Serious as a heart attack

So in my last entry, I wrote about how I was a little worried about my mom, going off on her big road trip to Sin City and waiting for a sign from God on how to run her life…well, she got it. And then some.

Two weekends ago, my mom had a mild heart attack. Technically, we’re told, she had a spasm in an artery, which temporarily blocked blood flow to her heart. Either way, it was scary as hell. It turns out the heart attack was caused by some carelessly prescribed migraine medicine, but there was still some damage to the heart and an increased chance of future problems.

I don’t really know what to say about it. I’d like to say I’ve had some sort of life-changing revelation from the whole thing, a renewed appreciation for the mundane details of my every day existence, but I can’t. It was scary, yes. I’d rather not lose my mom just yet, thanks very much. As far as the big picture goes, though, I can’t take it to mean anything special. She’s very lucky, lots of people have heart attacks and don’t make it. At the same time, lots of people have heart attacks—our situation here isn’t unique, it’s not even particularly dramatic or interesting. She got sick, she got better. We’re glad we have her back and relatively healthy, of course. I’m not heartless. I just expected to feel some sort of profound relief after the massive worry? Am I out of my mind?

Yo Momma

It's Mother's Day, in case you missed the E! Network's Tales of Hollywood Moms special this afternoon. The Remix and I spent the day with her mom, who graduated with her second Master's degree this morning.

My mom is in Las Vegas, spending a month or so with her mom, who is very sick. My mom is afraid to fly, so she decided to drive. In her Mini Cooper. With her DOG. (She tried to rope me into this, by the way, but 30 hours in a clown car with my mom and a flatulent dog did not sound like my idea of a vacation. That, and I'm a little light on cash this month, which would make going to Vegas pure unadulterated torture.)

Anyway, I thought since it was Mother's Day I ought to say something about my mom. She's been good to me, for the most part. Sure, she's overbearing, annoying, needy, and deaf; but she's also kind, generous, well-meaning, and forgiving. She's constantly trying to drag me to church, but I'll forgive her that, too.

I'm a little worried about ma, mostly because she's apparently lost her mind. This trip she's on to Vegas involved quitting her job, and didn't involve taking my dad. Personally, I think it's a religious problem. Like most religious automatons, my mom is constantly looking for guidance from a figment of the world's collective imagination. When things are going well, it's easy to pretend that "God" is guiding you...if, like my mom, you find yourself vaguely unhappy at some point, it becomes a little harder. Now she's looking for something to actually happen, looking for "God" to show her the way somehow. Of course, he won't, and so she's left feeling lost. My mom has committed too much of her life to her ridiculous beliefs to turn back now--turning her back on the whole thing isn't an option. Subconsciously, she probably knows what's missing, and eventually she'll figure it out. When she does, she'll be back to thanking her imaginary friend for the guiding hand, and she'll be right again. Until she's not, anyway.

This is aggravating for me. My mom is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I feel like she's been railroaded by well-meaning zealots into a lie she's too comfortable with to challenge. Religion is perfect for people like my mom--she doesn't want to think objectively about things like premarital sex, gay marriage, or abortion. There's too much to figure out, too many people who know more about it, too many fancy statistics, too many gray areas. No, she'd rather be told what to think, complete with a pat set of reasons that are easy to remember and inarguable by virtue of being totally illogical.

I'm not mad at my mom. I love my mom. I don't want some ludicrous and antiquated religious sham to ruin my parents' relationship or my mom's life, though. She is fortunate to have some time for "God" to help her figure out what she wants--but once she realizes he's not helping, she better get it together quickly, before she follows in all her siblings' footsteps and makes a total train wreck out of her life.

My kind of town

There's probably two potential posts in here. Hell, there's probably five, but I'm going to try to do it in one. Why? Because I'm lazy. Deal with it.

I spent Christmas in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. No, I'm not a gambling freak degenerate who disregards family and sentimentality to while away my holidays at a blackjack table. I'm a regular old degenerate who happens to have family in Vegas. My mom's whole family packed up and moved west when she was eighteen, and she stayed here to marry my dad. Everyone stayed out there, so every couple of years we spend the holidays under the neon lights.

