alabama, arkansas, i do love my ma and pa

Hey. Long time no see. I don't have any real reason, I haven't been, like, in the hospital or anything. I just haven't gotten into the mindset of writing much recently. Well, I have been writing a lot, but for the newspaper, not for this. Anyway.
I recently visited my family. My dad's family lives scattered across the country. I guess I should count myself lucky that they're currently confined to the continental US because for a while in the 80s several of them lived in various middle eastern countries. At our most recent family reunion, over Labor Day of this year, we talked about where everyone was when they were 24 (sparked by my 24 year old cousin's recent move to New York and fabulous new magazine job). My aunt talked about how she was living in Dubai and was forced into her first of, at my most recent count, five marriages, because she was nearly raped by her boss and living with a man who wasn't your husband was frowned upon. My mom was dating the anarchist that was murdered later, but she was getting her Master's degree. My dad was doing depressing work laying fiberoptic cables in Texas. I remember he told this story about putting bookshelves in front of his shitty apartment's door, but I don't remember the reason. My grandma was married with three kids. One of my aunts talked about how she had just started dating my uncle. He's the one who's dead now. I was glad that she talked about him because it was the first time we all were able to reminisce about how funny he was. My dad and another uncle talked about how wasted they all got at his funeral, which made me laugh. My dad drinks a lot but I've never seen him drunk. We hold our liquor well. I like my dad's family a lot. I see them once every two years and I miss them inbetween.
On my dad's side, we hold our liquor well. Now, my mother's family all live in the state that we live in, but we only see them, with the exception of my aunt, every six months or so, at my grandmother's birthday and at Christmas. So naturally we just visited them and wow! They are fucking insane. My mom has four siblings. She's the youngest, and then there's my Auntie, who used to be a dancer and is now a singer. She and my uncle used to take care of me a lot when I was small, and she and my mother are very close. We see her around once a month.
And then there's my mom's only brother, who is schizophrenic and a born-again Christian. I didn't actually know that he was schizophrenic because my mom has a tendency to avoid the discussion of unpleasant things until I started learning about it and mentioned it to my mother, at which point she said, "You know your uncle is schizophrenic?" No, I didn't. Of course, I should have known because he occasionally talked about his delusions while around me. I think my mom tried to limit my exposure to him, though I wouldn't think she would feel... like she had to do that, since she's a therapist.
And then there's another of my aunts. She lives with my uncle, grandmother, and her two kids, one a senior in high school and the other a freshman in college. So, I always knew that we didn't all get together at the holidays because my Auntie and she don't get along, and I never really liked her. I always found her to be... kind of callous. (When I was younger, we would normally have Christmas Eve dinner with my Auntie, then have everyone except her come down on Christmas day to open presents, and then have my uncle and grandma stay with us for a few days after that. Christmas Eve was always my favorite. Now we normally have Christmas by ourselves and go down after Christmas to clean their house.) Anyway, I was explaining this whole thing to my friend the other day when something occurred to me. "You know, I think she might be an alcoholic," I said to my friend. I really had never thought of it before, and I don't remember seeing her drinking but when I looked back at her behavior, it seemed to fit. I thought about asking my mom, but then thought better of it when I considered her tendency to avoid unpleasant topics. On the drive down there this Christmas, my mother did, for some reason, mention to me that my aunt's ex-husband, the father of my two cousins, is currently in prison for cooking meth. WELL.
When we arrived at the house, it was absolutely filthy, as always. I notice it more now that I'm older. Anyway, my grandmother lives in the house too, and she's 88 and can barely walk. I always wondered why my aunt didn't clean very much until I realized, oh yeah, SHE'S A RAGING ALCOHOLIC. Honestly, the second she came out of her room and started talking I knew. I really can't believe that I never drew the rather obvious conclusion earlier. Anyway, my mom was passive-aggressively annoyed because she thought that my aunt would be at work. So we all talked uncomfortably for a while. My uncle gave me a twenty-dollar check because he lost my giftcard. I think my mom would have been happier if we didn't have to socialize at all- really the whole purpose of the visit was to fix their house. Last month my dad visited there himself to look at all the problems so that he could bring the right tools this time. He ducks out on our weirdly formal family conversation to fix their dryer.
My cousins were asleep but then they woke up and joined in the uncomfortable conversation. The one who's a senior is a boy and he's not particularly interested in me. During the course of our visit he had two friends over, both of whom simply walked into the house without ringing the doorbell. (Later we are told that the doorbell is broken.) My other cousin still lives at home even though she's in college now. She used to be pretty weird and anxious, but she seems a bit better now. Anyway, she presents me with a Pat Benatar CD (I've come to the conclusion that I hate Pat Benatar). I can tell that she feels bad that we barely know each other and halfway proposes that we go to the mall, but I didn't really want to because she's still pretty weird and really likes anime, so I politely found a way of deflecting this suggestion. We talked for a little while though. It was okay.
