family issues

Being the Big Sister


I am working on my workshop powerpoint yesterday morning, and it’s really coming together by the way, when I receive an email. Now, I know you are not supposed to stop what you are doing and check your email every time one comes in. Efficient people check their mail at set times, deal with them and ignore them until the next designated mail check rolls around.

I check my email all the time. It is a habit from my teaching days when I would receive emails all day long from other teachers and parents that about half the time had to be dealt with quickly. If this is not efficient, it has never severely impeded me from getting work done either.

The email was from my brother, CB, and, of course, he was in trouble. I don’t hear from him unless he is in trouble and he is afraid to ask Mom for help. I am his go-between. His enabler if you will. He knows that if all else fails, I will at least send him a care package and ten or twenty dollars. Mostly, I don’t fail. I have always been able to convince our parents to pity him and help out.

He is 42 now. Hardly a “baby brother” anymore and while I would like to be on an equal adult footing with him, it’s so hard to achieve that balance when I get SOS emails and directions to phone him at this or that friend’s pad.

Today’s sad story involved my XSIL and an alleged broken nose (his) and a van with its engine scattered around the garage of an old girlfriend’s. There was the usual blame shifting – his car insurance company withdrew more than it was supposed to for the monthly payment – and he expressed his usual bewilderment at how he could still be living out of his car and on the generousity of friends at such an advanced age. The latter is the only thing that surprises me. My mother, sisters, myself and his daughters are really the only people compelled to love him; the rest have options.

CB has never been in step with the world. He drank from a young age and never outgrew the need to use alcohol to alter his reality like most people do. He mated up early with someone who was not good for him but, for reasons I certainly can’t understand, can’t see that. He thought he was too smart to need an education and was too lazy to go back for it when he realized he’d made a mistake. He was drawn to wild schemes and dreams that were too off the grid to ever truly work or required more work than he was willing to put into it.

I saw CB in so many of my students which made working with those kinds of kids easy for me, but I don’t think I had any more impact on them than I have ever had on my brother. Some people will never believe that it is they who are wrong and the world – with all its rules and customs – that is right.

I called Mom for CB. She called him. He was a bit of a jerk to her, but she figures a few hundred dollars is a small price to pay to keep him half-way across the country for a while longer.

Maybe I should Just Live Blog Topless?


So yesterday was a banner day for views. Between my YouTube version of a Hallmark greeting in honor of my handymanly husband and taking part in nursemyra’s T-Shirt Friday, I nearly topped out at 150. Woo-hoo, eh?

The week was packed with errands and reno and school preparations and family melodrama.

BabyD has been having tiny bouts of anxiety about her upcoming induction into grade one and all day school. To the point where she has been making Rob and I a bit peeved with “growing pain” episodes and tears at the drop of a hat about – nothing as far as we can ascertain.

We dropped by her school on Thursday as the teachers were finally back in the building and a visit to the grade one classrooms and a chat with her kindergarten teacher – in addition to picking up her supplies – has calmed her a bit. I will be taking her in on Tuesday but Wednesday we start with the bus back and forth. Fortunately, the little boy behind us (renters – it won’t last) is going to be riding the bus with her and with luck they will be in the same class.

Tee is a nice kid though Rob doesn’t think he is too bright (he thinks that about the boys ElderD and MidKid bring around too) and today BabyD and Tee played princess and My Little Ponies happily for over an hour. I have high hopes for this friendship*.

Most major activities for the fall are now booked. Ballet on Monday night for BabyD. Yoga twice a week from 10 AM to 11:30AM (me). I found a yoga strength training drop in class on Friday mornings too, and I am signed up now for the writing course at U of A. It’s being taught by a local journalist and writer and is designed for immigrants to tell the story of what brought them to the area. She is going to put together a book in which some of the stories might be included and there is a public reading after the class is over. Very cool opportunity.

Thursday being my dad’s birthday, I gave him a call around lunch because it is better to talk to him early in the day anymore. He is in bed most of the time and is not really eating again. Our talk was brief. He was not very responsive and sounded worn out and very old. Sometimes he is lively and witty but more often than not now he is sounding far away.

CB tried to call dad too a few hours later but got our mother instead and was told to call later as dad was asleep again. His call to dad was really about him – he needs help escaping his situation in San Francisco and wants to go home. To Iowa. That’s desperate folks.

Thwarted, he called me but got the answering machine. His tone told me I needed to call him right away and my instinct was right. He was zoned on his anti-anxiety meds and he talked – mostly at me – for an hour and a half. Basically he wanted me to convince the folks to bring him back to Dubuque.

And that’s what I have done.

But first I told him that it was time to really put the past in the past and take his relationship with our parents from now forward. No more looking back.

I told my mother the same thing when she tried to bring up CB’s long ago hell raising of his teens. I pointed out that he was a kid and they were the adults. They didn’t know he had mental health issues even as a small child but they had made mistakes and some of them were wrong no matter how the spin played.

I talked to my brother again on Friday. He sounded much better and I told him to call home and hash details out with the folks. Later DNOS called to wish Rob a happy birthday**, and when I told her about urging our parents to bring CB home for a bit, I got her pat reply,

“Oh really.”

Our mom uses the exact same expression and tone. DNOS sounds just like her sometimes – and would be horrified to know it.

Anyway, it means “WTF are you up to” or “Thanks so fucking much but I don’t think so”.

I noted but ignored. I am tired of some of the older family dynamics.

Dealing with CB is upsetting. It reminds me of Will in the earliest days of his illness – before we knew anything really – when he would get anxious or angry and plaintively tell me he had no idea why he felt as he did but that sometimes he felt like he was losing his mind. Sadly, he was and no one believed him or me.

CB’s quest to find mental help or help period has been fruitless with most doctors and other professionals telling him (or accusing him – take your pick) that he is actively choosing to live an effed up life. My folks and DNOS still believe this to some extent too. I don’t.

But I have no magic wand (or excess cash lying around) to help him, so I remind my parents that CB is their son and they have amends still to make. Unfair? Perhaps. But that is what big sisters are for.

Today Rob is off to the city to help ElderD move in with her friend who is a boy whom she loves and who loves her. Beyond that is anyone’s guess. Our massage therapist thinks BoySheLoves is gay***. We’ll see.

BabyD and I are off to shop for school clothes.

Next up is cleaning for a garage sale (good freaking god help me) and to put our new fall schedule to a serious road test.

Life in the Great White North.

* Like that the family doesn’t move soon. They are acreage crazy and it’s not looking good.

** My family worships my husband like aboriginals with a Coke bottle*.

*** Okay, we wondered about that too but ElderD says “no” because she wondered also and asked.

* nursemyra rightly reminds me that Australians might take offense at the coke bottle reference. I was thinking about that movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, when I made the comparison. My family acts as though Rob dropped from the sky like a god in Greek Mythology and it irritates me to no end as it seems to me they are happier with him than they ever were with my late husband. I meant no offense but realize now that some people were offended and I am sorry.