Christmas is going to the Booze

As a child, I thought that I had the picture-perfect family on my mother's side; my parents who loved each other, my brother and I were both athletic, smart and musical, and we got along like peanut butter and diabetics. My grandparents were cute and cooked good food, though their gift choice was always a little off wack. My aunt, Lisa, was divorced, but she got along just fine with my cousins Brandon and Emily, and my Uncle Paul was married to a cool lady and they had two kids, Lucas and Abby. We were the Christmas card family- two grandparents, their three childen with respective spouses, and three sets of boy-girl grandchildren.

Apparently I was too busy licking my finger and jamming it into the sugar bowl to notice the disfunction that was (is) my family.

Along the way between my youth and the present, my grandfather died, and Grammy remarried an old Italian man named Ed. They started dating six months after my grandfather died, and announced their engagement at the family Christmas party when I was a freshman. I hated Ed from the beginning and tried to refuse attending the wedding, but then got sucked into being in it. I thought he was too old, too boring, too plain, and too set in his ways to offer my fun, energetic, action-loving grandmother anything she needed. It seemed everybody in the family was trying to be supportive, except for me- I was pissed and made sure everybody knew it. My grandparents had been married for 43 years, he dies, and she is married again 14 months later.

This is Ed in a nutshell: He thinks that women exist to serve their men, disgustingly racist and biased, he shits his pants, and uses the same three jokes, cycling through them multiple times throughout the night. He can't hear, he act's supperior because he knows when to drink which wine, and he always has food on his face when he eats. He is disgusting, and I am impatiently waiting for him to die.

Apparently I am not the only one; my mom and aunt just kept their opinions secret until I was a little older. He yells at my grandmother and she takes it; he once blew up on my mother, who then cried for two days before resoving the conflict with a burning hatred for him. Truth is, the whole family is waiting for the man to keel over and be gone. Whenever he comes to a gathering, we just try to get him drunk as fast as possible so that he'll fall asleep in a different room and we can have our grandmother back.

Also a bastard: My mom's brother, Paul. I do not understand how this man comes from the same gene pool as my mother. He is the biggest racist/red neck/ deer hunting/ nascar watching/ 40oz. Budweiser drinking/ chauvinistic pig I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Actually, when I was little and he was always there to put the worm on my hook, he was a cool guy. Now, however, I don't understand how we are related. He loves everything that I am against, and he knows this- thus begins the never-ending routine of rubbing salt in what he views as the wounds that are my beliefs and sensitivities. For example, when he found out I worked at camp where there were lots of kids from Flint and Detroit he said things like, "Yeah, but you give the white kids more attention right?" or, "You put the nigger babies on mean horses and watch 'em cry, right?" THIS IS THE MAN CARRYING ON THE FAMILY NAME ON MY MOM'S SIDE; HE IS ONE HALF OF A PARENTAL UNIT RAISING KIDS IN MID-MICHIGAN IN 2006. His wife was raised to believe that women are lucky to have husbands who they get to serve. What the hell?

Then my Aunt Lisa, who is a complete nutjob. She just doesn't quite have it all together, and is very irresponsible with money. And also unwilling to care for her disabled child. Emily, my 21 year-old cousin is mentally disabled- you'd never know by meeting to her, or even talking to her for hours on end, but she has the mental capacity of an 8 year-old child. And her mother is pissed that she lives in her house. There were low-points when Em was in middle school when my aunt would snap and try to put her into foster care. She just wanted to get rid of her child, because she couldn't do it anymore. It was too hard. Fuck her. I've never been able to look at her the same since learning that. The only reason I found out was because my mom told my brother and I because my parents were going to take Emily in if my aunt ever lost it. Then there Lisa's son Brandon, a 25 year-old law student with the social skills of a potato. He is so awkward, and has absolutely NO confidence in the presence of anything that is not a math book and calculator. Today we were playing a game with dice, and he was asking me how many symbols were on the dice (the weren't ordinary dice) and how many people were playing. I told him and then asked, "Are you figuring out the stats in your head, you crazyass?" I was kidding, it was common conversational banter, and he replied, in the pissiest of tones, "Yes I am, and don't call me an ass." (my blank stare) "You're a jerk." (me, chugging my wine). He is so socially inept, it makes me wonder how we share grandparents. Lisa also has a boyfriend, Barry, who is very nice, but he eats slowly and gets really drunk on every occasion- entertaining, but awkward.

Then there is my family- I'm not saying we don't have issues, but we've got it together compared to these people. Among all of these people, I can see similarities between only my mom and grandmother, but the rest of those people just don't fit.

And I think grandma finally realized that today. As she got completely wasted. She leaned in to my face and drunkenly "whispered" because Ed was 3 feet away, "Do you still hate Eddie?" I just shushed her, but she "whispered" even louder, "What!? He already knows all about it! Do ya?" At this point my mother caught on to what was happening and chimed in, "Mom, stop. Why are there holes in your socks," as I threw in a, "Where did you get your earrings," for good measure to make sure she lost track of the conversatiional subject. I view my grandmother's obnoxious drunken state as her arrival at the point that this clan she is the matriarch of, is fucked up.

Personally, I've been secretly getting drunk at family Christmas gatherings since I was 16. Grandma finally caught on that the only way to avoid depression caused by the state of our "family" is to get blazing drunk so you aren't aware of anybody's voice but your own, or anybody's presence aside from the relief swirling around in the solo cup in your hand.

peace, love, and ponies.

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
-George Burns