The young and restless

I've just spent a week watching my brother with his 4-year-old daughter, my niece. My mom was along for the whole ride -- and I felt like I were 4 again, being cajoled into being in a good mood or else I would be punished. Or is that how you discipline 4-year-olds?

What is the message we're really giving? That it's not okay to be in a bad mood? That's the part that resonates with me. Oh, the threats of childhood: my mom's "parenting techniques," in current vernacular -- she went in for bribes, whether in cash, opera glasses (how someone got me to believe they were better than sucking my thumb is beyond the adult me), or simple threats, i.e., I'm going to crack your skulls together. Or, my favorite: "I'm going to break every bone in your body,"

"How many bones would that be?" I used to ask. 206, I knew. 211 until the last few bones knit together, at what point I don't remember. How did I know? My mom's favorite suggestion if we asked her a question and she didn't know, "look it up." A little knowledge was a lot of protection, and it was fun to use her mandate against her.

Sometimes being a smart-ass kid pays off. Sometimes it didn't. Must say, though, every chance I got to come back with a clever remark, one that made the grown-ups laugh, I took it. If my parents, my-mom-the-disciplinarian in particular, broke out laughing, chances are I was way ahead of the game.

That is, to my eyes, a lot of what child-raising and disciplining is all about: while parents rule the young and restless, once the restless acquire a good vocabulary and sense of what brings ironic laughter to the parent, it's a whole new ball game.

Between my niece's mother sharing my sense of irony and humor and what she'll pick up from my side of the family, I suspect my niece will be firing back some really funny remarks, sooner rather than later. She's a bright kid, reciting "Madeline" from memory. She already knows about the Eiffel Tower.

So my Auntie Mame-ism, begun at my niece's last birthday, when I picked the book to read her to sleep and try to interest her in Paris -- is already working: five months later, she's drawing pictures of the Eiffel Tower. Show me another child from Tiny Town, Sleepy Southern State who is learning about Paris as fast as she's learning about Wonderland from all her trips here.

I'll bet she makes it to Paris before her mother, my ex-sister-in-law (what is a better description of my niece's mother?) leaves the U.S. Or is that just my projecting the happier part, the not-at-home portion, of my childhood onto her? I can't tell.

Dream a little dream of me...

Over at Dementia Nights, one of my high school friends has been chronicling the experience of his father's Alzheimer's disease. Today, he is transporting his father to a nursing home. It is the hardest thing Alan, an only child, has ever had to face: being the father to his father.

I am dreading the day that I will live that experience first-hand: that day when I will be that parent to my own mother. Regardless of my having a sibling, chances are good I will be called upon the mother to my mother, and that my brother won't.

In our society, when baby boomers have aging parents who need care, unless one is an only son, it is still the daughters who do the heavy lifting. Or perhaps it is the child deemed "the responsible one" vs. "the fuck up" at an early age. We do live up to and down to parental expectations, alas.

My brother may have the best intentions in the world, but when it comes down to who's in charge of mom, that is going to be me. With bells on. Already have power of attorney. Ditto her health care proxy.

Given that both of my mom's parents went gaga, I have to think the genetic odds are unfortunately good that my mom will end up the same way. The Alzheimer's diagnosis wasn't on the radar when Grandpa Abe lost his marbles. Thirty years ago, he was just plain senile.

I have a vague inkling of what Alan is going through -- but from the distance of packing up and transporting my maternal grandmother. I don't think she ever knew what hit her during the senility send-off we gave her.

(Cue up the Mamas and the Papas, "dream a little dream of me," which went through my head while packing up my grandmother's things in 1989 and which seems to be my brain's link to that situation. Don't ask for a logical explanation for that.)

The day we parked my grandmother at what is generically the Jewish Home for the Aged, we discovered Little Haiti, the part of Miami where Granny Lee lived out her last days -- years of them. We know Haiti, the island, intimately.

We also figured that Little Haiti was not exactly in an upscale part of town. Then again, in the seven or more years Granny Lee lived at the Jewish Home, it's hard to say if she ever left the premises for more than some minor grocery shopping -- or dinner, with my brother and me.

She was happy to go to Denny's -- probably would have gone to Taco Bell, if that had been our decision. Over dinner, she informed us that there was too much sex on TV and in the magazines. That was, we think, the only time she ever uttered the word "sex," although she had, when I was a child, made reference to Grandpa Abe "getting amorous."

Grandpa Abe went gaga first. The last time we had dinner as a family, he didn't recognize my mom, his only child. He said, "I used to take my daughter fishing." I doubt he was talking to the waiter. My mom ran into the bathroom and I followed her: did that mark the beginning of my care-taking career?

Or had I always been the care-taker-in-training? I don't know, and it is way too late in the day to figure out how I got that gig. I just know I have my hat and my checklist when, 20 years from now, my mom's inability to provide nouns in her speech will render her incomprehensible. I am not looking forward to it.

The ex-wives club

Since the papers have been signed, I count four ex-sisters-in-law, only one of whom I care about. Ex #4, A., is the mother of my niece. Despite the not-so-surprising end of the marriage, I want to stay on good terms with her. I need the connection.

A. has physical custody of my one and only niece, Kay, who is my link to the next generation. How to make nice with A. without disturbing my brother? Friends say, send Kay postcards (not that a 2 1/2 year old can read), presents, and so forth -- just to keep my name in the air in her mother's household.

When Kay gets a little bit older, I'll start sending family photos, with lengthy captions explaining who's who. I'll write her stories about my dad, the grandfather she will never have met. I'll write stories about my brother, about my mom. I will be the witness, Kay's link to a family she otherwise may know only when we die and she inherits.

In the meanwhile, I have befriended A. on facebook. We have the occasional chat -- about her school, work, and my niece. FB is good for keeping in touch from a comfortable distance. When I'm typing instead of talking, I am more deliberate in what I say.

In some ways, that cuts down on the misinterpretation factor, but at the same time, so much is left out: the body language, the facial expressions, any visual clues. This is always the problem with e-communications; here, it's exacerbated by the speed with which a typed chat occurs.

I keep clear of any mention of my brother. Today, however, I'm wondering how to interpret A.'s status. A. "is happy that things are looking up. for a change:)." Dare I ask why? I think not. I'm curious, but at some point I have to be an observer.

Occasionally I wonder: what would happen if all the ex-wives got together? Each one took my brother's last name. It might be confusing: "Mrs. Uptown, this is Mrs. Uptown, this is Mrs. Uptown, this is Mrs. Uptown."

Did they revert to their previous surnames? From Social Security to the DMV, Department of State (ex # 1 was the sole passport holder), the IRS, and whatever other government institutions in the need-to-know loop, that's a lot of bureaucracy to contend with. Each one said, "I do," then after fewer than three years (each) said, "I don't."

Hard to know why any of my brother's marriages ended: we are not a family to ask for details best left unspoken. All I know is, each time he says, "I should never have married her." That's four "hers" now, and we hope he won't take the plunge again.

