school.  The last thing I wanted to do was take a half dead cat to the vet to have it put down with the Son and Daughter in tow.   

                When I arrived at the house on my reluctant angel of mercy mission, Mother seemed to think the cat only needed a shot from the vet.   I went and took a look at the cat and it looked at least three-fourths dead to me.  I saw no blood or signs of trauma so suspected the cat had either had a stroke, or more likely, been gripped in Dick’s large jaws and shaken about for sport.  While Dick leaves all the other cats alone, he reportedly had it in for Ivan.  Perhaps it was because Ivan was still a somewhat feral cat that hadn’t been fully incorporated into the household.  Regardless of how it had happened, it was clear Ivan had come to the end of his nine lives.  

                 Father, however, seemed to think differently as he had diagnosed the cat as “frozen” and said that it just needed to “thaw out”.   Why I am stunned by this explanation is beyond me.  And why I felt the need to point out that, while yes, it was bitterly cold, cats don’t become paralyzed from the cold and then just thaw back to their regular selves, however nice an idea, is also beyond me.  You'd think by now I'd know better.  Anyway, when I tell Mother that the vet would either immediately put the cat down or would run expensive tests and then most likely put the cat down, she replies that no tests were needed as they already knew what was wrong with it.  “It’s frozen.  It only needs a shot.”   At this point, I needed at least a double.    

                “Listen,” I replied, “the only shot that cat’s getting is a final shot.”  The parents wouldn’t hear of it, so I left the half dead cat at the house, painfully aware of how leaving a cat to linger on would negatively impact my karma.   I tried unsuccessfully to comfort myself with the fact that it really didn’t seem to be in any pain.  And then there was the whole issue of transporting a mostly dead cat to the vet for its final journey while fielding endless questions from the Daughter and extremely sensitive Son.  Nonetheless, I felt awful about it.  With a heavy heart, I email the siblings to explain the latest situation and to give them the deep freeze theory.  While it is self-evident, I nonetheless point out to them that the deep freeze theory is just further evidence of the fact that we are all well and truly fucked.  

                Later that day, when the phone rang and I could only hear cackling when I answered it, I thought the Devil was calling from hell to congratulate me on my inaction with the cat.  Turns out it is actually Sibling #3.  In between cackles, she explains how she thinks her husband, who enjoys lying about in a blanket on the couch, frequently gets frozen and it takes him a few days to thaw out.  I am not amused.  Then Sibling #1 attempts to clarify the freeze/thaw cycle by emailing how Mr. Freeze came upon his frosty powers that frequently sent Batman into a deep freeze.  He ends the message by stating that none of this will help the poor cat unless Dick has recently come into possession of a freeze gun.  Sibling #4, ever more practical, chimes in with the suggestion that she takes a few days off work and gets a family discount on an airfare/euthanasia package deal to Brussels, the only EU country where doctor assisted suicide is legal.    

                I am sick thinking that I left a cat to possibly suffer and when I call the parents the next day to say I’m coming to get the cat, mercifully sans children, I am greatly relieved to hear Mother tell me the cat has moved on.  I pass on this information to the siblings, along with my concern over what would happen to the body; the ground is frozen solid.  Sibling #3 promises to go over and move the cat into the garage with Louie until a hole can be dug for it.  Only, when Sibling #3 gets to the house Mother tells her that she was wrong and that the cat isn’t actually dad.  Like Betty White and Eddie Murphy, Ivan’s death had been misreported.  Sibling #3 recommends taking the cat in and having it put down, but again, the parents won’t hear of it.  So, she checks on the cat to be sure it isn’t suffering and finds that it isn’t really moving.  She can’t decide if it is still alive or not.  Sibling #3 calls to update me on all of this and I can’t help but to repeatedly ask her what sort of an idiot can’t tell if a cat is dead? Then she says, cackling again, “Oh, and dad said ‘The cat’s fine!  Just leave it alone.  It’ll be fine!  In a few days I’ll dig a whole and bury it in the yard.’”  

