I woke up from a dream where I was floating in a vast ocean of clouds… weightless and unfeeling. Where the knowledge of who I had become was gone and only the present moment existed.
The fantasy was shattered when the reality of what was before me shook my core. My hands trembled as I stood, steadfast, as the same force I’ve endured my entire life.. tried to wash me away.
And… I have to admit, I doubted myself… maybe I should be washed away. Maybe I was wrong… maybe I deserved to be eroded. But it wasn’t true. It isn’t true. And I have to keep reminding myself of that… the reality is.. that I have grown stronger… a denser stone. That my instincts aren’t wrong… that I really do see more of the truth than I ever have. It’s so hard to stand your ground, when the forces around you are so strong… but I have to… I owe myself… and the twins, my brother… that much.
I know I have had a really hard time with my memory over the last week… it hurts so much to remember at times… but I’m awake now…
***
When I picked the twins up on Wednesday evening. They were so very excited to go on this trip and you could tell. The smiles on their face as they loaded their luggage into the car, it warmed my heart.
We talked a little and before not too long I asked, “So, how’s school going?”
“I have 3 F’s!” Said Ava, half laughing. “I have one!” Said Evan… I paused.
“Oh really? In what?”
I listened as they explained which classes and I asked questions about their teachers and what was so difficult.
“Hm…” I said pensively and offered some advice and thoughts, “Well, you should really work to get those up guys” and I left it. In my heart, I thought to myself, they did just lose their dad. How good would I be doing if I just lost my father? But I don’t know if this is a new occurrence or not and I wasn’t about to broach the topic while driving. Also, I’m not their mother. And, I am very sensitive not to cross that boundary with Casey (their mom)… to respect her rights and ability to parent and to keep a good relationship with her. It’s not that I’m necessarily afraid of her. But it’s just easier to maintain a good relationship…well.. for a lot of reasons.
On the plane, the twins sat next to my brother and SIL, as my brother had purchased their tickets so they boarded together. Ava apparently announced to my brother unprompted that she had 3 F’s. This is where the trouble started…
***
The first night at the vacation house the kids enjoyed the pool, and as expected, my brother got really drunk. He gets drunk every night. At one point, my SIL, Amanda, was chatting w/ my parents in the kitchen (my brother was not in the room). Amanda pointed to a bottle of Jack and shook it, showing them how it was almost empty. “He drank all of this tonight” she said to them. My mom gasped and my dad shook his head disapprovingly, “I never drank that much when I was his age”. I walked by and internally I couldn’t help but scoff. Okay, you only cheated on your wife, and came home drunk on occasion, and also beat your kids. But, congratulations on not finishing the entire bottle of whiskey dad, father of the year right there. But, I said nothing and walked away.
Later that evening, the kids got tired of the pool and came inside. My brother, myself, the twins (and my brother’s son) were all in the living room hanging out. My brother was very drunk at this point and suddenly he launches into a lecture towards the twins.
“Hey, listen, I really want to take you on a trip next year.. to Hawaii or California… but I’m not going to take you if I hear about F’s again. I don’t want to hear anything about F’s. You guys need to get your grades up. You’re smart kids, there’s no excuse for getting F’s.” He carried on for a while more. Finally, Ava quietly said “Okay…” and Evan said nothing. They both looked somber. He kept going until it started to get uncomfortable, I interjected to break the tension a little.
“Hey, how many F’s did you get in school, Juan?” I quipped w/ a sly smile…
He couldn’t help but smile back… “Don’t worry about it..” and everyone erupted in laughter.
My brother barely graduated high school. My dad lectured him too, on doing better. He yelled, lectured, got angry…got in fights, didn’t matter though did it? I on, the other hand, breezed through high school. No one had to tell me anything (admittedly it was because I didn’t want any reason for there to be a spotlight on me). But, school was generally easy. I wasn’t a straight A student, just a good enough student to keep people off of my back.
Evan asked me if I ever got an F. “Nope.” I said and smiled, “I wasn’t a perfect student either though.. and you guys don’t have to be either… but your uncle is right…. let’s try and do a little better than F’s, huh?” I said calmly.