Honestly? I want to take all of his divorce papers and hide them in New York, so the next time he has the urge to merge, he has to get on a plane to fetch the papers. At least it would buy some time. He may be over the marriage thing, finally, though his track record suggests otherwise.

After wife #2 didn't pan out, I stopped getting invested in my brother's partners. I assumed he would always have one, but that she was subject to change. No point in my even knowing the maiden names of the women in the ex-wives club. I do have some recollections, however, not just of their names:

Ex #1 was Smith (sic) ; ex #2, not a clue; ex #3 was Cluck or Gluck or something to that effect, courtesy of her first husband; ex # 4, Kent. Looks like surnames of one syllable have been popular. And what would Emily Post say? Not sure she covers that territory.

A quarter of a century ago, Miss Manners did: "the truly correct style is to combine Mrs. with your maiden and [married] last name...but few people use it nowadays." By that rule, ex # 1 would be Mrs. Smith Uptown. However ex # 1, like her successors, was not the type to have heard of Emily Post or Miss Manners.

Ex #1 was, to put it mildly, a bitch on wheels. (Another epithet comes to mind, one rhyming with "bunt.") Of the group, she was the most educated -- and the one who lied on her financial aid application for law school, saying she was single to get a scholarship.

If she hadn't known so many family secrets, I would have made sure she got had gotten hit by payback. But I couldn't. What I know is, payback's a bitch unto itself. Perhaps karma will take, or have taken, care of her. My brother left her on Christmas day, the best present he ever gave me.

She made out like the proverbial bandit: after she and brother were through, my brother, who should have had a prenup, had no nup left to pre. Her list of parting gifts was extraordinary: a house, a car, law school tuition, a set of sterling silver my brother had inherited, and a lot more that I can't remember, seeing that the marriage ended in 1991.

Her father was an Episcopal priest. At the wedding, someone dug up a rabbi to hold up our family's end of the heritage. I was pressed into service as a bridesmaid. (I wanted to set fire to the acetate dress, but refrained.)

My father, who was the best man, forgot his cuff links and had to sew buttons onto his shirt. We were late to the ceremony, and you don't need Freud to figure out why.

That was brother's only church (did I ever say we were religious Jews?) wedding; the rest were City Hall specials that sounded about as exciting as renewing a driver's license.

Wife #2? That was more of a drive-by than an actual marriage. They pledged their troth (tell me, what is troth?) after eight weeks together, and divorced two years later. She was the daughter of Jehovah's Witnesses and had even been christened or baptized or what have you herself.

When I heard about her religious background, I hoped no offspring were forthcoming -- because I didn't want to have nieces or nephews raised as little door-knockers offering up copies of the Watchtower.

#2 took Oprah as gospel, which I didn't realize when started pondering aloud about the power of the media and how warped it could get. Whoops. Put my brother between a rock and a hard place. I remember telling him I would get on the next plane out of town if it would keep the peace.

Prior to marriage #3, my brother's mother-in-law to be took me aside and asked about my brother's "intentions." Excuse me? Intentions? Of a 35-year-old man with two ex-es already to the good?

Wife #3 came with two children, though motherhood was not her forte. The elder daughter turned into a teenage terrorist who proved incorrigible, not that her mother helped. Elder daughter got locked up in juvie jail, and upon her release, had to have "piss tests" whenever the authorities wanted. This put a crimp in wife #3's style, or so she bitched to me.

If we had national health insurance, I suspect wife #3 would not have gained her position. Sure, my brother liked to get married, but this time, it seems, his employee benefits were a major attraction.

The third segued into the fourth, who was half my brother's age. Now he says he married her to give his child a father. Okay. Wife #4 hadn't had a legal father of her own, that I knew of. And that marriage did produce my one-and-only niece, whom I adore. Still, was the paperwork necessary? Couldn't he just have put his name on the birth certificate?

For various reasons, including the fact that gay marriage isn't legally recognized by the IRS, I have never been formally married. What amazes me is, my brother and I grew up in the same household, saw the movie of our parents' lives unfold together.

Perhaps one of us saw the director's cut and the other saw the dailies. In any case, marriage never struck me as a good deal, though it struck my brother as the best thing since, yea, sliced bread. Our adult lives have unfolded in such different directions that I don't even feel I can ask, why marry? Or maybe I don't want to know the answer.

What I do know is, I have a niece, and I want her to know me as more than Aunt Alice swooping in from out of town for a few days a year. I don't know how I'll achieve that, but I'm hoping my current strategy will be the right one.

Alice va a Buenos Aires para aprender español

So far, that's about all of Alice's Spanish, but she's off to another hemisphere to wait out the freezes of February, keep her mind occupied and her skin warm, and reactivate her hiatus from responsibility.

January has been another month of travel and health crises: last month Brother had spinal cord surgery; this month, The Best Friend, aka Clover's Companion. Brother recovered quickly enough to return to Sleepy Southern State, where Alice went to celebrate her niece's second birthday.

However, back in Wonderland, Alice returned to find TBF still in serious condition, two weeks after her six hours under the knife. Alice trusts the visiting nurse, but the friend chosen to babysit TBF? Not so much.

Said babysitter's technological incompetence exceeds Alice's: yesterday Alice gave a magic show, what with turning on the cell phone and pushing the button to allow the thermometer to operate. Alice and TBF go back a long way, close to three decades on. If Alice were running the show, TBF would have a practical nurse from the time TBF's husband-the-doctor -- an actual practicing M.D.-- leaves the house until he returns.

When it comes to health care, Alice wants the pros. The cost is pretty much irrelevant. TBF is receiving all her nutrition from a feeding tube in her stomach. Fuck the friend/babysitter: TBF needs someone with real training. TBF is also attached to an antibiotic infusion, whose computer speeds the meds into her veins every four hours.

In another time, no M.D. would have dared consider her a home-care possibility. These days, it's let's cut, sew, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. If you can fog a mirror, apparently, you no longer qualify for a hospital bed, even if you have a staph infection that needs 24/7 antibiotics and you can't even swallow.

This is scary stuff: if Alice had her way, the amateur would have long since been dismissed, but she has no standing here, just her hopes and her prayers that husband-the-doctor (heretofore known as HTmD) takes damn good care of TBF, who is Alice's nearest and dearest.

Alice is equally powerless at home or 4000 miles away, and since TBF's babysitter is acting as guard dog, and HTmD is short on details, she has opted to leave town.

She is running for her life and praying for the life of TBF.

Y'all come back now, ma'am...

Five days in Tiny Town, Slow Southern State, where brother (the bro), sister-in-law, (A), and niece, Kayanna, reside. 120 hours with my mother, including hours of one-on-one transit and ho-motel time. (119.5 hours too many for my nervous system.)