My mom's family is white trash. There's no other way to put it, really. It's a fantastically dysfunctional family, full of emotional train wrecks--and I love every one of them. My uncle Fred (the gay one who doesn't pay taxes and gambles away all of his money, not the one who used to be married to my Aunt Liz but got divorced when he knocked up his daughter's teenage friend during a coke binge shortly before he went to prison but now hangs out with the family on holidays because he doesn't have anyone of his own) and I have a running joke where he tells me I've got more Vegas genes than Chicago--I drink, I smoke, I dropped out of college, I've been divorced, I like to gamble, I have bad credit, and I don't go to church. He's right, I think, and I'm not ashamed, either.

Here's the thing. My dad's family is great--I love them, and they love me. But they're all polished and ready for display, older kids getting doctorate degrees in history and kindergarteners who spout off Jesus-isms like junior Pat Robertsons. They're the easy kind of religious Republicans--they've never needed actual help from God or their government, so it's not hard to believe in either. Christmas in Chicago means Christmas carols, and the younger kids reading the nativity story from the bible, and egg nog, and board games. No alcohol, no drama, just your standard by-the-book Christmas.

My mom's side of the family is awful. At Christmas dinner, my cousin Laura (the one who just got divorced, then almost killed herself and totaled her car driving drunk, and then spent the insurance money on a boob job) got in a drunken screaming match with her mom (the one who just remarried her second husband because she had no place to live). My aunt Vicky (the one who just got married for a third time to someone she's been dating for about three months) and her new husband were not speaking. My uncle Ed (the one who got off of heroin and married his rehab counselor) and his wife (the ex-rehab counselor who got them both hooked on painkillers after she got a liver transplant) cornered my grandma and told her that they were sad it was going to be her last Christmas. (They were both high.) My aunt Sue (the one who's been in not one, but two, crystal meth comas in the past year and moved back in with her ex-husband so that she could afford her drugs, all of which seems to have aged her forty years) continued her lifelong habit of ignoring her teenage kids' obvious cries for help (my cousin Steph is pretending to be a lesbian at 15, and her brother Daniel is clearly actually gay and confused at 13) so she could attempt to flirt with my dad...

I could go on, forever, but here' s the thing--Christmas was a disaster by Chicago standards. Fighting, drunkeness, a poker tournament, more fighting. And at the end of the night, a bunch of us packed into a couple of cars and hung out at the casino until dawn. I loved it. No pretending to care about some fictional baby in a barn 2000 years ago. No forced politeness. No gushy sentimentality. We're a real family, not a Norman Rockwell painting. Sometimes we drink too much to have a good time. Sometimes we don't like each other. Hell, some of us don't ever like each other. We get together for the holidays because that's what people do. Most importantly, though, by cutting out the bullshit, the posturing, the overcompensation, we happen to have a blast, too. It's not normal. It's far from ideal. But it's a real family, a living thing with unsightly blemishes and bad breath. We love each other fiercely, in spite of the substance abuse and deviant sexual behaviors, in spite of the fact that my brother and I are the only ones who've even seen a university classroom, in spite of the fact that everyone is broke, in spite of the fact that we have to.

It's easy to love your family when they look like my dad's. Sure, I'd be embarassed to take my mom's family to church on Christmas day. But you know what? I'd be embarassed to take my dad's family to a casino on Christmas night--and y'all know where I'd rather be.

Coda

Read the post under this one first, or this won't make any sense.

After all this family feuding was done, the Remix was reeling. This was mostly my fault, I exacerbated the situation by a wanton misreading of her tone in some early e-mails, leading to the always disastrous "I-thought-we-were-joking-around-and-you-were-near-tears" effect. (E-mails should come with coded fonts for tone...you know, the text turns yellow automatically if you're scared, or blue if you're sad, or stays a harmless shade of teal when you're just chatting. This would be both helpful and aesthetically pleasing...the sarcastic purple being my personal favorite.)

Anyway, my mom essentially managed to nail down both the Remix and my own worst fears about the situation--that someone would feel slighted, no one would be happy with what they had, and the whole day would be an overly tense high wire act trying not to further hurt anyone's feelings. I think I defused that possibility, but the potential was slightly terrifying.

One good thing, though. Even at it's worst, while I was yelling at my mom (bold red letters, possibly in all caps or underlined, under my new color/tone system), I never made it about the Remix. Eons ago, the first time around, she was always in the middle. It was unfair, and an impossible position for her to navigate.

