Category Archives: dysfunctional family

Jan5

giving up all hope

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“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.” – Anne LaMott

Forgiveness has been a recurring theme lately in my thoughts and dreams. Call it the cosmos if you wish. The end of the Year of the Snake. The great shedding of old skin. Preparing to meet the Horse, which is my Chinese astrology sign. It’s a sign alright, and I don’t care what we name it. Bring it on.

I have been in a biglongugly funk. Fortunately, I do know how to get myself out of this: W R I T E. I can write my way out. I can draw or paint my way out, too. So can you. You can do any or all of those things. It has nothing to do with talent or experience – it depends on one thing and one thing only – willingness. Well, and a pen and some paper. I recently saw a quote by Dan Poynter that pissed me off. He said, “If you are waiting for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.” Thanks for that, Dan. As my friend Lyn would say, “well that hurts my feelings.” Doesn’t it just…

So I have to sit my butt in a chair and write. Or draw. Or paint. A combination of the three actually works best for me. Because the alternative is insomnia, nightmares, migraine. Lately I have been raging in my sleep. My anger will not be contained. It shocks me how violent my dreams are. I’m fighting for my life, kicking and biting and stabbing and screaming. I am really angry. Keep your distance.

That has to come before the forgiveness. Because I don’t understand forgiveness. I do not know how to forgive. To give forth. To give it up…to let go.

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks.” – David Foster Wallace

Apparently my body and my subconscious keep excellent records. I assume you also have an inner secretary; mine functions at an executive level 24/7. And there is a thriving Slights Department. I have 70+ years of slights filed here, just waiting for their moment to be justifiably indignant.

In the middle of the night my inner secretary drags out the trauma files and tries to convince me that someone is going to murder me. My nighttime assailant can be any number of people. Usually my father or my sister. They, along with other family members, were prone to violent outbursts. They all spent time in jail for violence against other people. They all weaseled out of more serious charges with the help of a good attorney. As did my former husband, my son’s father. They all drove drunk on a regular basis and never left the house without a gun. I knew what they were capable of, and for anyone who has ever been manipulated by an abuser, that is all it takes. A certain look in their glassy eyes is all it takes for them to back you right into a corner.

To say that I have clawed and chewed my way free of the manipulation of narcissists would be an understatement. The one thing I have not ever done is threaten them back. Oh, I am capable of it, believe me. I, too, have a vengeful murderer deep inside my psyche. I understand them. But I have never actually threatened anyone with any kind of violence at all. I loathe violence. I lived in it’s shadow until I was sixty years old. I had to learn how to walk away and never look back. So I guess I do actually know how to let go. I just don’t know how to make it not hurt.

And, I do swear a lot. Recently my son brought this habit to my attention and asked me to reconsider it. I told him that social psychologists have studied swearing and concluded that it does, in fact, help the body dissipate stress. He said something very wise about it, though. He asked me if it were not a form of violence. And I think it is, yes. I think I will curb my habit of swearing in my effort to live more softly. We’ll see how that goes, shall we? Consider it an experiment.

I have often joked that my obsession with murder mysteries is because I want to know there are people out there more psychotic than my own family. There is always some truth in humor, isn’t there? For the past decade or so I have played with the idea of writing a memoir. But I haven’t wanted to be the angry, confrontative whistle blower of the family. This week, as we begin a hopeful new year, I don’t think I have a choice any longer. I’m tired. I know truth heals. And only truth heals. I want healing. I will be careful and respectful to the best of my ability, but I will tell my truth my way.

Anne LaMott also said, when asked about exposing family dysfunction in her memoirs, “you own everything that’s happened to you. Write your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” I admit to you here, now, that I still need to overcome the actual fear I carry that my family will lash out and harm me. My sister threatened me years ago when I began this blog.

Many of my family members also had a great sense of humor. My son certainly does. I will incorporate that into my stories, but I will tell them however they show up. And I will share here what I can of them – not because I need you to know, but because I want us to heal. If I can do this, so can you. It’s time. It’s the year of the horse. We ride at midnight.