I don’t agree with how my brother approached it, but I wanted to make sure they knew, I generally agreed… but was not going to lecture them on it.
Juan went on for a while more about it. I started to get uncomfortable. Like, okay, they get it, but I knew it was because he was wasted that he kept going. The hypocrisy of it grated against me a little. It’s okay to get shit faced every night so long as you do well in school? Hm….. k.
On the second night, things escalated a little.
I was sitting in the kitchen sipping some evening coffee with Amanda, when Juan walks in, pretty drunk at this point… again. “We need to do something about their grades. We need to get on Casey.” Amanda and I exchanged looks.
“Um, I mean I agree they need to do better, but I don’t think we have a right to say anything to Casey about it…” that’s where my brother got upset.
“What do you mean?? Of course we need to say something… someone has to? She’s obviously not doing it. She doesn’t tell them anything!”
“Okay, but she’s their mom. I don’ feel comfortable approaching her on that.. I don’t mind talking to the kids directly but… I’m not going to criticize her parenting. She’s also a single mother…. and also I want to maintain a good relationship with her…” I tried to explain. Amanda chimed in, “Yeah, I agree with Jess we can talk to the kids but we shouldn’t get into an argument with Casey over it.”
“Wait.. so hold on.. you want the kids to just fail high school?” my brother said getting more upset.
“Okay, well first of all they’re not in High School.. they’re in middle school…” I said. I was trying to relate that they’re still really young (13) and I wanted to continue to try and get him to understand they’re just kids and going through a lot right now. He cut me off…
“So what? If they don’t start now they’ll continue failing in high school. So you want them to fail?”
“Yeah, that’s right, I want them to fail..” I said dryly, getting upset at this point. “Of course thats’ not what I want.. but we already talked to the kids yesterday….” my brother cut me off again with his voice raised and aggressive.
“Hold on, so according to you both …. its okay if the kids fail so long as you keep a good relationship with Casey? Rather than tell her to do better and at least the kids graduate?”
My hand started shaking lightly, I tried to conceal it by holding my coffee mug tighter. “This isn’t a black and white situation like that. I just think we can broach the topic with the kids and maybe if we are gentle on it with Casey…. ” but.. gentle is not what my brother is about. He has pissed Casey off before with this approach… and this is what I was worried about. If he actually wanted to talk to her in a reasonable way.. great. But he can’t even have the conversation with me in a reasonable way without getting upset.
At one point, I told him I didn’t like his tone.. to back off… and he got upset about that… and said I wasn’t letting him talk. I shut up and let him talk more but he had such black and white thinking it was driving me up a wall. His voice is always so accusatory. He *wanted* to get into a fight. And I don’t do well with this kind of aggressive confrontation. Weirdly, him and his son brutally wrestle every night according to Amanda… to the point she gets scared sometimes. So much aggression… it wafts off of him.
Eventually, my mom walked in and started listening. Juan told her that Ava was bragging about her F’s. I tried to explain. She’s not bragging, she wants someone to care, obviously. She’s boundary testing. He sort of understood…. but repeated that she was bragging about it several times that night after that. I rolled my eyes.
At one point, he mentioned feeling like the responsibility is his now… and I understood. Trust me, I understand the gravity, the weight of all of this. It’s painful and difficult. But, the knee-jerk reaction to it felt like too much. It felt over the top. And particularly hypocritical given he was fucking wasted. Given he struggled a lot in high school and never “listened” when my dad yelled at him.
He mentioned that he and Amanda get on their son every night to do homework… and he gets A’s. Juan said they needed to do that w/ the twins… get access to their grades somehow and track daily. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. To me, this sounded like a gross overstep of boundaries (and not even legal), but to my brother… it is necessary because “no one else was going to do it” and we had an obligation to try….
It’s not like I disagree that we should care. It’s that I don’t like that he was in this frame of mind while discussing it. And you can’t say anything to my brother about his drinking… or he’ll get upset. It’s that, I don’t like his black and white thinking. It’s that, he doesn’t consider Casey’s feelings at all (just like my dad). It’s that, he doesn’t understand that maintaining a good relationship *and* dealing with the situation is a possibility if he just tries to approach it with compassion. It’s that he doesn’t understand that he’s just repeating the same mistakes my dad made with him….