Oh yeah. Also may have mentioned that I love her in the e-mail to the parents. Not that it's a secret, obviously, or even a surprise, but certainly different. We've gone public, baby! Woo hoo!

Family Feud?

Sweet Jesus....So I throw that last self-righteous, pandering post up about how the Remix's family is being difficult, blah blah blah, thinking that all the holiday family drama is over, right. Whoops.

Out of nowhere, when I least expected it, LOOK! There in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, no, no, wait, it's...my mom going all Maury Povich about the division of time on Thanksgiving. Thanks ma. Appreciate it, there wasn't enough stress swirling around this holiday, let's have the easy part blow up in our faces too.

Here' s the story. The Remix's family event starts at 4. We are definitely too ancillary to the scheduling to request any changes, so that was the one we were going to have to work around. No problem, though--ma and pop are staying home on Thanksgiving, and they'll be happy to have us, whenever we can be there. Baby brother and his fiancee aren't a factor, they're not coming by until later. Hit the Remix deal at 3:30, jet around 5 or 5:30, make it to my parents' house for a 6pm dinner....So I e-mailed ma, laid this plan out, sat back with a self-satisfied smile and patted myself on the back for a job well done. For about five minutes, anyway. Then I got the e-mail.

You don't love us. You don't want to come over. Waah. Your dad's feelings will be hurt. Boo hoo hoo. When we're dead you'll hate yourself for not spending Thanksgiving with your family in a thirty-six hour festival atmosphere. Poor little me. *

*Portions of this program may have been paraphrased, edited, or totally fabricated, all in the interest of illustration.

Ok, so she's got reasons. I'll admit it. The ex-wife didn't like my family. Actually, it was less dislike and more like apathy. In a way, to my mom, that was worse. Not only did she not want to spend any time with my family at the holidays, she didn't particularly care whose feelings this would hurt, my own included. So for three years or so, I saw my family infrequently at best, and never at the good times. We'd stop by on Christmas Eve, sometime around one or two, and by six the ex would be sighing and checking her watch, anxious to get on our way (usually, so we could spend the night at her parents and open presents under the tree on Christmas morning, like ten year olds.) It was awful, and I feel bad.

Counterpoint, though. The Remix and I see my parents/family all the Goddamned time. Like, once every couple of weeks. The Remix loves my parents. She asks to go see them, goes out of her way to make time for them, etc.

I told my mom off. Good, too. I told her I wasn't going to feel guilty. I told her that we'd done everything we could to ensure that they got the most of the day, and if it wasn't good enough I would stay home and cook my own damn turkey. Hell if I'm going to get steamrolled by my mom, I'm no mama's boy...

I apologized by the next day. But she got the point. Everyone's ok now. No permanent damage, no guilty consciences, and no cloud over what should be an otherwise delightful day. When the dust cleared, I found myself still grateful for the family I have. They may be clingy and overbearing, but at least they want me around.

None of my business, most likely.

Sorry, one more thought for the day. Apparently, I'm not welcome for Thanksgiving at the Remix household. Not by the Remix herself, of course. Her dad still has it in for me, or for her, or for anyone she's dating--whatever the case, he's afraid I'll upset the social dynamic of the event. He's right, maybe. I'd be the only person there who cares about his daughter enough to consider what she wants, the only person there who would see how his stubbornness still hurts, the only person there who's willing to love the Remix on her terms. I'd be the first boyfriend who remembers what he was, the ways he hurt the one person I would fight to protect. I was there. I was there when he wasn't, and I suspect that's the one thing he could hold against me. That and the fact that my last name has a rolling R and my family eats Thanksgiving dinner with tortillas instead of dinner rolls.

It hurts her, I know. It hurts that my parents both welcome and want her there, not just because she's my re-girlfriend, but because she's fun, and smart, and nice to have around. Familial obligations mean something in my family, possibly because they never feel like obligations at all.

I would still go. If the new lady of the house will have me, I'll gladly sit in, put on my most charming demeanor and enjoy my reconstituted mashed potatoes with the rest of the family. He doesn't have to like me. He doesn't even have to look at me. But I'm not going anywhere, chief. I'm going to be around next thanksgiving, and the one after that, and so on ad infinitum. We'll have to sit in the same room, eventually. For her sake, for his wife's sake, I hope he learns to swallow his pride and play along. He's done enough damage, here. It's never too late to man up. I just hope he learns it soon.