We went to celebrate Kayanna's first birthday, and to meet the relatives on A's side. (While the bro's previous wives never earned the title of sister-in-law, A is the mother of my niece, so regardless of what happens to his marriage, which I hope is stable and lasting (previous evidence to the contrary) she will always be related to me, always have a special place in my heart for making me Aunt Alice.

Fortunately it was a big party, first birthdays being more of a celebration that the parents survived a year than that the child did, so we didn't chat much with A's relatives, mostly nodded and stayed on the level of introductions. Surprisingly, my mother didn't drink until after Kayanna's Tinkerbelle-themed fete was over.

(We must thing alike, A and I. Knowing nothing about the party's theme, I had brought Kayanna the perfect complement: a DVD of Peter Pan.)

My niece is perfect: her temperament is serene; she has huge blue eyes, fine blonde hair, incredibly soft and unmarred skin, and the smile of an angel. Sure, I am biased, but my next-door neighbor in Wonderland (with no vested interest) says if Kayanna lived in Wonderland, she would make a great baby model, on the cover of American Baby or its current equivalent, as her daughter was.

Tiny Town is not much to write home (or here) about except for a few details. Unless hearing a Japanese chef with a Southern accent counts for racial diversity, Tiny Town is in the clear on that account. I did, however, notice upcoming observances for Martin Luther King Day, so perhaps the town, all 50,000, did get the integration memo.

It is not cosmopolitan by any stretch of the imagination. The inhabitants are, per Southern custom, exceedingly nice and polite. Shockingly polite to those -- and apparently I am one -- whom they perceive as their elders. Several of the guests at the birthday party said, "yes, ma'am" to questions I posed. Ma'am? Moi?

I'm not sure how long my Yankee mouth and I would last there, but, as Scarlett said, "tomorrow will be another day."

And I shall return (sans mother), to dote again.

A high chair in the dining room

My brother, sister-in-law, and niece came to New York for the week. It is the first time my sister-in-law, "A," has been north of, say, Washington, D.C. My niece, Kayanna, 10-months-old, had her first airplane ride and encounter with the T.S.A.

I wonder if they looked in her diaper for a concealed weapon. I think the odor of a ripe diaper would have been a perfect way -- and so subtle -- for Kayanna to express what I feel when I am disrobing to go through the metal detector. It would certainly have marked her as a member of Aunt Alice's family. We don't suffer fools easily.

Hard to believe I'm saying "sister-in-law" after my brother has only been married for 14 months. Wives one, two, and three were relegated to the status of "my brother's wife." This one, though, "A," mother of my niece, may be a keeper. Kayanna has my family's bloodline, for whatever that's worth. Meanwhile she's adorable.

I'm hoping Kayanna's gene pool will swim with common sense and high intelligence, and forgo the migraines and depression common to "A's" family and mine. In that sense my brother is brave; I was never willing to take the genetic roulette wheel out for a spin.

I like "A", babe in the woods that she is, more than previous models. She's bright, she's funny, she shares my family's sense of humor, which, if you didn't know us, you would have a hard time following, and not only is she intelligent, she wants her daughter to go to Harvard. She wants Kayanna to have more advantages than she did, and I don't doubt that she will try her damnedest to make sure that happens.

(I don't think "A" realizes that she has married into a family that has the financial advantages to make sure Kayanna gets the best education she can receive, but that is a story for another time.)

"A" and I even like the same TV and books. We are House and Law & Order: CI fans. Her favorite book is Pride and Prejudice, which give her the seal of intellectual approval from my over-educated self. (Previous wives were fond of Entertainment Tonight and that ilk, and I don't think any of them touched an actual book.)

Kayanna hasn't quite perfected her crawl: after a few steps on and and foot, she relaxes into the Army crawl, pulling herself along solely with the strength of her arms, and dragging the rest of her 20-pound body behind her. However, she can stand up, and if you hold her hand, she can walk.

This may be banal for anyone who writes a mommy blog or who has had their own children, but I'm the Aunt, and my exposure to babies has been very limited. Judging from my mother's anxiety before the Southern ("A" is from a Tiny Town in the deep South, where my brother had taken up permanent residence) contingent arrived, it would be difficult to tell that my mother had raised two children of her own, and those in the era before the participatory dad.

The stories she tells about us are getting more entertaining. Once, she lost my brother, age 3 or so, in Central Park. Another time she offered him PB&J or caviar for lunch. He was about 4. He went for the caviar. I said, no wonder we aren't mainstream. As a baby, I ditched the house key in another park, so the nanny had to go to the super's office to so we could get into the apartment.

What else happened when my mom was raising us? At Schraff's, circa 1964, I refused to wear a napkin tucked into my chin unless my mother and her friend did the same. They complied. Amazing what power I possessed as a 3-year-old. Then there was the time I tried to drown my brother in the wading pool, a story my mother repeats time and again, as if eventually I will remember the incident. I also don't remember pushing his pram into traffic, but it's another of mom's greatest hits.

Onto the high chair: my brother and "A" came to dinner at my house last night, with the baby. I had invited them in part because my mother has become the take-out queen, armed with menus and her VISA card; no one has seen her apply heat to food since the Southerners appeared. I thought they might like one of my rare home-cooked meals, not to mention a meal without my mom (something I was also looking forward to).

They said they thought they would feed Kayanna in her all-purpose baby seat/stroller seat/car seat, until I said, do you want a high chair for her? Next-door, my neighbor has a grandchild about 2 years older than Kayanna, so I called. In less than 5 minutes we had procured the high chair.

Now it sits, pulled in as close to the dining room table as my grown-up chairs. Kayanna and her parents have returned to my mother's, leaving me with an empty chair that says "your niece ate here."

I hope she comes back for more, soon.

An 8-year-old walks into a bar...

While I'm on the theme of, how-old-do-you-have-to-be-to-walk-into-a-bar?, I thought of my brother as a child, in Haiti. His third-grade teacher had asked him to keep a diary/journal describing his days at the beach, as my parents had pulled us out of school to extend our? theirs? (you pick) vacation.

To be precise, this was a time and place when, as father's little dividends, we were taxable write-offs to the company business. So dad, at least, was doing some semblance of business (driving into town, Port-au-Prince, a couple of days to meet with the folks who populated our factory/assembly plant). We, on the other hand, were On The Beach, big time.

My brother's diary/journal read: "got up, went to the bar, had breakfast. Went swimming. Went to the bar and had a drink. Played backgammon. Went to the bar and had lunch. Spent the afternoon at the beach. Went to the bar, had a drink. Ate dinner. Stayed at the bar while my parents had a drink. Came back to the room. Slept." Next day, "got up, went to the bar, had breakfast...." and so on.

My parents had a good laugh after they read his teacher's comments on the saga of the 8-year-old who walked into a bar, early and often.

In Haiti, our lives revolved around the bar. Every meal was served there, under the open-air chacoon; every drink we ordered was noted on a scratchpad my dad would sign by kerosene light after dark. He signed off on sticks counted by five, under the titles rum, Coca-Cola, iced tea, and so forth. Who knows how many drinks, of whatever variety, anyone in my family consumed? We weren't much on keeping track. On The Beach, who cared?