At 5, we left, supposedly because we had dinner reservations but actually because none of us could really stand to spend any more time with them. We came back the next day, though, early in the morning, after stopping at the hardware store and buying them a new dryer. We get there, and my uncle and grandma are awake, he reading the Bible and she yelling at him to make her some tea. My grandmother doesn't really understand that my uncle is mentally ill and basically expects him to wait on her, which he mostly does. This, I note, makes my mother uncomfortable and is the main reason why we sometimes have the two of them to our house, so that we can serve as substitutes for my uncle and he can be in a quiet, clean house. My uncle is more agitated than usual, and we learn that this is because the garage has flooded. My dad goes off to investigate, and my mom makes grandma some tea. Grandma nearly does a spit-take when my mom says that we've bought them a new dryer. My mom insists that it's no big deal and my grandma sadly says to us that "it's [her] fault," because she always puts things off. My mom agrees with her.
My dad comes up a while later and tells us that he has fixed the leak in the garage, caused by the washing machine. (I suspect that it's due to whatever he did yesterday but don't say anything.) He sets to work clearing a path in their Hoarders-esque garage for the people to deliver the dryer, and my mom and I go upstairs to clean my grandma's room. My grandmother saves basically every piece of mail she receives, some of which seems to be important and most of which isn't. My mom throws basically all of it out, and my grandmother slightly freaks out but is too tired to prevent her from doing so. My grandmother tells me a lot of stories about distant family members who I've never met, most notably a 3rd cousin of mine who is, "a Down Syndrome." My mother tasks me with matching seemingly identical socks, at which point my female cousin walks in. I feel like she's kind of hurt not to be included, but she's also kind of annoying and my mom sort of ignores her.
We tell my grandmother that we are taking her to Burlington Coat Factory to get her a coat. "I'm always cold," she tells us for the umpteenth time. I looked forward to this outing as there is very little food in their house, and my mother has passed on her germophobia to me. I decide not to take my chances in their kitchen and wait to get some Subway when we go out. My grandmother has also picked up on my cousin's somewhat hurt feelings as she tells my mother that she will be "absolutely crushed not to be included". My mother basically ignores this and we leave. My other cousin is still asleep, and my alcoholic aunt is in her bedroom with the TV blaring.
Burlington Coat Factory is, it turns out, in a very bad area of town. I walk by several drug deals in action on my way to Subway, and on my way back I am almost not unreasonably concerned about being gunned down in a tragic drive-by shooting. Obviously, I escaped with my life.
When we come back, we all sit in the very dark and dusty living room. My dad has not left the garage, still heroically clearing a path through old clothes, Christmas decorations, and broken appliances. My mother escapes to go 'see how he's doing' and my grandmother is basically an inanimate object. This leaves me, my cousin, and my alcoholic aunt alone in the living room (my other cousin is still asleep). My aunt proceeds, apropos of seemingly nothing, to tell a pretty horrible story about this one time where she was petsitting for her neighbors and, in an unstated span of time, managed to let their cat out, presumably kill their pet tarantula, and definitely kill their iguana by leaving its heat lamp on too long and, ahem, "frying it". She's completely oblivious to how upset this story is making my cousin, and to a lesser extent, me. I excuse myself to talk to my mother in the garage, where I passively aggressively ask her to come back inside and she passive aggressively refuses.
I go back to the living room and we all sit there blinking at each other for a while. Later, when my mom was cleaning my grandmother's room and my grandmother and I talked to each other alone, she told me a little bit about her childhood (they sucked on ice for fun. [it was the great depression). My grandmother is a first-generation Welsh immigrant. Apparently her mother missed Whales very much, particularly a specific beach that she used to visit when she was a girl. After my grandma's father died, her brother sent their mother back to the beach that she missed so much but arrived to find that it had been completely built up and the charming little town that she loved so much was erased. She wished that she had never gone. I almost cried.
She also asked me to copy some addresses that she had into her new address book. It turns out that "some addresses" meant "an entire address book" and "new address book" meant "the one that we gave her last Christmas". The old address book was the one that she shared with my grandfather. He died shortly before I was born of lung cancer. My mother that this nearly destroyed my grandmother, and I think she's right. It sounds like they were very much in love. Anyway, we went through the address book, but I actually didn't have to copy too many things because as my grandmother went through, she realized that 75% of the people in it are now dead or "in a home". It made her pretty sad, understandably.
Tangentially, my dad has been secretly working on a project where he's transcribing all of the letters my grandfather sent my grandma and his mother while he was fighting in World War 2 and researched where he was and what battles he was involved in. He's really quite a nerd, my dad. My mother rescued the original letters from my grandmother's house a few years back and they both read them. I would like to read them but no one ever offered. My dad unveiled this project on Christmas Eve with Auntie. Both my aunt and my mother cried a little and talked about how sweet their dad was to my grandmother and how much he thought about her while he was gone. In one letter he mentions that he bought something at their most recent location for her younger sister's birthday. They talked about how mostly he tried to put on a brave face for my grandmother, with whom he was engaged, but also how scared he seemed and how young he was (18). I wish I had had the chance to meet my grandfather.
My grandmother gave me her roll-top desk, which we will retrieve at some later date.
After we left crazy-house, as it has been unaffectionately named, we went out to dinner with my 3rd and oldest aunt, my oldest cousin and my uncle. I really like them but we don't see them that much as a visit with them generally means a visit with the rest of my family. We share a similar sense of humor and mostly exchanged stories of how insane the rest of our family is. I also received confirmation that my aunt is a raging alcoholic without having to ask. I wish we saw them more.
Then we came home and sat in our clean house quietly. It was very pleasant.