Is there something in the water?

Everyone is getting engaged. By everyone, I mean my brother, and the best friend. By engaged, I mean promising to someday (not too soon, of course) get married, have babies, and spend the rest of their lives sharing living quarters and laundry duties.

I have been engaged twice. Once, too young and too quickly, and with no idea what to do next. Once, still too quickly, and to the wrong person entirely. I intend to do it again at some point in the future, with I'll possibly even have a chance to rectify the disaster I made of the first one. Anyway, I'd have to consider myself an engagement expert at this point, seeing as how I've done it more than anyone else I know.

My brother has been dating the same girl since high school. The laugh at the same jokes, they have the same friends, they even look startlingly alike. From the get go, it's had all the makings of a storybook romance. The best friend took the BFGF to prom, back when she was just the Remix's best friend. It's been up and down, but they seem to love each other, and he has to know by now that no other girl is going to put up as gamely with his various eccentricities. They all seem happy together, faux nervousness and commitment-phobic posturing aside.

I have two bits of advice for these fairy tale couples. One, remember that the wedding is your day. If you want tuxes with hawaiian shirts, or chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, tell Modern Bride to go fuck itself and do it up right. It's a party, it's a celebration of your particular relationship, and if your relationship parties like Guns 'n' Roses on a three day bender, rock on.

The more serious bit of advice--storybook romance or no, "happily ever after" rarely means just that; and "The End" isn't anywhere near the page with the wedding picture. Nothing gets easier just because you got married. It's the real deal, all the way. You'll fight about things you never even thought about before. Money, sex, TV volume, air conditioning habits. You'll wonder some days how this raving lunatic you married ever conned you into saying "I do." Regardless of how happy, or how perfect, you seem, there's bound to be hiccups. Granted, with a young divorce already under my belt, I'm hardly the person to chide you to hang in there. I didn't. There's a difference, though. You guys have the right partners. There' s been no mistake, no greener grass to be found. I made the wrong choice to get married--I didn't start making the right ones until it was too late.

My next one will be the right one. My last one. I hope it's this one, obviously. (Somewhere, right now, the Remix is reading this and possibly fainting.) All told, though, the people I know who seem to have caught the marriage virus have got the pieces in place for a long happy life. They've got the right one, right now. That's worth hanging on to, and I'm ecstatic for everyone.

Debutantes

One more notable event that bears discussion, and then some shameless cribbing from the Remix, because I'm bored and lonely and I have nothing better to do.

Yesterday was a coming out party. Out of nowhere Thursday night, my brother came up with a startling invitation--"Why not bring the Remix to my birthday thing tomorrow?" Huh? My brother was never a Remix fan, mostly due to circumstance, but I didn't know he'd grown up this much.

I almost didn't tell her. I wanted her to come, as soon as the idea was out there, but I didn't want her to say no. I love my family, see. I was with someone for a long time who didn't, who refused to even try. The Remix always loved my family, but I was a little afraid that there wouldn't be enough there, that she'd be too battle-scarred to give that part of it a go again. I posed the question anyway, trying to make it sound like a joke, and her first reaction was exactly the one I was afraid of. WHAT? No, no, no, that does NOT sound like a good plan. I swallowed my disappointment and agreed, but as always, she surprised me. She turned back, slowly coming around, and settled right where I'd hoped. Nervous, yes, and maybe a touch on the skeptical side, but game.

So we went. Her hands were shaking, I was smoking as fast as I could light them, but we did it. And strangely enough, it was good. Really good. Pops is still boring and abrupt, Ma is still tactless and overbearing, and my brother is still crude and funny--and the Remix still fits right in. She's a keeper, this one. Thank God for second chances.

Sweating like a whore in church.

It's hot. Really, really fucking hot. I was all geared up for a scathing entry, ripping apart my ex and her family for a moment of ignorance and cruelty I've never forgiven, laying the framework for a more measured response in short story form. It'll have to wait, though. It's too hot to be negative.