In my late 20s, a room On The Beach, plus 3 meals a day (with Caribbean lobster for dinner), cost $50 U.S. This is why I have never understood the concept of paying real money in the Caribbean, much less the idea of asking for I.D. at the bar.

In Lake Placid, my summer home, two toddlers walked into a bar. In Haiti, one 8-year-old. Perhaps I was 12 at the time, or 11. In any case, when I wanted a drink, I, too, went to the bar. Made perfect sense to me, and to my parents. The only part of humanity that didn't belong in a bar, so far as we were concerned, was that bit that was crying and throwing a tantrum. In our book, the only tantrum throwing was permitted in events that involved adultery and the Other Woman.

Superman's fiancee, my father's cousin, excelled at the tantrum. She was ejected from The Stork Club for fisticuffs in the 1940s, a feat no other woman has achieved. And our society considers Paris Hilton's goings-on a big deal on You Tube? I don't think so.

Makes me long for the day when two toddlers walked into a bar....

Cruelty is rarely conscious...

You probably think, like any sane person, that I should have shown TCP the door for good. You would probably be right. However, we have this history, see, that we each cling to. He claims he told me he wouldn't be staying the night Saturday, that I shouldn't have expected him. Given the week we had just had, recovering from reunion, I might be willing to concede he may have said as much. On the other hand, he may not have.

TCP was my first love. Freshman year, I disposed of my virginity to someone I didn't care to see again. More than a year later, TCP seduced me, and I fell in love. Perhaps someone with more experience would have reacted differently to him, but I lacked perspective. I had no idea then, in April 1980, that one night would be the beginning of my adult lifetime. That through TCP I would learn that the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.

I have, intermittently, loved people who were "good for me." Yet a line of Phillip Roth's seems to sum up my entire romantic life: "The sane ones bore you practically to death and the ones who fascinate you turn out to be nuts."

At our impasse the other day, I accused TCP of behaving like my father at one of his worst moments. TCP, in turn, kept telling me that I was not his mother, and I was behaving like her, in flashbacks he would have preferred not to remember.

We were, I suspect, both right: we have been together and apart for 27 years. Why we return, despite our pasts, is simple and hard, if even possible, to eradicate. No one speaks to this more eloquently than Doris Lessing: "We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed; they are always there for love or for hate."

Regardless of our memories of our respective parents, they were never boring. Their characteristics have imprinted on us, in us, for better or worse. TCP and I are at home, stuck in the second generation of a holding pattern that I cannot bring myself to sever, knowing the limits of the comfort zones established long before we were cognizant of the situation.

It is frequently said that a man marries his mother and a woman her father. I see that in my brother, in his choice of wife #4. She is the first to have my mother's sense of humor and, despite a lack of overall sophistication, she shares my mother's sensibilities. TCP and I, no matter how infrequently we acknowledge it, are in a similar position.

We may not bring out the best in each other, but we do take comfort in what we bring. All the hurt and disappointments and cruelty we can mete out has been long since taken into account. In college we discussed poetry; 20-something years later, we debated taxes. And no, there has never been a chance we would file them together.

I do have choices to make, defining what behavior is truly unacceptable and trying to separate it out from the scene of my own parents having the same argument over and over. My dad would promise something, and my mother would ask him to do what he said, and he would say yes, yes, I'll do it, and it would never get done, and that's just the way we lived, my mother resigned to my father's unmet promises.

My brother and some of his previous wives have had that same fight, and then, I would leave the room. I didn't need to see those re-runs.

I'm well into the syndication track myself: hoping against hope and knowing what I'll receive in return, yet somehow being surprised by the simple fact that insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.

I know that; TCP knows that, and yet, he can and does still comfort me after such events as the previous impasse. In my way, I comfort him.

The best I can do is protect myself: I'm sure we will have future encounters; what I can choose is where and under what circumstances. I'm sure TCP and I will spend a night or two together this fall. I am equally sure that my house is no longer open to him the way my heart once was. Next fall, I would prefer a hotel.

Brother's Little Dividend

Coming soon to a theater near you.

(This film is not yet rated.)

Above the Mason-Dixon line, it's got aspects of G, PG, PG-13, and R. This post is primarily PG-13; expletives that would make it an R have been deleted in print, albeit not in Alice's mind. Below the Mason-Dixon line, it seems to be for anyone and everyone, for no one there is inclined to say, WTF? In Wonderland, we can't help thinking anything else.

Aunt Alice has previously celebrated the birth of her niece, Kayanna Rosalie. For Kayanna's 3-month birthday, Alice's brother has announced that their family will be relocating, back to Tiny Town, Slow Southern State, from the relatively sophisticated Florida town to which they had decamped last fall. Tiny Town is Alice's sister-in-law's hometown. Alice hopes her niece will get to see more of the world, long before the age of consent.

It appears that Brother's Little Dividend will grow up in Tiny Town, Slow Southern State -- far, far from Wonderland and its influences (Alice and her mom?). Once again, brother changes venues: just yesterday, Alice and mom were attempting to count the number of addresses crossed out in each address book -- roughly a dozen, in the years between his five engagements and four marriages. Brother has been relegated to post-it note status in Alice's book; even a mortgage has not proved a guarantee that he will remain in one place for more than two years.

Alice doesn't consider herself overly materialistic, but she can't help noticing that over the years, brother has left behind his father's watch and inherited cookbook collection, their grandmother's good silver and their family's photographs, not to mention a good chunk of their mother's money, lost to various investment schemes, alimony, and house payments for places from which he had moved on.

Alice's mother grew up in what was a comparably Large Town in a Semi-Slow Southern State. When she turned 18, she crossed the Mason-Dixon line and never looked back. How ironic, isn't it, that Alice's brother should deliberately choose what Alice's mother eschewed.

Alice has never felt more like an only child. Surprised, too, to have this feeling at age 46. She has often heard, "a son's a son 'til he takes a wife (or four); a daughter's a daughter the rest of her life." Never has she been so keenly aware of the truth of the adage.

Meanwhile Alice, she of the six continents of traveling, has moved once in the past 25 years, keeping the same telephone number, and, until July, the same zip code. Thanks to the post office, in July Alice's street becomes declasse -- her mother retains the family zip code, but Alice's new zip will leave any New Yorker clueless as to her locale. She suspects the letter carrier will be as well. Alice is clutching her area code with both hands.

Two-one-two, now and forever. Or was that Cats? Some other Broadway show has since supplanted its run. Alice hopes her area code changes only if she has a change of venue of more than 100 feet. Given real estate prices and her relationship with Wonderland, this does not seem a likely prospect in the foreseeable future.

What is foreseeable is the demise of the last public horse-and-pony show in Manhattan: the Claremont Riding Academy is closing May 1, probably to make way for another 30-story condominium on what was, until recently, not a block considered fit for such residences.