Jan4

you can call me Phil

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“The opposite of faith is not doubt; it is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your image when he or she hates all the same people you do.” – Anne LaMott

I cannot tell you how many times I said to my sisters, “you have created God in your own image,” but they didn’t get it. I had never heard of Anne LaMott at the time. It just seemed obvious to me. They would yell and scream at me – as if perhaps that would convince me – that God hates fags. And blacks? A lesser race. Forget indigenous people. They were savages. My sister told me once that if she had her way all Muslims would be wiped off the face of the planet. To this day I am shocked how such different people could come from the same two parents. I don’t get it. I’ll never get it. That’s how I knew they’d been brainwashed into a cult. We were not raised that way. Quite the opposite; we were raised to be kind to all creatures, and treat every person with the same respect.

In my 20’s I started a tradition of taking my Mother to a summer concert, just us two. It was a manipulative way to get her all to myself for an evening. I would pack us a picnic and we would often sit in our car enjoying it after the concert, waiting for the parking lot to clear out. I’d given up buying the less expensive lawn tickets after being caught in a downpour. But I didn’t want to abandon the picnic part of our date.

Mom was a country music fan and over the years we saw some great concerts I never would have experienced on my own. Neil Diamond…Anne Murray…and when Willy Nelson came to Pine Knob I purchased tickets. But I just couldn’t bring myself…so I asked my sister to take her. They brought me a pink handkerchief as a souvenir. I had it framed and gave it back to my Mother, where it hung in her hallway for many years.

In 1993 we had both moved north from the Detroit suburbs, so I chose from the summer concert series at Interlochen. And I chose to get us tickets to see K.D. Lang…because, well, who wouldn’t want to see that icon live?! My sisters got wind of my Mother’s plans and had a hissy fit. How dare I take my Mother to see a lesbian?! My reply was, “well…we weren’t going to sleep with her…we were just going to listen to her sing.” That infuriated them. As usual, I didn’t get it. Thick as I am. But Mom and I had a great time. I hope she didn’t carry any guilt about going.

My siblings and I have very different gods. Mine doesn’t care what you call her. Theirs is definitively a him. And he cares very much how he is named in prayer. Sometimes I envy them their certainty that they know God. My God is magnificently mysterious and unfathomable. Big as all creation and yet personal, loving and kind. So is my faith.

“Maybe a great magnet pulls all souls towards truth, or maybe it is life itself feeds wisdom to it’s youth…” – K.D. LANG

Nov26

Happy Thanksgiving for all.

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“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Well…almost all. Unless you’re an indigenous native…or gay…or black…or female…or…well, okay, unless you’re anything other than straight white male. And then, depending on your political affiliations, to be determined subject to the current balance of power…or…fuckall…

We children all stood obediently, put our right hand over our heart and repeated after our adoring teacher. In any other setting that ritual would be called indoctrination into a cult. The cult of nationalism has many sub-cults. The cult of school (yay, team), the cult of church. The cult of family. The cult of loyalty, unquestioned and unquestionable. Don’t you dare question. By the time we’re around the age of 10 (too generous? maybe 7?) we are gone. As in, so completely turned around and conditioned that we have no idea who we are. We do know what we stand for – because we have been told. God help us.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in these here United States. Let the celebration of genocide begin. That is not to say I am not grateful, because I truly am. I might be female, but at least I was born into a privileged white family. In a peaceful, free country. Might not have been the same United States you were born into. But let’s be honest, I’ve had many advantages. And much to overcome. I doubt my father would have been an abusive narcissist were he not born where and when he was. He certainly would not have had so many advantages, least of all a culture of protection around him to hide his psychopathy for 82 years. Talk about an invisibility cloak, phew! That worked well.

My mother died of liposarcoma at the age of 69. The oncologists refer to that cancer as “the anger cancer.” I suspect all cancer takes root in anger, but suffice it to say she died of repressed anger. I’ve told many times here about my memorable 16th birthday gift from her. She gave me two books: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. Was she trying to tell me something? Ya think? At least she made an effort. God knows she never had a chance of any freedom for herself. And I was so conditioned by then, I had only a smidgen more.

Had I not been born into privilege, in a relatively safe environment with abundant food and shelter, would I have ever have gained any insight into the underlying dysfunction? I’ll tell you what my family thinks: they think I am blatantly ungrateful. They couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m grateful for all the same things they are, and so much more. I’m just grateful for different reasons.