I spent the day with my family, again, and I'm feeling inclined to write about them for the first time on this particular outlet. I'm lucky. I know this. My parents are loving and supportive, no matter how many bad decisions I make. My brother looks up to me with that fanatical devotion that only little brothers can generate. I love it.

My mom is nuts. She's a full on, bible-thumping, evangelizing Christian, but no one's perfect. Although she's blind in her faith and stubbornly follows the church even when she knows in her heart it's wrong, I hold no ill-will towards her spirituality. Yes, she tries to convert me every chance she gets, yes she refuses to acknowledge my cousin's lesbian relationship even as it enters it's 10th year, yes she votes Republican across the board in an effort to rid the world of gays and abortionists. The thing is, she lives it out. Every day, every thing she does, she does with the Christian ideal in mind. While I tend to believe Christian politics are medieval, and Christian rules a little too restrictive with not enough logic, I can certainly think of worse moral codes to dedicate your life to. She's compassionate, loving, kind, and selfless. She's everything I'm not, and she doesn't hate me for it. That's a rare combination, and she's a special woman.

My pops is quite the opposite. I'm more like him than I want to admit, usually. Stern, unequivocal, intelligent, and firm. He knows everything, and it's rare that we catch him out on something, all too frequently a little argument and a little research proves him nothing but correct. He's also fiercely loyal, decisive under pressure, and he would unhesitatingly kill or be killed to defend his family. He left my mom, once, for a short time in the grand scheme of things. I've almost forgiven him, if not for leaving my mom than for not taking me with him. I'll never forgive him for forcing me to become the man of the house, for forcing me to over power him, to throw him out bodily in a moment of desperation. He loves me, though, and I love him. Mom has forgiven him, though I can't understand how, and the four of us are a stronger family unit for the experience.

Then there's my brother. Unfairly cast as the dumb one, the troublemaker, he was getting lectured on the phone about almost missing his curfew while my friends and I got high in the backyard every time my parents went out of town. He's brilliant with electronics, terrible at test-taking. Anyone who hasn't known us for years would be convinced he's the smart one, taking apart computers and improving them on reassembly since he was 13 years old while I flunked out of college five years after I started. He's got a wickedly sharp wit, able to make me laugh whenever he wants. More than that, he never fell into the trap laid by my father's outward stoicism, he wears his every emotion on his sleeve, ashamed of nothing. While pops and I hide everything, cover every sign of potential weakness with a sharp word or a commanding look, my brother overwhelms everyone with his acute sense of justice and his wide open feelings. He has a quick temper, and a quicker apology. He almost worships me, but he's not afraid to tell me when I'm an asshole. He's everything I could ask for in a brother, and one of my best friends.

As you can see, I'm a lucky man. My family bugs me, stifles me, smothers me, overprotects me. They also made me who I am, and they love me anyway.

Meta-meta-analysis

So, I'm frankly in a little bit of heaven here. Got laid this morning in spectacular fashion, then got on the laptop and got some work done. Taking my parents to the movies this afternoon, then catching a UFC pay-per-view with my little brother. All around good day shaping up. I'm pleased.

The Remix is nervous again. This thing is too literal, from time to time. For defensive reasons, both of us keep hedging our bets when it comes to the details. Pretending that things mean less than they do, or qualifying even a simple statement just enough so it doesn't look incriminating later on. This whole blog exercise is a perfect example. I'll say about 99% of what I think, open and unabashed. There's always something, though, always some little throw-in so that when I read this later, I can tell myself I knew what was coming. (This last sentence? Perfect fucking example.)

We're afraid to hope for too much. We've got something of a routine down, now, which would be more unsettling if we didn't both enjoy it so much. I'm sitting here, watching cigarette smoke curl around the monitor, daring to hope and simultaneously making excuses in my head. I don't even know what I'm hoping for exactly, beyond the hope that things continue being this good.

