Category Archives: family

Brother, Can You Spare Some Change?

Posted on May 21, 2010 | 6 comments

I’ve written about my oldest brother before, but in sum: His name is Donnie and he’s an alcoholic. And a drug addict. And homeless.

Last week, my mom was driving to the grocery store in New Jersey when she noticed someone familiar walking along the highway. He was wearing red shorts, no top, and was carrying a black bag. As she got closer to this man she realized it was my brother, her eldest stepson. Unable to pull over and unsure of his mental state, she called my dad to let him know. Everyone assumed he was either on his way to our shore house or to his brother, David’s house (less than a mile apart). But everyone was wrong. After days of Donnie-free sightings, David learned that Donnie had been sleeping on the beach.

It’s kinda weird to hear a story like this about a family member. A man walking along the highway, barely clothed, sleeping on the beach. Almost every day I walk past a homeless person on the streets of New York and think ‘how did they get there? where is their family?’ And now I wonder how many people saw my brother and thought the same thing.

It’s very simple for me to close off any feelings for Donnie. He’s over 20 years older than me (my dad started “playing house” pretty early) and he’s always been in and out of the picture. In when he needs something. Out when he’s flying high. The stereotypical rambling man, or prodigal son. I owe him nothing and he owes me nothing. We simply share half a bloodline. Hell, I remember the time when he showed up to one of my high school basketball games. He walked into the swankiest prep school in Philadelphia covered in tattoos and beer gut in full force just to embarrass the living shit out of me (at least that’s what I thought at the time). I swear one of my teammates actually asked what the homeless dude was doing there. Worse than Peter denying Christ, I wanted to deny my brother more than three times. And just last summer, I made fun of the fact that he was selling French Fries on the boardwalk. A grown man working a minimum wage job that high school kids do for the summer? O-M-G. Soo em-barr-ass-ing. We are so not related.

But sleeping on the beach? Walking from town to town without a shirt on his back? No money. No cellphone. I can’t make fun of it. I can’t roll my eyes. Goddamn it brother, why are you in my life at all?! I’m frustrated by my powerlessness, by his helplessness. Do you know what it’s like to want to reach out and help someone while fully aware there’s nothing you can do? Sure you do, you’ve walked past a homeless person before.

I can’t give Donnie anything that will change his life. Not even my love. If you give a bum some change, you don’t change his life. I could give Donnie all the money in the world–it would not alter his reality. This is how he chooses to live. Addicted. Schizophrenic. Literally. Do you know how many times I’ve referred to someone as psycho? But my brother really is. Thanks to a life spent shooting, smoking, drinking and snorting he’s damaged goods. He’ll call my parents at odd hours just rambling on about things that don’t make sense, about people out to get him. All they can do is just listen. They’ve tried getting him help, putting him in homes–he just leaves. None of us know what he’s after or where he’s going. We can only watch him walk along the highway; hear him ask for change.

From what I understand, Donnie started drinking at age nine and added drugs around 12 or 13. No one knows why. No one understands. It’s like cancer and car accidents–some people get it, get hit and some people don’t and it never makes any fucking sense. It’s a simple twist of fate.

“A saxophone someplace far off played/As she was walking on by the arcade/As the light bust through a-beat-up shade where he was waking up/She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate/
And forgot about a simple twist of fate.” -Bob Dylan, Simple Twist of Fate

To hear the original track from the album Blood on the Tracks cut and paste this URL into your browser:

http://popup.lala.com/popup/504684642123677280

And here, a Jeff Tweedy cover of Dylan’s song with altered lyrics:

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Posted in addiction, family

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You Are Who You Come From

Posted on May 2, 2010 | 2 comments

Grandmom Edith

“Sorrow found me when I was young/Sorrow waited, sorrow won/Sorrow that put me on the pills/It’s in my honey it’s in my milk.” -The National

My grandmother and I never got along. In fact, when she was dying her last words to me were, “I’m going to haunt you.” Grandmom Edith knew that I was easily freaked out, especially by the paranormal. I replied: “Good.”

I never understood how or why my mom’s mom got along with all her other grandchildren except for me. She and my cousin Jenny exchanged letters full of sweet “I miss yous” and “you’re such a good girl,” but her directives to me were always along the lines of “go get me another beer.” I was nine.

I wanted my grandmom to be like all my other friends’ grandmothers–to spoil me with candy and homemade cookies. But no such luck. My parents used to leave me with her for entire weekends when they needed some alone time. Here’s how the weekend usually went:

Friday night: Grandmom presents me with my beloved Party Mix snack–that delicious junk food potpourri of chips, pretzels and cheese balls in a bag. I eat it and she asks how I could possibly eat so much.

Saturday: Edith makes a huge breakfast–steak and eggs. I can’t finish it. She is offended and shocked– “How can you not finish that? There are starving kids in Africa!” We make a run to her liquor store where she picks up a six-pack of Old Milwaukee beer and a 12-pack of Parliaments. Then back to the apartment to watch Dallas and old made-for-TV movies.

