Archive for the 'Familia' Category

Upon remembrance of you

October 12, 2007 | Filed under: Familia

“The faintest waft is sometimes enough to induce feelings of hunger or anticipation, or to transport you back through time and space to a long-forgotten moment in your childhood. It can overwhelm you in an instant or simply tease you, creeping into your consciousness slowly and evaporating almost the moment it is detected.” ~Stephen Lacey

When I met them, they lived in New York, but they were all southerners. Three from Alabama and one from West Virginia and so I try not to make jokes about kissing cousins but I’m sure they once regaled the stories of farms and hot nights on the porch, working in coal-mines and the time a tractor ran through the house.

My memories of them – my grandparents – are mostly foggy with a hint of sunshine and clarity every now and then. Everything is in pieces and out of place and probably a story I’ll never remember. I can think of the grapevines in my maternal grandparent’s backyard in Queens. I loved grapes then as much as I do now. My grandfather took us to McDonald’s each Saturday. He would get a chocolate shake and I would get a Big Mac. Garrett and I had walking sticks for our tours around the neighborhood to keep away dogs. The sticks were like checking under the bed for a monster before turning off the lights; completely ineffective and still I believed.

The summer he broke his back and the lung cancer was discovered, my mother and I went to visit him in the hospital. My mother was performing her power of attorney duties and a doctor asked whether or not he wanted to sign a DNR. While most things about him are a blur I distinctly remember him saying, “If the good Lord wants to take me away, then I’m ready”. He died the day after Christmas and his funeral was held on New Year’s Eve. I now hate New Year’s.

He is the one I remember the best. I know that we spent the most time together and that he let me drink his coffee and bought packages of lollipops and always said that it was “grand day.” He was my mother’s father and unlike my grandmother, he didn’t ask what color I was when I was born. He liked the coconut rabbit cake my mother made for Easter and the first time the World Trade Center was bombed, he let me and Garrett stay up late and slide down the stairs in laundry basket covered by a blanket. He was the first person to ever use the ‘N’ word in front of me during a thirteen hour car drive to western Alabama. He always wore a hat and flannel shirts. He used powdered shaving cream and allowed me to perch on the sink next to him while he mixed the green paste together and whistled away.

The other day Danielle and I were discussing grandparents and she said that she couldn’t imagine what it would be like for someone who never met their grandparents. That is something I will never know but then I can’t help but wonder if it’s as difficult as trying to remember things about them once they are gone. The little things that at one point were incredibly insignificant but now are permanently etched in the mind. I don’t remember the color of my shirt yesterday but I can’t help but thank God, every time I remember what my grandfather smelled like and to smile when I come across a bar of Irish Spring.

Vapid and proud

August 23, 2007 | Filed under: Blogology, Familia

“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” ~Jules Renard

Before I went to Oklahoma, Sarah wanted to make sure that when the awkward “so how do you all know each other” question came up that there was a good answer. Shana and Susan at least had a plausible reason to be there and I am just this person who flew in from NY for the weekend because I heard there would be free cupcakes and I am all for free food.

She decided that she would tell people that we met at a scrapbooking convention in Reno. Of course I went along with this because I find nothing more interesting than finding cute stickers to put along side my photos of a night out in Madrid when I punched my friend Mo in the face (The reason? Because he is a male). At one point someone asked the dreaded question and I managed to keep from blowing my cover by inserting half of my face into a glass of wine. The cover was blown and Sarah said that she met me because I write about personal finance online and she had been reading me.

Let me tell you what people do when they find out you “write about personal finance” online, they start asking you for advice such as whether or not to put their money in a high yield but risky international money market account or how to start their 401(K). I have no fucking clue. In fact my “writing about personal finance” is less writing and more complaining about being broke and lamenting on the price of organic foods and then complaining about being broke then hitting up a Kate Spade sample sale. I am not Suze Orman so I wouldn’t consider anything I write (Do ubiquitous run on sentences full of bullshit count as writing?) to be good advice or anything worth reading in fact one should make great strides to ignore the girl that believes that cantaloupe should cost $9.00.

I’ve been receiving all of these personal finance/quarter life whatever books for research purposes. Garrett asked me if I was writing a book to which the answer is no, unless I can write a picture book while being petulant for 350 pages. The reason for the research is to give me more ideas of what to write about given that apparently people from Yahoo! think that my complaining (the word ‘write’ is so not what I do. I’m a shitty writer but a fantastic complainer) about money is so great that they asked me to complain over there as well. I will admit to being shocked because I didn’t know there was a market for broke ass 23 year olds who are experts in not saving money. Though in truth, I’m more than willing to share that time I couldn’t afford a bed so slept on the floor for seven months if it will teach another 20-something to save the proper 10% of their paycheck, lest they want to spend weeks on a twin size mattress in the middle of January in close proximity to a mouse.

My parents know of my new writing and have been telling everyone they encounter that their daughter now writes complains for Yahoo! Which whatever, I’ll let them have their dreams and proud moments because it’s better than the time my father googled me and found out about my proficient use of “c-u-next-Tuesday” (ahem) and that I sometimes drink so much I throw up. As I’m pretty sure that was his proudest day as a father.

My family doesn’t read my complaining and frankly they think I’m boring as shit. Or as G put so well “Apparently the rest of the world finds you more interesting than your family does.” Never have truer words been spoken.