                The next day I go over with a pot of chili that I had made and no one in my house would eat as it was really quite awful.  Spices are not exactly my forte.  Oblivious to the unappetizing taste, Father sat down joyfully to devour half the pot while Mother sat on the couch weeping.  I took that as a good sign that the cat had finally moved on.  I had to be sure, though, so after heating up the chili, I snuck down into the bedroom where I feared I’d find the cat body as I doubted anyone had thought to move it out to the garage.  Sure enough, Ivan lies curled up on a blanket on the floor of the closet.  I crouch down and stare at it and, to my great horror, think I detect a slight rise and fall of its midsection.  I crouch lower and get even closer and stare at the cat, hoping I just imagined the movement.  Having to be sure, I poke a finger at its tail and find it is soft and not at all stiff as it should be.  Shit, shit, shit, I think.  Having no choice, I poke the same finger into the cat’s body and it is not cold and stiff, but only sort of cool to the touch.  Ugh.  I don’t think it is moving so it has either just died or is at least 95% dead.  Chagrined and appalled that I am poking at a possibly dead cat, I see Sibling #3’s point; it is a lot harder than I thought to determine if a cat is deceased.  Regardless, I am not carting it off to the vet now, nor can I move it out to the garage until I know for sure it has passed on and so I leave it there again.  This is getting ridiculous.     

                I pass by my place of employment on the way home.  The night prior, my classroom absolutely reeked of weed.  After suggesting that the student or students in question at least air themselves out before coming to class, I had to invite the off duty cop security guards in to remind the students of the school’s no tolerance policy.  After this whole cat saga, however, I hope that whoever reeked badly enough to smell up the whole room comes back to class reeking just as strongly.  I can only hope that the smell  is potent enough to help me get over my finger poke at a possibly dead cat that, ironically, was unfortunately not as frozen as I'd have liked. 

A Conical Christmas

I never expected to be greeted with tidings of comfort and cheer, but I thought if I carried on as if nothing were amiss, no comments about the hair would be forthcoming. Of course, I was wrong. Perhaps fittingly, Mother started in first. Mother, whose eyesight isn’t the best anymore, let out a low, guttural titter that meant she was laughing at someone. That someone was me. This was approximately two seconds after she walked in the door on Christmas day. “Did you do that to your hair on purpose,” she says in greeting, actually snorting as she finished the question. It was less a question and more a statement of disbelief.

“What’s wrong with it?” I respond, trying to play it cool. I knew I had gotten a rather unfortunate haircut, but I didn’t think it was that bad.

“It’s terrible,” Sibling #4 chimes in. Then, because she does not share the same issues with personal space that the rest of us have, she swoops in right behind me and raises her hands up behind my head like an overly dramatic mime, if there is such a thing, imitating a cone. “From the back it makes your head look like a cone.” She doesn’t have to add that I have a long head to begin with. That’s understood. The long, horse face comes from Mother’s side of the family.

“Well, at least I don’t look like Laura!” I retort. Laura was our great aunt. She only wore black, wool coats on the rare days she ventured out, even if it was a hundred degrees outside. Her face bore a fairly constant scowl of disapproval. The appointment of a non-Italian pope caused the look to become permanently etched into Laura’s features. I now frequently see that same expression flit across Sibling #4’s face with greater regularity. Because she is Sibling #4, she doesn’t seem sufficiently concerned by this. Instead, when I bring it up, as I frequently must because I know she can’t help the expressions she makes, Sibling #4 adopts both the vocal tone and the facial expression with frightening accuracy. Perhaps this is only fitting. It was, after all, Sibling #4 that sensed something was amiss and called us from out of town to check on Laura, only moments before the hospital called to say Laura hadn't survived the surgery. Most people drink wine at family gatherings and take lots of pictures they can put up on facebook for all their “friends” to declare how stunningly lovely they are. We happily mock long dead relatives and attack each others Achilles heel. “At least my hair will eventually grow out,” I can’t help but to add. That is, if it doesn’t all continue to fall out from the stress.

Once we greet each other in this fashion, we all make haste to get the food on the table. The sooner everyone eats, the sooner everyone can go home. Like I’ve mentioned before, we don’t quite understand parties. Sibling #3, the host for this year’s Christmas non-event, is so eager to get us all fed, that I suggest next year we simply prepare to-go-boxes. Whoever is hosting, can have them ready so that the lunatic visitors need only pull up to the curb, roll down the window, and be on their merry way. As Sibling #3 likes to think she is the more social of the bunch, the only way to understand her eagerness to have us all gone is to either take it personally, or to assume that the stress of hosting a gathering is such that she can’t wait to slip out to the garage and don an entire tinfoil outfit. Who knows? Maybe she has even created one that looks like a Santa suit for the occasion.