There was no story time with my grandmom, no walks to the park or special trips to the toy store. With Edith, there were beer mugs in the freezer and witticisms I was too young to understand, spoken between cigarette puffs.

Exhibit A: Letter to Edith from her criminal grandchild.

I was no ideal child, don’t get me wrong. I challenged everything and everyone as much as possible. If my next door neighbors had toys that I wanted, I simply “borrowed” them when they were not home. I also had no problem stealing on Easter. The holiest day of the Catholic year and I stealthily put a pack of colored pencils in my jacket after my mom refused to buy them. And then at home, cool as a cucumber, I opened the pencils and started coloring in front of everyone. Edith asked me where I got them. “From the store,” I said.

Lots of kids steal things, but usually their parents drag them back to the store and embarrass them so profoundly that they learn a lesson. My mom just rolled her eyes and I got what I wanted without punishment. Jenny never would have done something like that.

But bad kid or not, my dad’s mom and I got along famously. (It was possible for me to get along with others.) Grandmom Marge was nice and sweet and funny and affectionate and she cooked Italian food. She was the best. (I still believe she’s my guardian angel. We all deserve one.) So what was wrong with me and Edith?

Today, my mom calls me Little Eddie. She says the older I get, the more I remind her of her mother. Great. So I’m the wicked witch of the west. There are certain attributes Edith and I do share: I have her nose, the shape of her face, and I scrunch my nose, close my eyes and show my top teeth when I laugh, just as she did. I’m also full of wit. (Not charm.)

My mom loves sharing her mom’s sayings, such as: “When money doesn’t come through the door, love goes out the window,” or “Never tell a man everything he doesn’t want to know,” and “What’s in the marrow comes out the bone.” We could write a book full of Edithisms. Her old quips make us laugh and we know there is truth and wisdom in them. We have our theories on why Edith was the way she was. We’re all a sum of our experiences. And she had some brutal ones.

I’m still mad at my grandmom though. She’s won our war; she haunts me.

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Posted in attitude, cautionary tale, family

Confidence Lost

Posted on April 25, 2010 | 5 comments

If confidence is lost, did you ever really have it?

Born to write. Born cursed.

Friday, April 23rd, 9:31 pm. I’m sitting on my couch, on the phone with my mom for the third time in one day.

Me: “Do you remember when I was little?”

Mom: “Of course I do.”

Me: “Tell me your favorite memory.”

Mom: “Oh here we go again.”

Me: (laughs) “Come on, tell me something funny I did as a kid!”

Mom: “I don’t know. I can’t think right now. You woke me up.”

Me: “Sorry. (pause) Do you remember when I used to put shit in your bed?”

Mom: (quietly exasperated) “What?!  No.”

Me: “I cannot believe you don’t remember this. Whenever I was mad at you I’d put potpourri in your pillow case and under your sheets so it would poke you and make your bed smell.”

Mom: “I probably liked it.”

Me: “You’re crazy. Go back to bed.”

End scene.

You know things are bad when you call your mom for a mood lift. There are so many things wrong with this. For starters, moms are meant to annoy. No matter how much I resent her self-help b.s., she somehow always convinces me to drink the Kool-Aid. Tell her you don’t want any and she’ll give it to you anyway.

Secondly, moms are blinded by bias. Of course she’s going to tell you you’re qualified to be an editor-in-chief at 29 even though the closest experience you have for this job comes from bossing around your stuffed animals and dolls from ages five to 11. Or 12.

Lastly, moms are bad with the tough love. When my mom tries to tell me to suck things up, I just want to put potpourri in her bed again. I demand my bottle, my bath and my bedtime story please.

So clearly my mom can never win (as her daughter, it’s my job to set her up to fail), but I still love her and this is all beside the point. The point here is that I’m so desperate for a confidence fix that I’m searching between the couch cushions for it.

How did this happen? I’m the girl who’s famous for the line “clankity clank,” which is short for “pull out your brass balls and fight for your right.” Let those mo-fos in charge know who you are.

And here I am. Stuck. In my own mud. Sure, I can blame getting laid off a year ago. I can blame my current mind-numbing job. I can blame myself and I often do. There are plenty of culprits in the lineup for confidence robbery. But at a certain point, I need to pull out of this mental quicksand and pull out my brass cojones. If there’s one thing my mom’s personal PSAs have taught me it’s think it and you’ll be it. But how can you believe in your talent without the success?

I know, pray to Buddha, right? It’s not all about the material recognition. Fuck that. Look, I’ve prayed to Buddha and Jesus, to Rolling Stone and Fleetwood Mac. I’ve paid for therapy and medication and opened myself up to love. I’ve given up security for the chance of something better. And the only thing I can tell you is that in America, success matters. It’s measurable. And I want it. But first, I need my confidence back.

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Posted in attitude, career, family

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The Power of Oprah Compels You!

