Family Tree

2002-07-02 - 11:04 a.m.

So my mom called to wish me a happy birthday, and I haven't called her back yet. My dad called with my 10 year old half sister (well, she's 9 but will be ten soon) too, and I haven't called -him- back.

Their calls depress me.

I think my step-mom is a bitch queen and can't see what Dad sees in her, unless it's predictability and the culmination of the Heterosexual UnDream. They were together for a long time before my sister was born, so I can't just say he stays with her for the kid. And besides, I know from experience that my dad can only be coerced -into- marriage by children, not to stay in marriage.

He thinks he's stupid, but he isn't, though my step mom doesn't do anything (that I've seen) to dissuade him from this notion. And my step mom, last Christmas when I visited, was caught by me telling my pre-pubescent sister not to eat the turkey skin because it would make her fat, and no woman wants to be fat, right? And I will always have this level of bitterness because I know my sister is going to get that message from the whole world, and the last place she needs it is from her family. My dad isn't much better, since I can remember from my own childhood being called "Grosse Badene" (sp), which, roughly translated, means "big tummy." I am certain that nickname was common when I was 11, but it may have come about sooner. So, as much as I love my dad, it's still really tough to call him.

My mom depresses me for different reasons, because she took a risk with her life and is suffering for it. She was a reporter, and then an editor for most of my life, and then one year she decided to run for politics. She won, but it was a minority government, and a year later her party took a chance at toppling the government in the hopes of winning a majority in the election. They lost seats, and one of them was hers.

She had burned some bridges, and so couldn't get her old job back, and was unemployed for a year or two. She got a job at a call-centre, one of those lousy no-respect jobs that are all over the place in Nova Scotia, but those are jobs that are for people new to the workforce. When you've been in public office, or been a prefessional for most of your life and you're nearing 50, you don't need to be told when to go to the bathroom. You don't need to have your dealings with the customers randomly monitored.

She's doing some reporter work now, and makes about as much as I do, but she has four years of debt on her now. In the last few years she has had to sell her house (with the family dog's grave in the backyard) and move to a seedy-side-of-town apartment, get rid of our zoo of animals, get rid of most of her stuff, work crap jobs...and now she's moving from her apartment into a friend's basement so that she can pay off some of her debts.

She used to be with the NDP, which is the "leftist" party, the one that really does seem to care about people, but they didn't even offer her any work when she lost her seat, so now she's working for one of the central parties, and she's changed her world views to match. The Liberals can do no wrong with her any more.

She dates alcoholics or 50-year-old momma's boys, and when she speaks she sounds like she hates herself and her life.

Ten years ago she was the strongest woman I knew. Now, she considers me her best friend, and I only talk with her every two months.

I want everything in her life to be fixed, but there isn't any way for it to be fixed. At the very least I hope that she isn't broken, because I want the woman who raised me to be the grandmother for my kids whenever they come.

So there are my parents, and I'm pretty sure I'm only this bitter because of the heat.

Cheers,

The Magus

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