Alice's cousin is a Central Park Ranger, who has procured her horses from Claremont for Saturday volunteer cantering around the park. Alice wonders, where will the ponies go? She doesn't wonder where to bet on them -- a family tendency she has managed not to inherit; she is simply curious: where they will live and breathe won't be in Wonderland, but where will it be?

Aunt Alice heads south

My niece, Kayanna, is adorable. Of course, I am biased. And I've never bonded with an infant prior to this trip to Florida. I cuddled her, I fed her, I made funny faces at her, I talked to/at her. (I did not, as you may gather, change her diapers, but I learned to recognize the look on her face that preceded the need for a diaper change, so I could hand her off in time.)

My brother is shaping up to be a devoted and bonded dad, in the way I've heard men of his generation can be. My new sister-in-law, when I left, was feeling sleep-deprived, and I don't know quite what she thinks of me. We do, however, laugh simultaneously at the same sights: our reaction to the customer in red sequins in my brother's restaurant required no verbal communication between us.

She was unnerved by the prospect of meeting my mother, the presumptive grandma. Did we paint such a terrifying portrait of my mother? I don't know what my brother has said or left unsaid, but I suspect I was pretty unsparing the few times she came up in conversation. Alice's mother lives in her own, unique version of Wonderland, and it has even less bearing on reality than the Wonderland in which Alice resides.

I did tell my sister-in-law that everyone likes my mother; that the only person who seems to be troubled by her is me. I am also the only daily recipient of her domestic-related phone calls, many of which involve retelling me about a purchase she has made, even shown me, then forgotten she ever mentioned the item. She also constantly updates me on the weather, as if I couldn't open a window, turn on the TV, or check it on line.

It is the little things that drive me insane.

I spoke to my sister-in-law after my mother returned from Florida. Apparently she was looking over some pictures with my brother, and, presented with one of a woman about my age holding my niece, my mother said, "the baby looks cute, but the nurse is ugly." Said nurse was, in fact, my sister-in-law's mother.

If I had explained my mother as Sophia on The Golden Girls, a woman without the ability or interest to censor herself, my sister-in-law says she would have understood that completely. My mother is of the, don't-ask-me-what-I-think-unless-you-want-my-honest-answer school. It makes her to be described as "interesting."

Well, she does keep things lively.

Welcome to the world, Kayanna Rosalie

At long last, Alice has become an aunt, an honest blood-relative aunt. She is, granted, the age of her niece's grandmother (not Alice's mother, who is a generation older than Alice), but an aunt nonetheless. Looking forward to the fun parts of parenting while not having to get her hands dirty. (If there's one adjective that doesn't describe Alice, it would be domestic. Thumb splints aside, she has not and does not plan ever to change a diaper.)

On the morning of the 16th, Alice's brother's wife's 22nd birthday, the phone calls started at 8 am, and continued through to the birth announcement at 6 pm -- she got the obstetric blow-by-blow from her 42-year-old (and only) brother. It started with "we're" in labor, a notion she finds rather odd. After all, he wasn't; she was. Big difference in the pain factor. But Alice will grant that if it's a harbinger, it's a good one. Next up, full dilation. Two hours later, Kayanna emerged.

Wednesday evening my brother emailed me a photo from his cell phone. (Love that modern technology. Don't have a clue how it works.) I know all babies are beautiful, but this one really is adorable. Did I mention Kayanna shares Alice's gene pool? In what she prays is a good way? Alice did have a happy babyhood, or so she has been told.

Alice's mother is happy the baby is healthy, but not exactly bubbling over. She said, several times: "I'll go [to visit] in April, when the baby is less of a blob." I wouldn't have expected her to say anything different to me -- but apparently she repeated herself verbatim to my brother, tact-be-damned. Her lack of enthusiasm is underwhelming. I suppose it's fear mostly: my brother has had three marriages fail, but none of them involved progeny of his own.

Still, it would be nice if my mother could at least be happy for Kayanna, for the genetic legacy she would not otherwise have seen. I used to say I wanted to be a grandmother, but I could skip the hands-on, character-shaping mother part. As an aunt, it seems I have my wish.

Physically, reproduction was not an option for me: this is a fact that I have acknowledged since I was about 18. First, there was the smoking. Not much later on came the antidepressants, and I wasn't willing to risk my sanity to continue to replicate a gene pool of depressions and migraines, one about which I was ambivalent at best. I gather my brother didn't let that influence his sudden desire, at 42, to be a father.

Truth be told, my brother and I watched the same movie that was my parents' marriage, and we reached different conclusions about whether to enter the theater again. I haven't crossed that threshold, and he can't seem to stop.

I am hopeful that he has walked across it carrying a bride for the last time. He has a child now, my niece, Kayanna Rosalie. This time, the stakes are higher. This time, he's in the game for good.

I've known my niece's name for as long as I've known her gender (i.e., since September or so, two weeks after my brother called to announce his girlfriend was four months pregnant).

Kayanna, per the web, is a variation of Kaye, an English name with no discernible meaning. Rosalie was my grandmother, whom my brother and I loved very much. She died in 1985, a year that major family upheaval was the norm. (Matriarch dies, her son goes to rehab, her daughter gets breast cancer, and those are only the headlines from June to November.) I used to go visit the cemetery on the date of her death.

Once, as I was getting back on the subway, I saw a rainbow (unusual for NYC, even for Brooklyn), which made me think she knew I'd visited. Since my dad died, however, I haven't made that trip more than once or twice. Next week will mark the 16th anniversary of his death, a date that never gets easier for me.

Rosalie, his mother, was a very strong, determined woman, who urged me to go "to business," not to stay at home being a housewife. My grandfather was a traveling salesman who didn't drive -- grandma did all the driving. She worked as an editor and proofreader in an attorney's office prior to marriage, and they wanted her to read for the bar (this was circa 1920, before law school was mandatory), but her parents wouldn't let her because they didn't want her to scare off potential mates with her education.

She also waited until she was 29 to have her first child, my aunt, and was 33 when my dad was born. She was the kind of grandmother who, into her 80s, could close down a bar at 4 am. She was good at a few things domestic -- baking, for example -- but better at delegating the details. (My father had a German nanny who took him to Bund meetings pre-WWII, until she was deported for being a Nazi sympathizer.)

Grandma Rosalie was also terrified of infants, and I was the first -- not my aunt, not my father, not my two older cousins -- to whom she gave a bath. So I'm glad her name carries on. Kayanna, well, it's unusual, and I know my brother's wife selected it, but I don't know why, or where she'd heard it. I'm not asking.

I'm about to search eBay for a sterling silver baby cup, then start finding airline schedules so I can see Kayanna sooner, rather than later. It is a singular occasion, I believe, that I will meet a child who will call me Aunt Alice. I'm looking forward to it.