You see, I think they are living in a deadly and toxic state of denial. I think they are altogether unwilling to press pause on their insecurity button for just a little moment, long enough to consider – not accept, just consider – that they are not actually superior to everyone else. And so, they behave as if they are absolutely terrified of everyone around them all the time. They don’t leave the house without their gun. The world is a very scary place. It’s full of others.

I don’t envy them that position, although I have at times in the past. God knows most days I’d give anything for that previous naivete. For one more day back home with them all around the dining table on Thanksgiving, laughing. I didn’t know those were fields of gold.

I have often envied them the certainty of their convictions when I was questioning my own motives. When I was requiring myself to be as honest with myself as I possibly could bring myself to be about why I thought I might be smart enough to have figured something out.

I’m not. Smarter. I haven’t figured out shit. But I do have certainty of my convictions now. Not because I accepted what I was taught, but precisely because I have questioned it all and decided how to think and what to believe – beyond a shadow of a doubt. Insert belly-laughing emoji here.

What a mess we have created from fear. Of course, I’m neurodivergent, so conservative ass-holes seem to have everything backward from where I stand. And this grief I am going through recently comes with an equal measure of terror. Most of my fitful sleep is composed of my fighting for my life. Nightmares of my family trying to kill me aren’t new, but lately there are trained assassins after me. I’ve moved up in the world. Or they have. Now they can hire it done.

I’ll tell you what: fuck this shit. I’m determined to look the demons right in the eye and beat them at their own game. It’s freedom or nothing. Give me liberty or…

“Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and most often the two are intertwined.” – Ken Burns

Oct19

we live here…

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Bitch, please…I grew up in Detroit. For those of you who are not familiar, or accept the cultural collective’s jokes and voodoo euphemisms of Detroit, you’re missing out. Detroit is the heart and soul of America. It is fu@king awesome. Go. Stay in the New Center area and spend a couple days at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Drive around and take in some of the most spectacular historical architecture in the United States. You won’t see it all in that time, but enough to enjoy yourself enormously and appreciate it’s beauty and world-class culture.

Then take yourself “up north.” This is where I have lived the past 40 years. Let me tell you a bit about how I came here, and why I stay.

My father grew up on a farm outside of Traverse City, where my Irish ancestors had immigrated and settled during the potato famine. About to enter high school, his father moved the family to Detroit during the automobile boom. And so I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and often visited my great-grandparents and aunts and uncles on Long Lake, west of Traverse City, in the summer months. By the time I was in my early twenties I would spend as much time as possible here, staying with my great Aunt Edith, my grandfather’s sister, in the old farmhouse out on Cedar Run Road. My young son had baths in the big iron sink after I pumped water from the well and heated it – on the stove I’d built a fire in. I would put on one of my great grandmother’s old house dresses, crank up the Victrola, and dance around the living room…romantically imagining I lived in a simpler time…way back when. Until Aunt Edith became impatient with my immature fantasies and reminded me that we had no trash pick up or mail delivery – and I needed to get my arse in gear. Those errands were not going to do themselves.

I have about a million and thirty stories I could tell that depend on the geography of both places, and all around the Great Lakes. There is nowhere else like Michigan on earth. And while it is great, not all of my childhood was great. I came from a big dysfunctional family that often settled differences with fist fights and spent years stubbornly not speaking to one another, depending on the current offensive issue. This blog is full of many – by no means all, of those stories, from day one, back in 2012. That was when I began to write as though my life depended on it, not knowing how true that was.

The move from Detroit to Traverse City was purposefully to get my child away from my family, and their drug and alcohol-induced violence. To be safe. To start over. It was the naive plan of a young woman suffering from PTSD, not yet aware of her ADHD, her mental and emotional limitations. It didn’t work. Not only did I not escape my own demons, but my family members were inspired by my new life and followed me. Over the course of the next few years they all moved north, too.

We live here now. Now I actually live about 50 miles west of Traverse, near the shore of Lake Michigan. My son grew up here. We have both traveled some; enough to know this is home. But home has come to mean an internal space for me as I age. It’s funny, the name of this blog…a painterly home. I thought it would be about interior design. Little did I know it would be about interior design – as in, my spiritual interior. There are so many more stories to unpack and share. I’m grateful beyond words for this journal and your readership. It continues to save my life on a weekly basis.