And then there's always the parent issue. They won't approve. This is a given. The best friend barely approves, he's another one who's constantly hedging the bet. The parents are different, though. I could make them see, probably. Not without changing what we've got, though, and I won't do that for anyone. I could tell them she doesn't need me as much, that she makes me so happy, that we've grown out of so much of the bad stuff. I can sell anyone anything. That's what I do. Problem is, to do it right, to make my parents comfortable, I'd have to trade so much of what we like about this. The weight of their expectations would obliterate everything we have going. To be fair to mom and pop, it's not all their fault. We were very, very bad to each other when we let go the last time. For the first, and last time, I'm going to justify this on paper. This is what I would say, if I was going to say anything at all:

We were just kids. We were so in love, then, the way kids tend to be. I wanted to change her world, and she wanted to believe in me so badly. We set ourselves up to fail, trying to so hard to be things for each other that no one should have to be. It was a failure to her every time she wasn't perfect. It was a failure to me every time I couldn't help, couldn't fix it. It was wrong, though. She never had to be perfect, she was more than I could reasonably ask for. I was unreasonable then. I didn't have to fix everything, I gave her everything I could and probably a little more. She asked for too much. Five years have passed now. We've been around the block a couple times, and now we know. That's our dirty little secret. She knows what it's like to really not be perfect. I know what it's like to really try too hard. And we both know what it's like when it's not as good as it could be. We've got something good. This time, we both know how good. That, regardless of what happens, makes this worth another shot. We wouldn't be here, without all that history. We had to blow up, had to go our own way, had to find out what we wanted from life independent of what we wanted from each other. Now we know. Now we're making the relationship fit ourselves, not the other way around. Now we know.

Recycling

This is reprinted from another blog I keep, but I like it, and I'd like it here. So.

So I'm a little confused....one of my good friends from college is getting married in two weeks, and she didn't invite me to the wedding. She says she didn't know my address, but let's be honest here....I think the real problem is that my ex-wife almost has to be there. Now, to be fair, I understand that when you get divorced, your friends have to come down on one side or the other at some point.The guys have mostly come down on my side of it, but this particular friend had thus far been fairly objective. Actually, she's the only one of the girls from our little gang at U of I who still talks to me at all.

I don't exactly blame her--who wants their wedding to be the setting for an incredibly awkward social scene, right? But they're nice couple, and I would have liked the opportunity to get together with some of the old crew. What really bothers me more than anything is that she won't shoot straight about it. I mean, she hasn't taken sides, and I really appreciate that. And I know she can't be fucking Switzerland with the wedding, it had to be one or the other of us. But she could have just told me, it wouldn't have broken my heart.

That's the worst thing about the divorce, really. I'm glad I got out of the marriage when I did, pre-kids and all. I'm not happy about the whole situation, but I don't regret it and I definitely have reached a point where I'm at peace with the whole thing. The earthquake was bad, but we're past that. It's the aftershocks that hurt. I miss some of those friends, and it stings a little to know that things will never be quite like they were, even if we all managed to get together.
I miss owning a house. I miss hanging out with my brothers-in-law, drinking beer and arguing about the kind of asinine things only close friends can discuss. I miss playing softball on Friday nights and then playing basketball hungover on Saturday mornings, reeking of booze and dragging ass all over the court with the guys. I miss my nieces and nephews. I miss all the innocent flirting with my sister-in-law. I miss playing bags on Sunday.

I don't miss the fights. I don't miss going to my in-laws four times a week. I don't miss the drama. I don't miss being broke. I don't miss the nagging, harping, constant browbeating about everything under the sun. I don't miss my ex-wife.

I take back my earlier comment. I have some regrets. I'm not sad that it turned out the way it did, I think it was inevitable. I don't regret the relationship, either. The good times were good, just not good enough to get us through. But I wish I'd made a better break with all the satellites that orbited our marriage. I wish I'd had a chance to say goodbye, man to man, to the guys that meant so much to me for the past four years. I wish I could have explained myself to my ex-wife's sister, because I can't stand the knowledge that she hates me now. I wish I could have kissed my nieces and nephews goodbye. I wish I'd told my father-in-law that he was a controlling, domineering ass. I wish I'd told my mother-in-law that half of what ruined my marriage stemmed directly from her fucked-up way of directing her daughter's every action.

But the one thing that can still make me tear up is a ridiculous little thing. So insignificant in the grand scheme of things, I'm almost embarassed to admit it. You all (yeah, sometimes I pretend someone reads this cathartic, self-indulgent shit) will probably think I'm nuts, and I can't say I blame you. But it just happens to be the one thing that still hurts. Judge me however you want, recommend me for psychoanalysis, never speak to me again. It's the simple truth.

I wish that bitch had let me keep my goddamn cats. I loved those fucking cats.