I once described my family as “six abrasive oddballs” led by “parents from Neptune and three siblings I never knew. All the kids ignored each other except when tormenting younger ones, while mom and dad orbited in ellipses that brought them into contact with us regularly but never intimately.”
It’s a fair description, if a little on the warm and fuzzy side. Not that we dislike one another, or that we are unhappy as a family. We surviving siblings (brother Pete died in 2012) are just a bit prickly, with a side dish of antisocial and a healthy dollop of broken glass on top.
I’ve never had an actual conversation with anyone in my family, ever, unless it involved the Cleveland Indians having traded someone they shouldn’t have, or vice-versa. And maybe weather.
Other subjects, like health, finances or family life are all off-limits, although no one has ever said so. Work and jobs go unmentioned and politics isn’t on the menu. It’s OK to ask about someone’s pet.
I’m in my eighth decade and I’ve never physically embraced anyone in my family and that will never change. We don’t do hug.
This is a lengthy but necessary introduction and explanation for my darling wife being troubled, and borderline traumatized, following a 15-minute phone conversation with my sister. Why? Because Trophy suddenly realized she didn’t know whether Carol was divorced or still married.
Uh oh. Carol must have let something slip.
I tried being honest. I said “I don’t know” mixed in with two other truisms: ”What do I care?” and ”None of my business.” There could have been an anniversary a few decades ago but I’m not sure.
This failed to satisfy Trophy, who is Italian and thinks families should know everything about each other, starting with birthdays and shoe size to genetic predispositions, wildest fantasies and which Beatle was their favorite.
Fine with me. Whatever. Tell each other anything you want. You won’t hear me complain.
“Oh, and by the way, I don’t know if Bill is married either.”
(I didn’t actually say that. Wouldn’t have occurred to me. None of my business.)
But after several minutes stewing following that phone call, Trophy smelled family discord. She zeroed in: ”What about Bill and Darlene? Are they still married?”
My wife should understand that I don’t know about them and they don’t know about me, and that calling up and demanding answers to personal stuff just ain’t gonna happen. Bill and Darlene got married in the early 1970s (my mother told me a few years later) and at some point they split up. But got back together.
Over the years they’ve often lived apart, mostly because he taught Black History at South Carolina State, and she taught Black History at Michigan State, Stanford, Harvard, Charleston College and some others, maybe. Not sure.
She also had a kid at some point. Not with him. Don’t ask, how would I know?
I’m happy to report that neither of my siblings know whether I’m married to Trophy (or to Paris Hilton) or not. Put bluntly: They Don’t Care and I Don’t Mind.
I’ve been writing columns going back to the 1980s and with the Daily Journal since 2007. Sometimes family stuff gets tossed into the Osterizer blender I call a Royal typewriter and sometimes their names get mentioned.
Bill and Carol will never know about this column. Neither have the slightest interest in my writings, my books, my hopes nor yearnings. I could tell them my favorite Beatle was Spiro Agnew and they’d shrug. If you think any of this causes me to weep bitter tears on lonely winter nights, please tell me. I’ll laugh for 10 minutes straight.
It goes both ways. I stopped at Carol’s house in Pennsylvania one time in 2008; Bill has lived in South Carolina nearly 60 years and I visited once in 1983. But a year ago I bumped into him in a bar in Columbia, the state capitol and biggest city. (NOTE: Mathematically impossible.)
People may think my family is stunted or repressed, and I wouldn’t argue. But look around the next roomful of people you happen to be standing in and I’d bet their families and upbringings were at least as whacky as mine.
Or yours.
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