The month that was

Alice is finally getting to flex her fingers, thumbs included, at least part-time. The rest of the time her thumbs remain immobilized, which seems to have immobilized her brain as well. All that aside, Alice has been traveling and birthday-ing, and occasionally attempting to work.

So, late September: Florida. Alice goes to see where her brother and his fiancee have ensconced themselves. She is delighted that fiancee, although half her brother's age, seems to have more intelligence, a better sense of humor and appreciation for irony, and preference for financial independence far more than did wives 1, 2, or 3. Fiancee's favorite book is Pride and Prejudice. Previous wives have favored The National Enquirer or TV Guide for reading material.

Alice, brother and fiancee almost fall off the couch watching the local news. It is South Florida, and the weatherman looks like Lurch from The Addams Family. His forecast has been the same since June: hot, humid, chance of showers or thunderstorms. No hurricanes in the vicinity. By the third night, we are mocking him ceaselessly. We equally enjoy the sportscaster, who regales us with tales of high school football.

There is nothing so delightful as high comedy masquerading as news; it distracts us from "national news," which makes all of us want to hurl sharp objects at the TV. Finally, a potential wife who shares Alice's political leanings. Recent previous wives have not even been registered voters.

Fiancee and brother both work in the service industry, she in retail and he in restaurants. Their customers all seem to share a brain. Apparently gray matter is in short supply in Collier County.

They seem good for each other, based on Alice's quick assessment. And on Alice's refrigerator in Wonderland are now posted sonograms of her niece-to-come. She is going to be an aunt. Another generation waits in the wings (well, in the fiancee's womb, to be precise). This is an experience Alice never anticipated.

Alice returns to Wonderland, where The Croquet Player has snagged a room at a posh hotel for his semi-annual visit. Despite previous protests to the contrary, Alice decides to see The Croquet Player again. In this, our 26th year, the sex has been better than Alice remembers since the first five years or so. TCP was Alice's first love, and he will always have a place in her heart.

The purpose of Wonderland's hotels, in Alice's life, is to offer her a place to get away from real life and think of nothing but great sex. It is the perfect set-up for Alice and TCP: secret assignations in lieu of domestic disharmony. The hotel looks out over Central Park and the Hudson River. Alice knows she will never live there, but it's a damn fun place to visit.

A few days go by. Two days before Alice's birthday, her brother calls to invite her to his wedding. It is to be held in the town in Alabama where the fiancee comes from, an $860 round-trip ticket from New York, and it is scheduled for the day after Alice is to return from London. There is no way Alice can return from London at 8 pm Monday night and get on a 6 am flight to Alabama (via Atlanta; no one flies to Alabama directly) the following morning.

This is the first wedding Alice has been invited to since the disastrous wedding #1, when Alice was forced to be a bridesmaid, and her hideous dress lasted longer than the marriage. With wives #2 and #3, her brother called to announce the nuptials a few days after they had taken place in various Southern City Halls.

Alice, sadly, regrets. Later, a friend suggests that missing the wedding might have been a good thing, since her brother's latest in-laws might not be folks with whom Alice could sustain a conversation. Given that Alice is just a year younger than fiancee/wife's mother, and the mother's life is so far removed from Alice's experiences, she has to agree.

Then it is Alice's birthday. She used to adore her birthday, spoiled by a father who made sure a birthday was a BIG DEAL. Now she receives the occasional card, and is treated to dinner by several friends on successive nights. Alice still likes the celebration, the day that is All About Alice, but she remembers her childhood, misses the days of opening presents, albeit she realizes the gifts of time and friendships are far greater than a new toy in a box.

For Alice's birthday, she and a friend have a once-in-a-lifetime experience: they go to hear Barbara Streisand live, at Madison Square Garden. Her voice is phenomenal. She sings the theme from The Way We Were, and Alice is moved to tears: the first time she saw the movie, she was en route to England for the first time, with her entire family. She was 13.

The next morning, Alice leaves for London, to join her mother. Mom is turning 70, and for her birthday, she wanted Alice to spend a week with her in London, a town Alice has known well over the past 30+ years. While Alice is chief entertainment source and itinerary director, it is Alice's mother who insists on waking Alice at 9 am every morning.

Alice's mother is already babbling and expecting Alice to respond, in full sentences. Alice can scarcely manage 9 am, and she does not speak in full sentences until she is well into her second cup of coffee. Therefore, Alice is perceived as a bitch in the morning. She wonders why her mother can't remember that this is the Alice she has raised, that Alice's morning behavior was implanted in her brain and hence, is unlikely to change, no matter the location.

It is then that Alice discovers her mother believes Alice and her brother, as infants, always slept through the night. Alice suspects the truth is closer to the fact that her parents have always been sound sleepers, a tendency Alice has inherited and embellished.

The day after Alice arrives in London, it is 10/11. She and her mother are dressing for dinner, with CNN on the television, when the broadcast is interrupted by breaking news.

At the moment, 3:08 EDT and 8:08 GMT, the live, breaking news was that an airplane had crashed into an apartment building down the block from her mother's apartment. 9/11 happened five miles away from Alice and her mother's respective abodes; 10/11 occurs in the building that holds part of the hospital where Alice's mother volunteers.

Three days a week, Alice's mother has lunch in the building's cafeteria. Nearly every day of the week, Alice's mother walks by the building. The debris, Alice realizes after returning to Wonderland, could have very easily fallen on Alice's mother. However, her family has a history of barely missing violent events: the last time we were in Haiti, for example, our plane took off at 8 pm, and a coup was attempted 30 minutes later.

In London, on the hotel room TV, videos of the tiny plane flying into the apartment building were surreal. When Alice returned to Wonderland, reality entered the picture, and she was far more shaken up than she had been the week before, when the pilot and his flight instructor, filled with hubris, had veered off course and smack into the vicinity of Alice's mother's apartment.

As for the reporting, what didn't get mentioned in the newspapers was that
the one woman who got burned in the building is the same woman upon whom a street lamp fell one year when a helium balloon went out of control at the Thanksgiving day parade. Note to Alice: do not ever cross the street in her vicinity.

After reading all the news reports, Alice has concluded that hubris was the direct cause of the plane's accident. Many years ago, Alice herself flew small planes, leaving from an airport in the suburban county where her parents lived. She had been told where LaGuardia's airspace was, and decided at the time, that it made no sense to fly where the big boys controlled the turf.

The plane lost radio contact 13 blocks from where it crashed. If anyone sounded the Mayday signal, no one was listening. What puzzles Alice still is that the hardest part of piloting an airplane is take-off and landing. Once you are aloft, unless the rudder pedals break, it is so easy to fly in a straight line that even Alice, whose lack of car-driving skills are legendary, could pilot the plane without going off course.

Back in London, Alice and her mother enjoyed delightfully warm (for Alice) unbearably hot (for Alice's mother) weather. They (Alice's mother) breakfasted. They lunched. They had tea at their favorite hotels. They went to theater. They dined in familiar restaurants. They saw the Churchill War Rooms (a first for Alice), and they tramped through well-known territory: the V&A's costume collection, Kensington Palace, Knightsbridge, Bond Street, Green Park and Piccadilly.