After we eat, we get the out of town siblings on the horn. We are always slightly resentful that neither Sib ling #1 nor Sibling #2 has to endure the planning and execution of a lunatic holiday. We do our best to get Father on to a political topic when he is on the phone with them as this will guarantee they get to spend quality time with their Father on the holiday. Mother, meanwhile, lets out a snort every time she looks at my head.

After this, we reminisce about Christmases past. We mock Sibling #2’s globe like eyes that scanned the sky for Santa far into junior high and perhaps beyond. Inevitably, Sibling #3 always mentions how she was sent out at the age of six or seven to purchase Sibling #2’s present that would magically appear under the tree on Christmas morning. Sibling #3 has more of the martyr syndrome than the rest of us, although coming immediately after the golden child, perhaps it is understandable. Then, Sibling #3 begins to cackle as she recalls how Sibling #1 would buy candy bars for everyone as a present and when he’d get mad, he’d show us our present and eat it in front of us.

I remind the siblings of the quilted velvet dresses Mother had made for us that we would wear to midnight mass. “You mean the one with the green skirt and the cherries on the top part? That was mine,” Sibling #4 states. “That’s the one I wore when I won the Miss Peanut Queen contest”. Everyone needs something to be proud of so I don’t mention the picture of her wearing this dress in which her body looks like the size of an ant and her head looks like a giant balloon.

“No, not that dress. There were at least three of these quilted dresses and we would all wear them. Don’t you remember?” I prod.

“Wasn’t the dress pink?” Sibling #4 asks. And then Sibling #3 begins to cackle again as she very clearly remembers the pink dress and her role in ruining it. The pink dress was a long number that for some reason, even though I generally wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, I loved. Sibling #6 was wearing it for my First Communion. As we were late, Sibling #3 and one of the other siblings were on either side of a very young Sibling #1, holding her hands as they ran along towards the church. They ran through the bus barns, which were right next to the church, and didn’t notice that they had dragged Sibling #6 and my pink dress through what was apparently a massive oil slick. As if we didn’t all look crazy enough running in late for my First Communion, there was poor Sibling #6, quite literally covered from head to toe in black oil.

The quilted dresses nobody remembers are quickly forgotten as, by this time, we all need air and head out for a walk. I’m guessing this is when normal people up their intake of alcohol. We simply escape for a while. When we have sufficiently soothed ourselves with a minor endorphin release, we head back to the house for dessert. Shortly after, we are all resting comfortably at our respective homes, sated and truly looking back with fondness on our family gathering, at about the time most people are only sitting down to their Christmas dinner.

A friend passing by in a car earlier today, stopped to chat and see if the kids had gotten what they wanted from Santa. There had been some question as to whether or not Santa would be able to acquire a popular electronic device that was seemingly out of stock everywhere. The friend was far more relieved than I was when he learned that Santa had come through with the device. When I suggest Santa would have just left an I.O.U. if he had failed to acquire it, the friend is clearly horrified. “What?” I ask in response to his horror. “One year Santa gave me an I.O.U. for a sweat suit from the Sears Outlet. I was probably seven or eight and I didn’t mind. I was happy enough with that. I think I even got the sweat suit eventually. What’s the big deal?” The friend just shook his head and said that explained a lot.

Of course, I have spent the days since Christmas studying my conical hair in a mirror. completely perplexed by how to remedy the situation aside from wearing a hat constantly. That, and wondering just how it is Sibling #3 is in possession of a photo of me from when I had the mumps. The Nephew, demonstrating the true Christmas spirit, happily posted the photo on the fridge for all to see. "You look like a guy," he says with a giant smirk. Actually, I look like a young man on steroids due to my massively swollen glands. The hat which I have taken to wearing, I am relieved to say, is a polyester blend mix. I have yet to fashion my own out of tinfoil, though I think we'd all understand if I did.

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.