Being Cliche

About twice a year I call my Aunt Karen. Karen was married to my father's brother, my Uncle Mike, who was an alcoholic and killed himself just over a dozen years ago. I call Karen and talk about twice a year to catch up on how my cousins are and generally just to talk about life. Karen's got a very dry, bitter sense of humor that not everyone gets, the kind of humor that annoys my mother but that I understand completely. Now that both my younger sisters are teenagers, I value her conversations immensely. My Uncle's alcoholism and death left her raising three boys alone in a rural factory town on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River.

There's a Great Southern Novel in Karen's story somewhere, but I won't write it. Drunk and dead daddies are cliche, every southern poverty tale seems to have them. I think that's why it's so difficult to write or talk about my father's alcoholism, even though it's been a big influence on my life the past couple of years. It is not that I am embarrassed by my father's addiction; it is simply that I am embarrassed to be affected by so common a problem.

I am embarrassed by my family's cliche reactions to alcoholism. We have all too neatly fallen into stereotypes: the oppressed and put-upon working mother, the oldest child who tries to fix everything, the problem teen, the angry little girl. We are everybody's working-class family of Irish descent. Worse, my father was in the music business, the Entertainment Industry, and every biography of an Entertainment Industry figure or family details their struggles with addiction of some kind in the family. We're not even afflicted to levels of horror that are noteworthy. We're just your average family, living in the southeast, that has crumbled against a problem so common that it's not even noteworthy. Every neighborhood in every town has a family like mine. That's part of what makes the pain so damn sharp sometimes; I don't even feel justified in complaining about so common a situation.

Talking to Karen every now and again helps. She understands teenagers, having raised three now, and I rely on her for insights into my own teenage sisters. Karen also understands living with an alcoholic on the edge of your life, a person who can come in at any point in the day and just introduce a problem so big and so unexpected and tiresome that you can barely deal with it. Even though her ex-husband has been gone for over a decade, she has been living with the results of alcoholism in her life every day for years. Like my family, she and her sons have been marked for life by the simple, common, and cliche destructive actions of someone else.

I haven't spoken to my father in over a year now, and I recently made the decision not to include him at all in the new baby's life. Karen understands my decision, and unlike other family members does not reproach me about attempting to excise my father from my life. She understands that my father is on a downward spiral, and that I have simply decided not to watch him as he continues down his path. The truth about alcoholics is far worse than you'd expect; my father may live another decade or two, or even three. He is killing himself in the smallest doses possible, in order to stretch out the pain. He wants witnesses to his grief and agony; he wants us to feel his slow suicide with him. I have simply refused to be in the audience for his last big show. I will not let his grandchildren watch this last performance, the twisted last years of an addict. The sad thing is, alcoholism is so common, I can't help but wonder if someone else will act out the play for my children - or if they'll end up as stock characters in the same story with someone else.

The first cold day of Autumn

It was colder than I thought it would be this morning, and as a result I'm doomed to be a little chilly all day. Autumn creeps up so slowly on us here in Atlanta that I am always a little surprized when, one day, I wake up and it's not quite as warm as I thought it might be. The climate here spoils me with so much sunshine.

The past few weekends have been crammed. Both my mother and the husband's parents have been visiting. My mother has a steady boyfriend now, and he seems nice enough. I have realized that I am too old to get a step-dad. My sisters, should my mom re-marry, will have a step-dad, but I am simply too old for one; while I hope my mom finds a new partner that makes her happy, I am past the sort of serious influence a dad might have. Things in that arena remain complicated.

The husband's parents came down for a stay and we went out to eat a number of times. And I realized that I have an inner teenager that mightily resists being told what to do. I *like* my husband's parents, but if I had grown up in their houshold I promise you I'd have a faceful of piercings and a mohawk. A green mohawk. Seriously.

Probably I am feeling resistant to authority because everyone keeps telling me to take naps and put my feet up, and every time this happens, I can feel a devil pop up over my left shoulder. That little devil says things like: "Name the baby Damien and embroider pentacles on the nursery gear." Because I am forced to be so conventional lately, because I am pushed into this weakened pregnant-lady state, I crave shock value suddenly. I even understand pregnant teens who smoke now. They probably didn't want to be pregnant, but finding themselves in that role, show their definance the only way they know how, by smoking, the most shocking act a pregnant lady in the U.S. can committ. It's horrible. But they'll do it anyway to show that they are in control of their bodies.

I am not in control of my body. I'm still throwing up, thanks to Hyperemesis. I had a few tubes of blood taken from me again this week, both for the AFP test, and to try and figure out why I'm still heaving all the goddamn time. The next visit to the doctor will be the high-resolution scan, where we can see the baby's face; hopefully, the kid won't flash us, and I can continue not to know the gender. Not knowing, so far, has been the best part.

Vomiting in Public

Well, it finally happened: I threw up in public. My Hyperemesis had been so extreme last month that I rarely left the house except for work. After a month of this, I was desperate to go out and have fun. I had been feeling a little bit better every day. The husband had planned to take me up to Salem for my birthday to see friends, and I was just itching to go. I hadn't thrown up in two weeks at that point, and was starting to get a little energy back; I thought I would be fine.

I wasn't. I vomited at the Atlanta airport into a trash can in the rotunda. I vomited again into a plastic bag from the gift shop at Boston Logan a few days later. I'm still sick. I had been weaning myself off of the nausea medication, which makes me sleepy and fogs my thoughts. I thought I would be all right without the meds. I'm not all right. I'm still sick.

There's something about collaspsing on the pavement outside of an airport and heaving your guts out that is worse than anything in the world. It's not just that the pavement is cold, but that no matter who is whith you, you are alone in that no-place place, the airport which isn't ever exactly part of any town or city, just a waystation to somewhere else. And then, no matter how ill you've been, you have to get up and get through security to get to your plane. That was a rough day.

I had a really great time in New England, though. It was so nice to see the parade in Salem on Friday night, where all the little kids were dressed up for Halloween. The holiday has been dying a slow death at the hands of Southern Baptists down here, and it was just a breath of fresh air to go some place and see the thing celebrated with all the innocence I attached to Halloween when I was a kid. I miss real Halloween, the holiday without wierd associations and guilt.