Posted on January 15, 2010 | 3 comments

Oprah, the new messiah

All right, look, I’ve watched The Secret, I’ve highlighted inspirational quotes in self-help books; I’ve even enjoyed visiting quotelady.com and thinkexist.com for famous words of wisdom (and still do sometimes). And yes, there was even a time when I enjoyed watching Oprah and reading her magazine (it’s a good magazine and I’m not writing that because I’m afraid of her). But when I opened my mail yesterday and saw an issue of O magazine with my name on it, I felt a burning sensation of rage.

Now I know how satan feels during an exorcism. The dude just wants to be left alone with his misery and his mischief. You can’t cancel a subscription if it’s a gift from someone!* (You know, kind of how the devil can’t fight against a crucifix.)

Who would violate me like this? My mother. She’s always trying to push self-help literature on me. Some of the reading material she’s left in my room or in my bag over the years: Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man (Steve Harvey), The Essence of Attitude: Quotations for Igniting Positive Attitudes, and for my recent birthday, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be (Paul Arden). So basically my mom thinks I’m a negative, unambitious, lesbian. Does she give this crap literature to my brother, the married surgeon who gave her grandchildren? Nooooo. Just leave me alone with my misery and my mischief! I’m happy being a malcontent. Honestly. It’s a safe space. Do you get that, Jesus? Mom? (Um, Jesus, if you’re reading this, I do love you. I truly fear you just like a good Catholic girl should.)

As for you mom, I love you too. But here’s the thing: Yes, I’m jaded. I’m cynical. I can count the people I trust and truly love on one hand (fine, almost two).  And that’s OK. I have best friends, I’ve found the love of my life (it’s a man!), and, well, I kind of have a career (freelance doesn’t mean unemployed, no matter what dad thinks). And the truth is I don’t care to be the greatest or the best, I just want to keep my job. Books aren’t going to teach me how to be in a relationship, my boyfriend will. And I don’t need inspiration. I do what I gotta do and that’s great enough. So, please, cancel your 12-month subscription to Oprah in my name because I don’t want to live my best life according to Oprah, or you, or to anyone else.

And because all of my posts need to end on a musical note:

*But you can change your address and have the magazine shipped to the gift giver instead, mwah ha ha.

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Posted in attitude, family, pop culture, religion

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Cast the First Stone

Posted on December 31, 2009 | 3 comments

My two oldest brothers are the prodigal sons–the boys who left home too early, squandered their fortunes, and returned home after everything was lost.  And just like in the biblical story, my parents had many celebratory feasts welcoming them back, believing as they were told, that this time would be different.

The story of the prodigal son is one I learned while growing up Catholic. And although these days my religious ethnicity is somewhere around the equation of 80% atheist/15% agnostic/4% believer/1 % Satanist, I still think the Holy Bible has some good points. Hey, our influences are our influences.

Donnie and David are big influences in my life. Bigger than religion. They’re real-life examples of what not to do. What paths not to take. In them, I see two adult men with broken families of their own and a lack of personal pride and responsibility. They also both suffer from drug and alcohol addictions. And I hate them for it. They just can’t get their shit together and I resent them for it. They’re supposed to be older, wiser and supportive, but I’m the one who’s smarter, wiser, and better than. I’m the good son (technically, daughter) dammit!

My brothers and I did not exactly have the same upbringing. First of all, we’re half-siblings. They’re my father’s sons from his first marriage. And they’re more than 10 years older than me. My dad divorced their mom. My dad also suffered from addictions. Their mother also suffers from addiction. And even though my dad has done more than his best to raise the kind of men he’d be proud to call his sons, these boys are in a vacuum of pain that no one can get them out of.

Pain is the culprit, right? I just don’t know how else to rationalize my brothers’ behavior. What makes a person so unable to take care of their own life? I hate them for being the kind of siblings I don’t brag about and I also wonder how they broke beyond repair.

The problem is that every time I pass judgment on my two oldest brothers, cast those stones, I realize I am no different. I know the restorative power of drinking and doing drugs. God the escape. You just don’t know unless you’ve felt its deliverance. Deliverance. ‘I do declare that this drink has lifted my spirits’ even though I’m crying…I feel goood! And what compelled me to take more than one? Pain! That fierce enemy! So it might just be true that pain is what leads a person to drink too much, to eat too much, to do too many drugs. Because I can attest from my own minor dalliances that this shit makes you feel good. No need to be poetic about it. Even when you’re feeling bad, this shit makes you feel great. Tony the Tiger grrrreat. Invincible. Incapable of feeling pain or sadness or disappointment. You feel powerful. Strong. Mighty. No matter what will you feel like the next morning.

Some days I feel like I could do it all the time. Consume to oblivion. Drink. The. Magical. Elixir. And yet I hate my brothers for making this their habit. The basis of their lives. Of our lives. And I understand the appeal the entire time.

Although Bon Iver‘s song “Skinny Love” is more of a, well, a love song, it still reminds me of my brothers:

“I tell my love to wreck it all/Cut out all the ropes and let me fall/My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my/Right in the moment this order’s tall/Who will love you?/Who will fight?/Who will fall far behind?”


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