He did end up apologizing to me later.. said he was sorry if he was being rude but was glad we were on the same page. I said it was fine, not to worry about it. Which.. tbh… I’m impressed with myself that I passed that off as sincere.
Because it wasn’t fine.
It has never been fine. But this was easier than trying to get him to see any one else’s perspective.
I was rattled. I rolled through the rest of the night pretending I didn’t care. But… I also felt guilty. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was being too easy on the twins. Maybe I should have talked to them more about their grades. Maybe I should say something to Casey. Why didn’t I think of that? Am I not paying enough attention? If I did say something to her, it would be more in the vein of offering support, as in, “Do you need help or support or tutors for them?”
I think, really it was just that I was giving the kids a break. I was just happy to see them and I didn’t want to use family time as a bargaining chip. The whole situation shook my confidence that I was doing right by them, that somehow maybe I looked like I didn’t care. The guilt I’ve felt not spending more time with them, spending so much time on myself and my own issues, compounded and I started to panic inside. The negative thought and self-hatred chain reaction ignited…. it was fire inside of me. We had plenty of alcohol though and I did what my family taught me. I drank, a lot.
***
It’s strange. To observe him, my brother. Especially around my dad. He is so fucking chummy with him it disgusts me. He told me he never wanted to talk to my parents again after my brother died. It is like… none of that matters now. None of how my dad treated him or me or my brother matters. And you know what the worst part is? I used to be just – like – him. I used to try and be the person my dad wanted — to win his approval. I don’t do that anymore. I am just quiet and I avoid but I can see my brother doing it — it’s astounding. My brother thinks he’s a badass. That no one can tell him what to do, that he does what he wants. So much fucking machismo and ego. And yet, all I could see was a young kid trying to get the love from daddy he never got. My stomach churned. Both because of how fucking pathetic it is but also how fucking sad. And even sadder that he’ll never see it.
And as I lay in bed tonight….the weight of all of that sitting like a heavy stone in my stomach. The weight of realizing how different my reality is because of my brother being dead…. my brother is dead… my brother is dead…. Eddie died. It’s like a horrible distorted reality I can’t wake up from. And it has been some time since I’ve felt it. The rawness, the striking pain of realizing his kids are growing up without a father. That all they have is their mom who tries, but is largely under-supported. And us, an emotionally broken alcoholic “family”.
And then there’s me. Just as broken, trying so hard to rise to the occasion but always feeling like I’m failing. Always hating myself. Always suffering. Always wrapped up in my own bull shit. And I just feel so bad. So sorry. I’m so sorry I’m not doing better by your kids, Eddie. All I can do is say, I’ll try harder. I don’t know what I can do and all of it hurts so fucking much — but I’ll try to do better. That’s all I can fucking promise. I will try and move past all the fucking bull shit and do what’s right. I will do my best to follow my instincts…
It’s not weak to have compassion. It’s not weak to listen to the kids and offer support instead of a lecture. To let them make some mistakes, and to step in only when those mistakes start to veer in the direction of *too far* off the path. And to show that I care in the right ways. To lead by example. To show that it’s okay to have feelings. Evan struggles so much with “big feelings”, he walks away a lot when he gets too overwhelmed. Everyone rushes to coddle him, but I just let him be. If he needs a moment, that’s okay, and I always offer an invitation back after a short while (which he always takes). And when Ava wants to be alone, everyone gets concerned there’s something wrong… but jeezus.. it’s okay to just need alone time (God, I know this more than anyone). It’s these tiny lessons I hope…. I hope they see. I hope they feel safe and supported when they’re around me. And, if I need to have a tough conversation with Casey (or them) I’ll do my best to work through it. I will probably fuck up… a lot… but all I can do is try…
I just wish it all didn’t hurt so much.
…5 more days with all of them. Deep breathes….. : /
“Nothing is about you. Life is never happening to you. Life is happening with you. Your role isn’t the victim, but the self aware observer.“