Today I am grieving as my sweet familiar, Chewy, is dying. I’m not ready to lose him. Many of you know that I had two elderly dogs I cherished when Chewbacca the cat came to live with us. I was asked if I could please help out a friend and foster him for a couple of months about 8 years ago. What a blessing he has been. He fit right in with the dogs, becoming immediately inseparable from my little beagle, Odie. I’ve written other posts about them, of course (see Sept. 9, 2025, Chew de Monk). I never would have chosen these silly names for these magnificent beings. But they were already displaced and going through enough adjustment to impose any others unnecessarily. For starters, Chewy became known as a catdog. He did not know that he wasn’t a dog. Since we lost Odie in 2020, Chewy has seldom left my side. Like the dogs, he feels it is his duty to be constantly underfoot. He follows me from room to room. He insists on touching while we sleep, just as he did with Odie; he extends one of his back legs and pushes it against my thigh. I will aver that he understands English perfectly. All of it. Only an hour or so ago I mentioned out loud that I would give him a bit more liquid and medicine in the syringe again, hoping he can rally. He begrudgingly pulled himself up and walked the few steps to his water fountain and took the first drink he has had in two or three days.

Yesterday doesn’t count. We spent the day at the emergency clinic while he got IV liquids, a warm enema, pain and diabetes meds, in an attempt to save him. We came home last night exhausted. He has barely moved and still isn’t eating. I haven’t given up. I keep telling him that I won’t ever give up on him, and that if he can pull through this I will do everything in my power to improve the quality of his life. I’ve promised new toys. I also told him that if he is too tired he is free to go. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life, and I will remember daily all the joy he brought. Rejoice at the thought of he and Odie together again. Still in a magnificently beautiful place, with all the loves that I don’t know how to live without.

Sep8

you make the choice of how it goes…

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Sound asleep, my sister would rock back and forth on her hands and knees and bang her forehead against the wall. It would wake me, and I would get up and go into her room and softly coax her back to laying down, tuck her in again, and go back to bed. My brother would regularly sleep walk while talking out loud. He would pace through the entire second floor where all of us five kids slept. It would wake me, and I would get up and gently walk him back to his bed and tuck him in. I was scared he would fall down the long staircase some night without my hearing him, but fortunately that never happened.

My parents bedroom was on the first floor at the opposite end of the house. They were either at a party, the bar, or passed out drunk. They never heard a thing. None of my four siblings ever remembered any of these instances that so terrified me. Did they think I made it up?

My brother died two years ago of an apparent heart attack in his sleep, at the age of 62. He had overcome alcoholism, drug addiction, and quit smoking – all cold turkey with no support. He was a remarkable person, but he was never able to quit a gambling addiction. And so he lived in abject poverty, working right up to his death and living in a rented room in the home of a coworker.

My sister knows for certain that his heart attack was caused by the Covid vaccine. She blames those good-for-nothing evil Democrats. Thank god we have RFK now to save us all, and a president who knows what is truly going on here – the spiritual war we are fighting for the redemption of mankind’s soul. In case you don’t know me, yes – I am being irreverently facetious. Also believe me when I say I really don’t get it.

I have three siblings still living. We barely keep in touch; we’re about down to reporting the obituaries of our mutual friends and relatives. We exchange emojis on holidays…you know, Happy 4th of July and all. As if we didn’t share the first 20 years of our daily lives. Suffice it to say we have nothing in common. Oh, we all five grew up in the same house. We all five had the same two parents. We went to the same schools, had many of the same teachers. We shared every holiday, the same music, all the vacations, the same four grandparents, we ate the same food. But we had very different childhoods. How does this happen?

Seriously, can someone please explain this to me?! Gabor Mate can theorize about it and I understand what he is saying, but my own experience just doesn’t jive. Hard as I try, I cannot reconcile our continued disparate realities.

I miss my family. I still miss us. I have no one to share the stories and the memories with. Meanwhile, my cells don’t seem to run dry of the endless tears. I’m old enough now to know they will come forever. And just wise enough to welcome them. Some days my grief will not be consoled, and still I am nothing but grateful for it all.

From their point of view, this separation in our worlds is entirely down to me. I’m the different one; the one who questions everything. The one who needs answers when obviously, there is no problem except my mental illness. This is on me; they do not suffer these imaginary indulgences. They figured it out long ago. They found Jesus. They are healed. How I envy them their conviction.