In short, everything they did in London they could have done with equal ease in Wonderland, their hometown. But Alice knows that regardless of what her hometown offers, she would never spend a week there acting as a tourist. Life would intervene: the telephone, the e-mail, her attempts at life maintenance and work.

Thus, despite the early awakenings, Alice's mother's solo cocktail hours, and Alice's having to have countless conversations she could have lived without, Alice did leave Wonderland, and the change of venue was appreciated. The trip, which Alice was dreading, went much better than expected. According to friends Alice and her mother have in common, Alice's mother had a great trip. Alice wouldn't go that far, but it was mom's 70th, and if that was her mom's perception, Alice did her job well.

Back in Wonderland, it has been a few days, and Alice is enjoying her solitude. She has been recuperating from her vacation, from her birthday, from The Croquet Player, from her trip to visit her brother and fiancee, and appreciating some time alone, when the only person to whom she must answer is herself. At the moment, herself is calling time-out on use of hands, so Alice will end this lengthy post here.

Instability

Like my nervous system, with its perpetual synaptic lapses, my thumb joints have been determined to be unstable. They had a few years, a hiatus, when both were operating on as close to full power as they had in 15 years. I could cook; carry groceries, mail and packages; wear clothes that buttoned and shoes that laced, and even change a light bulb or two. I could even hold your hand, or any part of my anatomy or yours I desired, depending on the occasion.

The skills that remain semi-intact are typing, telephoning, and channel-changing. Others I have misplaced are the ability to pour a pitcher of water, cut food with a knife or properly use a fork, wrestle lobster out of its shell, pick up a suitcase, hold onto a hand bar on a bus or subway, navigate car doors (forget driving), pick up a pen, shuffle papers, or use the computer mouse.

Say good-bye to 21st- century living. On a good day, I can punch the start button on the microwave. Sometimes I can wash my hair. Being left-handed (and left-thumb dominant), I have been challenged by the electric toothbrush, its control and my coordination.

So, off to a new orthopedist: he wanted to know what had befallen his colleagues in the hand trade. A misdiagnosis, a badly run office, a doctor who stopped taking my insurance: with that I stopped. Newsflash and note to self: never tell doctors -- except perhaps shrinks -- how his/her predecessors have failed you. They will mark you down as a difficult patient, never mind that you have been dealing with your body and its foibles low these 45 years, and the doctor has met you perhaps for five minutes.

There is no scheduled date for the reuse of my hands. I did not need the orthopedist to say "I don't know"; I could have told him that. All I wanted were new custom-made splints to immobilize my thumbs -- black is the latest color plastic to come down the designer splint turnpike. Its ever so chic and, more to the point, doesn't show the that dirt my several previous incarnations of the white knuckle-halfway-to-elbow or the beige pin-pricked (for air circulation) wrist-length plastic of earlier entries in the immobilization sweepstakes.

I realize this plaint of unusability has nothing on the situation in which my eldest cousin and her family found themselves a year ago. Apparently the proper term for the destination for those who made it out of New Orleans just ahead of Katrina -- for government purposes is an "evacuation center." Refugee camp is more like it. I doubt they ate Army surplus MREs; the military can't fill the beds it has available, so MRE shipments are not what the government would have had at the ready.

My cousin and her family had barely deposited her daughter at her dorm at Tulane when word of the storm's impending arrival made the news (at least locally; I don't know when Bush's official messenger sent him the word), and the entire family evacuated. Fortunately, they are a family of campers, accustomed to going without electricity and making do with the most rudimentary of lavatory facilities. Otherwise, it would have been rougher going in Jackson, Mississippi than it was.

It was a 21st-century involuntary migration: when the electric power went out, the family could have had a full tank of gas, and they could charge their cell phones in the car's cigarette outlet (and to think, no one wants me to smoke), get some semblance of news from the car radio, and press the four-way red blinker button to indicate a crisis.

My cousin's 13-year-old had, at that point in her life, experienced not one but two parents surviving cancer, on top of the Katrina evacuation, and I give her prize for surviving more instability than any other relative at that age. When I saw her last week, the Mississippi story bored her; to me, it would have been a life-changing event. In an instant, powerlessness and instability can overwhelm.

Had I been there, a medication crisis might have been imminent. Today, if I were not already prone to depression, my inability to do for myself would certainly have helped shove me over the edge.

Then, too, there is this past month's familial instability: some of you may remember I thought last October I should have gotten my brother a box of condoms for Christmas. Who knew how prescient that was?

For he has interjected into our tiny family the 21-year-old mother-to-be of his child (I thought, but did not ask, are you sure it's yours?), whose pregnancy (and his impending fatherhood) crushes any thought of stability, in my eyes, in his life. Couldn't he at least have waited until, say, Thanksgiving, to announce this girlfriend was pregnant? Given me a week or two to adjust to his most recent divorce status? Given him, maybe, a week on his own?

I have spoken to the girlfriend. In the Southern state in which they resided, Medicaid was taking on her prenatal care. In the state to which they moved less than a week after announcing the pregnancy, matters are not so clear cut. All I can think is, if we had national health insurance, my mother and I would not be singing my brother's wedding bell blues nearly so frequently. (The third time was not a charm.)

The girlfriend's mother is one year older than me. She works at the equivalent of an International House of Pancakes, in what capacity I did not ask. My mother once made pancakes, in the days when Aunt Jemima wasn't considered politically incorrect. Her mother married at 16, had a child at 17. At 17, I was a virgin. My mother married at 22. Given this disparity in generational ages, my mother is old enough to be this forthcoming infant's great-grandmother. As it stands, she can't muster the excitement for the assigned role of grandmother (my own chronological generational peg).

As for me, I am wondering: do I set up a college fund for this child, after she -- it's a girl -- is born and in possession of a Social Security number? Neither of her parents finished college. I am grateful that the mother to be (status as brother's wife or ultimately sister-in-law to be determined) speaks grammatical English, something wife #3 could not manage. Yet I can't help wondering: what are the chances brother and mother-of-his-child will be together in five years? What will it be like, to be Aunt Alice?

I may well be putting the proverbial cart before the horse. However, when my mind veers ahead of itself, it doesn't twist in any prettier a direction than my unstable thumb joints. It hurts.

Scenes from familyland

I. Familyland North
Familyland north bears some interesting resemblances to earlier generations of Alice's family. My cousin, not his wife, is the primary cook, just as my dad was the chef chez Alice when she was growing up.

His 12-year-old son spent Saturday night at a sleep-over, playing penny, nickel, dime poker; my dad had a weekly poker game -- with higher stakes -- every Wednesday night from 1964 until his death in 1991.

Their nine-year-old daughter got to taste Mommy's wine and comment on the flavor. She said it tasted orangy. She was right.