We harrass each other out of love

July 6, 2007 | Filed under: Familia

“The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble.”  ~Clara Ortega

When my mother went to Prague in October of 2001, I subsisted on a diet of peach schnapps and frozen thin mints. I bit my nails and cuticles until they bled. She left six weeks after a terrorist attack and was very ‘ho hum’ about it all. Meanwhile our last conversation was a constant loop in my head. A conversation during which she told me who to call in the event anything should happen and where her will was located and that my inheritance had already been promised to American University, so I shouldn’t be expecting anything.

I’m not one to usually miss my parents or family in such extreme ways, interesting given my fondness for going to the extreme. But there was such a strong and recent fear that something would happen that I could hardly control myself. Everything I did during the 10 days she was in Prague was completely methodical and done in such a way that it was as if I had no control. That’s how strong and real the fear was.

Fear not, because now she’ll leave the country and I tend to forget and then when I do remember I frantically send her an email reminding her to stop at Zara on La Rambla or to get me my favorite perfume in Paris. Then I go back to my humdrum life of being distracted by shiny objects.

I was able to joke about G not having a list for going to Senegal (then Ghana) because it was days away, so it didn’t feel real. We’re notorious for our ups and downs and for attempting to kill each other and locking each other outside for hours. But he’s my baby brother and I love him with the fire of a billion suns and I think I might spend the next five weeks biting my nails until they bleed and drinking Hefeweizen and listening to the CD he made me last night.

It’s torture knowing that someone you love – but would never dare let him know – is so very far away in such an unfamiliar place. My mind goes to those extremes and “what ifs” because that’s just how I work, I think the worse.

He’ll of course come back in five weeks and I’ll complain about not having the bathroom to myself anymore and why I didn’t bust down the wall between our rooms to make a master suite for myself. I’ll complain that he stole my DVDs and opens my netflix envelopes and I’ll have to resist the urge to crack a bottle of wine over his head.

But until then I’m totally going to miss that infuriating, maddening, giant sized, motherfucker.

I’m going to start making lists

July 3, 2007 | Filed under: Familia, Humdrum

” Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible. ” ~George Claude Lorimer

I, being one of the most flighty individuals that ever graced the earth, find list making to be some sort of foreign activity reserved for special occasions. “Sticking to task” is not my forte and is something that very boring people do. I like to fly by the seat of my pants and to delve into something and then move onto the next thing. I tell myself that I have tons of time and then procrastinate further.

I try to make it sound so very charming and endearing: “Oh, how I love to just put all of my cares into the wind…live life as it comes. How lovely.” But really my lack of process only leads to dire stress and pain and tears and excessive consumption of beer and hand wringing. It’s just so very awful and so I end up lying in bed until the wee hours praying fervently to whichever deity will listen, for relief and giving promises of becoming a better and more altruistic person in return for relieving me of my self induced stress.

G leaves for Ghana on Wednesday. That would be the Wednesday roughly 36 hours from today. I thought he left Friday and when he said that he was leaving on Wednesday with nary a malaria pill or t-shirt packed, my heart dropped into my stomach for him. My cousin and I both interrogated him as to where exactly his list was. He HAD to have a list. How does one just go to Ghana without a very long list of things to pack? It’s not like you walk out onto the streets of Accra and lo and behold there’s a Target just in case you forget anything. It’s GHANA. I kept repeating this to him over and over again.

“Chill the fuck out. I packed for Las Vegas the night before. I have everything I need it just needs to go into a bag”

People, here is a good time to pause and well…list…the stringent differences between Las Vegas and Ghana. The first being the lack of an Hermes store and free alcohol while playing nickel slots. Also a lack of big and tall stores for my linebacker sized brother.

I kept sitting here talking to my cousin about why he didn’t have a fucking list. Ok fine, I’m not the most organized person in the world but I feel that leaving the country requires focus and list making and making sure that one is well equipped with anti-diarrheal medication. Then she – in her uber mom mode – started rattling off her various lists: one for tonight, one for tomorrow morning and one for tomorrow afternoon. Her list for tonight includes “going to bed early.”

“I can’t tell you the rush I get every time I get to cross something off. It’s exhilarating. You’ll see, once you have children, you’ll be a list maker.”

I’ll question the validity of that statement until I do have children of my own. But for now, I just want to remove G from the trance of Engaged and Underaged and remind him of what malaria parasites can do and that maybe, just maybe, he might want to at least write down ‘bug spray’ and ‘mosquito net’ before he returns with hypoglycemia and renal failure.

Melissa

July 1, 2007 | Filed under: Familia, Humdrum

“Babies are such a nice way to start people.” ~Don Herrold

I feel like I’ve had a rough week. I’m tired and cranky with a side of restlessness as I’m settling into things. Though yesterday afternoon I realized that my crankiness and feelings of being unsettled and generally ‘floppy’ do not compare to those of a newborn. I mean, one day you’re inside all warm and cozy and everything is wonderful and blissful and next thing you know, you’re being ripped from your habitat and thrust into a world where it’s like 95% humidity even in the shade and the light…oh the fucking light…it’s everywhere. People are poking and prodding you and all you want to do is be left alone and get some fucking sleep.

When I tried to coax my niece awake yesterday by poking her, I started to feel bad because she’s had a pretty shitty week and she wanted some rest and there I – along with her parents – were telling her to wake the fuck up because when I show my father these photos, he’s going wonder if the child has eyeballs. And I’m going to have to say “I really don’t know.”

I also realized yesterday that I would make the worst mother ever, because I find newborns to be so very boring, but also, if my brothers continue to have children and G gets the five (oh yes, FIVE) children that he so desires, then I can never have children, and neither of my parents will notice. Besides, my father has a hard time remembering MY name, so I wouldn’t want to add more burden to his life by forcing him to remember anymore names than he already has to.