Welcoming Another Twisted Generation

It was always apparent that Mom’s child-raising techniques were shaky.  My brother, sister & I all have some qualities that would only make us appropriate for the deeply discounted fruit section of the supermarket. 

My own life theories & child-rearing beliefs, juxtaposed against my mother’s eccentricities, make me seem whiny & dramatic.

Example: Mom gave her third husband a gun for Christmas not long after I noticed bullet holes in their bedroom window.  I asked a few questions and learned that Mom had recently actually fired her own gun in his direction and missed.  I disagree with her decision to provide him with the ability to return fire.  

However, if I look at it from her perspective, I am selfish.  The fair and thoughtful thing to do was equal the playing field.

This is one minor situation in an enormous cache of material that I may or may not document on this blog in the future.

Recently a family crisis has arisen & it trumps the old stuff for today.  It all began when my sister’s daughter, at age 19, moved into a trailer and begin living with a 45-year old Mexican named Oscar.  Next, my nephew began living with a girl whose parents are both in prison for murder, her father on Alabama’s death row.  I really wondered how much further this fantastical story could spiral.  

The niece, Samantha, decided that rearing only one baby lacked credibility in the trailer park, so when her daughter was 11-months old she bore Oscar a son.  Then the trailer caught fire.  “Wow,” you may be thinking, that’s crazy.  But that’s not the crazy part.  Everyone was feeling very sympathetic, donations were pouring in, clothes and money from churches & the Red Cross. 

As the trailer fire sympathy reached a crescendo, she was arrested for picking up a 42-pound package of marijuana.  It was described by police as being “recliner-sized.”  She was even stealing her own mother’s plastic baggies for the distribution, which was really a level of inconsideration that I think was unnecessary.  The feds didn’t even bother to arrest her the first time, when the package was only 20 some pounds (perhaps the size of an ottoman?) 

Since these events began unfolding, I have spoken with my family more in the last month than in the last decade.  I started making excuses why I should be more understanding toward my mother, now a senior citizen.  But I was particularly disturbed by her attitude about drug distribution:  ”Well, I think anybody would do the same thing if they were sure they could get away with it.”  What?

Picture the scenario for our telephone conversation: My mother has had a balloon inserted into her stomach because of an inability to control her desire for food.  She is choking on the other end of the phone because she inserted a piece of chicken tender into her mouth and swallowed it whole. 

She is beating herself on the chest, trying to make it go up or down, as she attempts to continue the conversation.  She is wheezing from her allergy to the four dogs that live in her house.  She has lost weight and is now down to 250.

I continue to be surprised that my mother is both a financial genius and a moron.  As we talked it became clear that her real disappointment was that my niece did not handle the business end of this deal properly and the pay was not what it should have been.  Mom claims that everyone does drugs, they should be legalized, and that’s that.

So on Christmas Eve 2006 she bailed my niece out of jail ($5,000/10%) because, “Somebody’s got to take care of these fucking kids.”  These are the kind of sweet nothings my mother has screamed at the top of her lungs my entire life.  If my niece takes off, Mom owes $45,000.

Three days after my niece was released from jail my nephew received a 45-day jail term for flunking his own urine test. 

Today I live across the country in an average loving home with my husband, son & daughter.  But I grew up with my mother, I entered this world through her, and I am still fascinated by her lunacy. 

I carry some of it with me in my brain, in my DNA, in my occasional lapses into very poor behavior.  A part of me still craves the dysfunction, the hitting, the screaming, the adrenaline rush of a sick family.  

Update:  My niece has since had a third child (she told her mother and mine that she’d had an abortion, then eight months later surprised everyone with a late night trip to the hospital).  The children are now ages 3, 2 and 8 months.  They are all in foster care & my sister is working toward custody.  My niece is serving a 4-year prison sentence & her boyfriend 12 years with no parole.  They will more than likely both lose their parental rights.

My nephew has also had a baby girl, born to the above girlfriend.  She is 20 years old and this is her third child.  Neither of them want more children because of the effort involved.  Their daughter is absolutely adorable.

My sister lives near my mother.  Mom thinks the 2-year old, named after his father, needs a new name because “Oscar sounds too Mexican.”  She plans on calling him Opie instead.  (One of many things I have told her I disagree with, although that matters little.)  She believes my step-father, the third husband she recently divorced, the one who almost cut his arm off in a drunken accident a year ago, will be a great help with the little boy & will teach him things in their truck shop.  “He really loves kids.”

I visited my niece in jail when I went home for my brother’s funeral and as I came around the corner of the visiting room I could have easily mistaken the girl behind the glass panel for my 11-year old daughter.

(As of 2/13/08 the three grandchildren are now living with my sister.)