On the rare occasion when we do talk, I am guarded. If I slip and say the wrong thing I will be corrected, maybe even ghosted for a time. I am too much for them. Given time to reflect on the error of my ways, I realize I am wrong. To them. They love me, but they do not like me. They have no desire to connect, to understand me, to know me. And I have finally given up the need to be understood and accepted by them; I’m sure they’d say the same. That only took way too long.

Of us five children I am the eldest by 3 years. The four of them were born in close succession, four within six years. I was the first child, the first grandchild on both sides, and for over 3 years I enjoyed being the center of their attention and the apple of their eye. My siblings, like my father before them, will tell you that is why I am a narcissist.

Not in any effort to defend myself here (it’s my platform, after all…) I would aver that I prefer an evidence based model of reality. Or as I say to them, I choose my crazy. I value science and therefore neuroscience and psychology; I see no discrepancy between science and religion. My God is a quantum physicist and still, miraculously, maintains a sense of humor. My siblings refer to this rebellious misguidance as my “Jesus is just alright with me” spirituality, referring to the days when we all enjoyed a good spliff and some Doobie Brothers on Dad’s dime.

Here’s the thing, I guess…the evidence says to me that they live in vapid denial. There is no worse thief on the earth plane than denial. It has stolen our lives. It has taken everything from us. Everything except my hard-earned sanity.

Of the 7 of us in my family of origin, I am the only one who has not suffered the ravages of chemical addiction. Since my early 20’s I have not drank or smoked or used drugs. I tried them. You were a square and no fun and a snob in my family if you wouldn’t partake. I’d resist, hence my nickname, Little Goody Two Shoes. I remember a Sunday night during high school when my father ordered me to do a line and fill in at the Euchre table as they were down a player. I protested, explaining that I had a History final the next day, and he gave me his I’ll-knock-you-into-next-week look. “You can make it up!” Yes, sir.

Pardon me if I call that evidence. There are more stories like that than I will ever have time to tell. None of them were living their best life, but not for me to say. They all six struggled with homelessness, depression, addiction, all of their lives. A couple of them were grifters, committing fraud, and somehow narrowly dodging the law. I was called to provide bail and an alibi more than once. I learned to hide my valuable possessions. I wish I’d learned sooner to hide my heart.

The other side of this insane equation is that I also got so so so much from them. Each and every one of them were extraordinary people. They all were born with high IQ’s, enormous creative talent. Funny! Wow, I wish I had the quick wit of my mom, my brother, and my son. How does anyone think that fast?! They’d have gotten on well with Robin Williams! Had they been any less intelligent and charming they might have ended up in prison, but in fact they all had so much going for them. Yet they lived in poverty and pain. Denial does that, theirs or yours. Makes you a refugee in your own life.

My physician asked me to take the A.C.E. test a few years ago. You can take it here and compile your own evidence. I scored an 8.

Sep3

home is a many-layered thing…

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First journal? Scrapbook? We were kids when we started, eh? With a diary in grade school. So, for me that was the 1950’s. Although I was drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil (per my mother), magazine tear sheets wouldn’t come into being until I was in high school in the 60’s. But once I discovered magazines a whole new world opened up, quite literally. The world became a much smaller place once it was delivered to the mailbox.

It began with Seventeen. Barbie grew up and dressed in Betsy Johnson. But it wasn’t long before art and shelter magazines like Metamorphosis and Architectural Digest and Rolling Stone broadened my horizons. And then The Sun.

Suddenly my life was too small. I couldn’t wait to leave the boring suburbs for real life in the city. Little did I know…I wouldn’t get too far too fast, probably a good thing. Family kept me close and I set aside the acceptance letters to RISD and Parsons and New York School of Design for Wayne State and Center for Creative Studies, known then as Arts and Crafts. It was across the street from the fabulous and inspiring DIA, to this day one of the best art museums in the country. It was my familiar stomping ground as I would often skip high school (I still got A’s & B’s) to spend the day roaming the galleries, dreaming and sketching. Other days you’d find me on the 13th floor of the J.L. Hudson Company, moving from vignette to vignette in the furniture and design department, imagining what I would do with that room.