I am sure her wine vocabulary is considerably more expansive than that. For all I know, in a blind taste-test, she can distinguish a chardonney from a pinot grigio or a merlot from a shiraz.

Both children, when younger, drank their milk from wine glasses -- it was the only way their parents could convince them to swallow the beverage.

No matter the generation, the life lessons seem hard-wired. They are perhaps not the ones that most children learn, but in my family, they are just par for the course.

II. Familyland South

Alice thinks the ink on her brother's third divorce papers may be dry -- it's been at least two weeks, maybe a month. Shortly after he moved out/was pushed last October from his third wife's, he got involved with a woman half his age (she turned 21 in January). Last night he called with BIG news:

The girlfriend is pregnant, and their baby is due in January.

Alice just doesn't know what to make of this. Three marriages, and he manages not to get any of his wives pregnant. But now he wants to be a father, at 42. They've even picked out names, and that's the part that really got to her: whether it's a girl or a boy, following the Jewish tradition of naming a child for a relative who has died, the child will carry either Alice's grandmother's or her father's name.

Am I scared? Yes. Hopeful? Maybe. Excited? Not a chance in hell. When the shock wears off, perhaps there will be more reactions to report. Meanwhile, Alice can't help thinking that when she put the off-White Rabbit to sleep, little did she know that south of the Mason-Dixon line, the rabbit had already died, the old-fashioned way.

Car talk: free-for-all for any generation

I spoke only of mother-daughter forced intimacy; what I didn't mention that while my father never asked the questions, he had already intuited the answers.
Then there was the famous father-son car talk, 250+ miles to Lake Placid, with a parent who did not like rest stops. Although my father didn't see fit to preserve the confidentiality of the child-nailed-to-the-seat car talk, he did think age 13 was the perfect time to have the sex talk to end all sex talks -- five hours on the road -- with my brother.

I don't know the exact wording, but I assume wet dreams, hookers, and precisely drawn definitions of fidelity were among the topics. (My father wasn't the only intuitive member of the family.)

That car talk culminated in one of my brother's 16th-birthday presents from my dad: the proverbial box of condoms. The moral: don't kiss and tell. Or rather, if you fuck, don't tell.

For both my brother and me, we separately had our parents-to-the-seat-belt at later points in time: at 20, my brother wrested the car keys from my father's hands, since my dad was too coked up to drive; at 31, I wrested the keys from my mom, since she was too drunk.

Cozy little family stories, aren't they?

I received several comments on "Revelations at 60+ m.p.h." (There are no hyperlinks in this blog due to my inability to retain HTML for more than 10 seconds.)

sporksforall said...
"I can't tell you how glad I am this technique has never occurred to my mother. Not that she's any worse at cornering me. Given her suspect driving skills, there are many people in the southeast who should also be grateful. As to your mother, is it possible that as they get older the filter wears away?"

I must admit, it's not only her filter, but mine that we have worn plumb out.


scout said...
"Hmm, my mother prefers the not knowing in just about every case (except where my health is concerned; she has M&M reports to prepare), so when I came out it hit her like an iron skillet upside the face. Good times."

My mother is terrified of the M&M report possibility, so she is perhaps not my wisest choice as health care proxy. What really did her in was the time the NYPD left a message on her machine: I was fine, but in the E.R., having fallen down some subway stairs.

What comforted her was finding out when the EMTs took me (walked me across the street) to the E.R., the E.R. doc asked, "did you lose consciousness?" My reply? "How would I know?"

and
The Misanthrope said...
"I am glad that we don't usually have those kinds of conversations. I would lie anyway. I also don't tell daughter anything, not that she wants to know."

Lying is an option, but my guess is, your daughter knows more than you wish she did.

Revelations at 60+ m.p.h.

Car talk: some might consider it moments of intimacy demonstrating maturity in the mother-daughter relationship. That is, those who were not trapped at 60+ mph, when the inquisitive mother, circa 1977, decided on the moment to ask, "if you were pregnant, would you have an abortion?" (Um, yes, murmured the virgin daughter.) "Would you tell me?" (I don't know.)

This was topped only once, 10 years later, by the 70 mph trip on the New Jersey Turnpike when the IM turns to the non-so-virginal daughter for clarification of suspicion: "Are you a lesbian?" (Bisexual, says the daughter, to avert collision with other vehicles on the road.)

In neither of these cases did I have the option of running out of the room and shutting myself up, alone. We had too much ground to cover.

To think in 1968, my mother was too embarrassed to tell me how babies were made and so I had to read the books from the school nurse, followed by a post-cocktail pop quiz from mom.

How times change. I don't have a daughter, but apparently a good quantity of my parenting efforts have gone to raising my mother, more than I had bargained for. So much for the generation gap, which I preferred to leave the width of the Grand Canyon.

"Don't ask, don't tell," was invented just to prevent these generational Q&As. I thought I had it on good authority that I was conceived immaculately. After my dad died, my mother blurted out a few more details than I wanted to hear -- that is to say anything -- about their sex life.

In his most recent divorce wars, my brother openly confessed to my mother that he and his wife hadn't had sex in several months prior to the jump-or-pushed debacle that ended their cohabitation. My mom passed along this information to me. This is exactly where "Don't ask, don't tell" is a motto for the generations.

Robert Lewis Stevenson wrote: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Evidently he never got into a car with my mother.

Where there's a will, there's an executrix

Increasing, that person is me. My older clients, my mother's friends who are 70+, these people want me to take care of distribution their worldly goods once they are no more. It is at once flattering and disturbing.

Yes, I know the drill. An intelligent inheritor knows how to read a will or to interpret one that includes her. Plus, it's part of my day job. Yet I assure you it's much easier to deal with legalese than with what it represents.

For example, money that my father and his sister were due to inherit came in part to me, because my dad had died. His sister, my aunt, called me on the phone: "hello, heiress?"

"I would rather have a father." I depressed the hook and ended the call. Parting gifts? Some perverse consolation prize, that.

Initially I wrote a will when prompted by my father: I had come of age, come into some money, and he didn't want the cash to come back up the food chain into my parents' names should something happen to me. (At 22, pre-Prozac synapses melting, there were chances I needn't elucidate here.)

I rewrote my will when my brother married wife #1, and again when they divorced. Wife #2 never made the cut. Wife #3 did, with the proviso that she be married to and living with my brother at the time of my demise. Scratch that. The divorce is well under way, and any further wives my brother may marry and divorce are women whose last names I will probably never know.

As long as my brother has a dog, I will be more likely to know its name than his femmes du jour. The dogs last longer than the marriages.

And now I have agreed to be the executrix for my mother's best friend, who regards me as the only person she knows in my generation who has common sense, much less a financial background.

It is odd to know that in the end of the lives of the generation preceding mine, I will be the one to carry out the wishes of the departed. Once again, I will be called upon to act as fiscal parent to what was once an adult thirty years my senior, but in death, has become my child.