It had never occurred to me that I would be anything but an artist or a writer. It wasn’t what I did; it was who I was. Fast forward five+ decades and I look back, longingly some days. At the life I sidestepped somehow, too young married and mothering and clambering for survival. The demons were lurking in the shadows, fighting amongst themselves for attention. They were not to be ignored. In retrospect, I wouldn’t trade any of it – but that realization happened just the other day. It’s a process, like me. I’ll have to keep you posted as to when I solidify.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (has that euphemism become old?!) some things have not changed much. I’m still obsessed with art and music and design. As I said, it is who I am. I was born this way. That’s why I keep insisting that you cannot miss your purpose. You don’t need to search for it; God hardwired it in. You can miss the option of different vocations – but your purpose is not a job. It’s who you are. It’s your calling. And spirit – your spirit – will nudge you toward happiness and fulfillment ceaselessly. Every day every day every day. You will realize yourself one way or another, sooner or later. And you will relax into being. You are whole. And holy. Right here, right now. Try to enjoy yourself already.

Sep2

I don’t clean up for less.

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Okay, I admit, I am easily entertained. Although I’ve become increasingly pickier with age. Want my money, my time, my attention? That bar is high these days; it will remain so. My standards have been raised. Some people have the gall to tell me that my standards are too high. Others might say they had nowhere to go but up. However, I don’t much care what some might say anymore…

My criteria for acceptable entertainment (as well as information) has been refined, taste aside. I expect high quality in everything I take in, whether that be news, movies, television, music…or our relationship. And by quality, I mean on every level. My senses are going to be bombarded with the culture of sensationalism every day, so bring it. If I am going to watch, I want high quality cinematography. Listening? Crisp high quality sound while I’m weeding out the crap. No more perfumey candles to smell or scratchy fabrics against my skin. I’ve had to improve the quality of the food I eat if I want to be healthy – and isn’t that work these days?! Read the labels, research – and then pay more to have them leave the chemicals and the seed oils out. Even my cat deserves nothing less than the best quality food I can possibly afford.

Now in my 70’s, I’ve survived more than most people can imagine. A lifetime of narcissistic abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse. I have walked through hell. I’ve watched – and felt – almost every person I’ve ever loved suffer through cancer and addiction. Now I watch my beloved child struggle from decades of absent adults, never present enough to protect him from the same ravages. My gorgeous, brilliant nieces and nephews – and their children now; living out the 4th generation of trauma. To say I have paid my dues is an understatement. The only thing I’m sorry for are all the years I wasted making compromises. Repeat after me: “All my debts are paid, seen and unseen.” And be absolutely certain of it.

Now – just now!, am I really getting to the good stuff of life. Droppin’ off the shame. I’m not made for that. Neither are you. So, no more apologies. No more begging to belong. We are everything we are meant to be.

“Be kind to me, or treat me mean. I’ll make the most of it; I’m an extraordinary machine.” – Fiona Apple

Aug21

bugger

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“People without a sense of humor will never forgive you for being funny.” – Joyce, The Thursday Murder Club

In my fantasy life I host a writer’s group once a month. Or maybe we pretend to be a book group or a writer’s group but we really solve murders. We gather around my gorgeous little antique dining table in the upholstered rattan chairs and talk and ponder all afternoon. We have tea, coffee, perhaps a sip of prosecco. We open little party gifts we’ve made or collected for each other, and we eat cucumber sandwiches and scones with lots of cream…someone falls asleep out on the veranda in the chaise lounge. It’s just a little nap. Some drooling might occur, but no one will hold it against you.

They love coming to my home, because, well, let’s face it – I know how to entertain. And put together a list of suspects. No one leaves hungry, and everyone leaves excited and hopeful and full of new ideas. It will be hard to sleep tonight.

In my actual life, a dear friend is moving into a new apartment in a retirement community, as did another friend not long ago. I’m experiencing pangs of jealousy. First of all, I love being old. Helen Mirren said “the best part of being over 70 is being over 70.” So hanging out with peers is ever so appealing. Young people just don’t get it. I want no-holds-barred brutally honest communication – and I also want to be home in my pajamas by 8.

All of my adult life I’ve wanted for nothing more than a big, raucous house full of family and friends. Kids and grandkids, constant coming and going. Music playing and spontaneous dancing and laughter and laughter and laughter. And a private office off my bedroom with a door that locks when “I vant to be left alone.“

That was my childhood home, and I spent the last 50 years of my life trying to recreate it. But it wasn’t real. It was a sham. My childhood home was also hiding terrible neglect and abuse and dysfunction. The big loud happy home was just for show. My parents wanted the happy home, too; they also didn’t know how to make it happen. They didn’t know how to face the addiction demons. Neither was I going to be able to create the life I wanted; I had not a clue how to go about it. And so shame tends to creep into my dreams and cloud my sleep. When I wake I feel entirely like a failure. Where did I go wrong?

That’s where the deep sense of failure stems from: I’m smart…but not smart enough to have figured this out when I was younger. To have stopped trying to please everyone else and keep everyone else safe; to have known that survival mode will never get you where you want to go. I was slow to understand that love is not transactional, nor negotiable. I wasn’t just quite smart enough to know that we really cannot earn our way to health and happiness…to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I AM already everything I could possibly dream. My loyalty and devotion were misplaced outside myself.

And now I have lived long enough to know the privilege of looking myself in the mirror and asking, “IS that what you really wanted? Or perhaps, is there something far more valuable to be gleaned here?” And now I can let myself fall apart at the seems. I grieve the life I spent trying to fulfill a fantasy that, in fact, I would not choose now. Now that I belong to myself.

“Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it, at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.” – Barbara Kingsolver

Aug16

those darn judgey aunts

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Do we all fantasize about an out-of-the-blue inheritance from a long lost aunt or uncle? I do. But in my real life, I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. My Dad’s dad, Russell, was a second generation Irish immigrant. His family settled here in the Traverse City area, but during the automobile boom he moved to Detroit for factory employment. My father was a teenager by then and he and my mother would become high school sweethearts.

By the time I was a teen my grandparents had retired to Florida, but I remained close to my grandfather’s sister, my great Aunt Edith. As I grew older I would come to understand that my parents were not close to her. My Mother particularly, although my Mother was an angel incarnate and never complained or said a bad word about anyone. I would always make sure Aunt Edith, who was alone, was invited to all the holiday dinners and family events. My parents were always polite and accepting.

Aunt Edith and I would come to blows early in my adult life. She did not approve of me at all. I divorced my abusive alcoholic husband for starters. That was not allowed in her church. To make matters worse, I had “colored” friends. And they visited my home – in the same neighborhood where she lived, no less! I was the one who was ruining the neighborhood. And I was a smart aleck. When she was berating me, I asked her exactly what kind of Christianity they were teaching in that church of hers, and she actually threw a bible at me.

When Aunt Edith passed away she left a three million dollar estate to her next of kin, her brothers. She had inherited that money from her estranged husband (at least she wasn’t divorced!) who owned a string of shady motels along 8 Mile Road during Detroit’s boom years. But that’s a story for another day. Edith’s four brothers had preceded her in death, including my grandfather. Her brother’s children would inherit from her, of which my father was one fifth. Because I was the only remaining member of my family who had any contact with her the attorney had to enlist me to help him find her nephews. They were scattered around the country and in fact she had never met most of them. None of them had seen or heard of her in decades. I was the only one who had any idea where they lived. In my youthful naivete, I had asked Aunt Edith to talk about her family to me. I wanted to know.

And so, those cousins I had never met inherited money from a long lost aunt they had never known. My father lived in Florida at the time, under an alias, as he was hiding from the law. His children would never see a dime of that money; my guess is it all went up his nose.

I was the only member of my immediate family named in Aunt Edith’s will. She left me $1500. and her personal belongings, including her 20 year old car – which my father insisted on buying from me. He reneged once I handed him the title. “Well you didn’t pay for it, so why should I pay you?” he said. He continued to badger me for her belongings until one day I said, “Dad – I have nothing left to give you unless I start making payments to you out of my own earnings.” He hung up on me, and it would be over 20 years before I’d hear of him again.

My favorite British streaming service has a new series that premiered this week, Irish Blood. It tells the story of a woman who inherits a home on an Irish loch from her estranged father. She inherits his troubles as well, and has to deal with the criminal thugs he was involved with. Similarly, I did inherit my father’s troubles. Newly divorced with a young toddler, we lived in the suburbs of Detroit. I was being harassed by federal agents looking for my Dad. Men in black suits would wake me pounding on the door late at night demanding to know his whereabouts – which fortunately I did not know.

I’m out of aunts and uncles and parents and a brother and most of my cousins. I’m the old matriarch now, and I’m still waiting for the house on an Irish loch.