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One is the loneliest number
Being an only child is an overwhelming experience that virtually ensures dysfunction in later years. There are moments of such intense scrutiny that wishing for a sibling becomes commonplace. Though I am a bit of a glory hog, there are times when sharing the spotlight would have been a great relief — like when I cut school to get high with my boyfriend on the same day that my mother decided to read my diary and come to school because she determined I was suicidal. Apparently, she mistook my teenage angst for genuine existential sadness. Is it too much to wish for another child in the home to divert a prying mother’s attention at times like these? It was always this way — just me and the folks. And divorce was looming at this point, so you can imagine the fun. When I was really young kid, I dreaded family vacations. My parents were not cruise-ship parents or schlep-to-the-public-beach parents; they were remote-cabins-on-private-property parents. I rarely saw another living soul. I desperately wanted a sibling because I wanted a playmate. I wanted us to run around in the surf and trample each other’s sandcastles (for surely this is what siblings did). I was even jealous of friends who fought with their brothers and sisters; at least they had other kids in the house. If I did something wrong, there was no one else to blame, which led to elaborate fantasies about a hell-raising older sister with a Mohawk who rode a motorcycle and French kissed all the boys. She would be the ultimate icebreaker and I would be angelic by comparison. The desire for a sibling never subsided. When my parents divorced, I didn’t want to be alone with my anger. And I didn’t want attention placed on me. When I went away to college, I wanted to talk to that brother or sister. I wanted to say, “Mom is being that way again,” and he or she would understand instantly all the implications of that statement. I wanted a partner in crime, a person of my own rank in the family, and maybe even another person to love. Yet, when I finally became a sister at 25, I was mad as hell. My father’s hangover and other bitter pills
Dad sat me down to watch A Clockwork Orange when I was just 12 years old; he said it was one of the most important anti-government movies ever made. He took pains to explain the messages that were lost on my pre-teen mind amidst the eye clamps and beatings. Dad talked to me about college and sex and philosophy before I even knew long division. He was a “60s refuge, but not the kind of free-wheeling ex-hippie popularized by Jerry Garcia. My Dad was more of a cross between Keith Richards and Oliver Stone: a drunk, angry ex-hippie. Angry, perhaps, that, at least in his mind, he had sold out. Angry that being successful did not make him happy. Angry that his ideals were expressed only in his thoughts and not his actions. Angry that marriage wasn’t all romance. But I think my father was mostly angry that the “60s were over. I am sure that he really believed in the causes for which he fought. But I also think he liked the fight itself. I think that’s why he became a lawyer. When I was in middle school, I used to think that I really missed the generation boat. My peers didn’t unite and confront civil wrongs. We didn’t blow off society’s expectations of us to follow our ideals. We didn’t even have good bands. In my house I dutifully listened to Arlo Guthrie, Dick and Mimi Farina, the Stones, Beatles and Dylan. I suffered from “low generation self esteem.” What a cruel trick that I had to watch Woodstock footage on PBS instead of bragging about being there! I felt my Dad’s whisper from behind me at such moments, “Oh, those were the times … to be alive then, that meant something.” I felt that I was supposed to be there, muddy and idealistic, high and swaying, an activist, a love child. Then I grew older and, therefore, bitter. I staged a small revolution against my father by listening to pop music. I began sneaking Madonna albums into the house and quietly started to embrace my own generation. Question authority? OK, let’s start with Dad. Let’s question the idea that the “60s were so great to begin with. I mean, a goddamn war was going on. My father wiped tears of nostalgia from his eyes over a time “when energy was in the air” and yet we’re talking about a time of bloodshed, riots and assassinations. I decided that this wasn’t a time to romanticize; this was a time we should be glad was over. I would never be jealous of anyone’s “60s nostalgia. I didn’t want to go back to a time of stratifying dissent when feminism was just a glint in some women’s minds and gay rights weren’t even that. I embraced my generation. We were punk, prep, new wave, grunge, hipster and chic ” we were whatever we wanted to be. We were not uniform in our dissent. But while I developed my own ideas, Dad seemed to stay the same. He drank and remembered secret times I wasn’t privy to. And then one day he changed.
Night of the living hippie
After one too many drunken mishaps, my father went into rehab and became a new man. Just like that. One day I was informed that my father, whom no one had ever openly referred to as an alcoholic, had recovered. I no longer knew this new and sober Dad. Suddenly, Dad was warm and fuzzy. Dad was a hippie. Again. An angry, self-reproachful man had become a love child. Now, my father just wanted to photograph nature and study Islam. He wrote a journal and meditated. He talked not of harsh wrongs that exist in our world, but of meaningful relationships and why love should not be taken for granted. Clearly, I was up against some interloper who just looked like my father. This was all the more troubling because I had turned into an angry and jaded person myself. I was just like my father and I wanted to bitch about politics, not pick flowers. We were on uneven ground, to say the least. I once had a philosophy professor who told me that he finally realized, at the age of 50, that all the theories he had when he was young — and subsequently discarded as he got older — were actually right all along. That was my Dad, back to the beginning, reborn with his initial life philosophies. Meanwhile, I was still shedding theories. Of course, I was happy that my Dad was sober. A child hasn’t really lived until she has seen her father passed out in front of the Spice channel, still clutching an empty bottle of vodka. Sober was definitely better and very welcome. And, in time, I did begin to see that although my father was now a kinder and gentler man, he still had a sharp wit, still got upset by conservative politics, and still loved me with unbridled fervor, which, as New Dad would say, is all that really matters. So we forged a new, and, perhaps, more mature relationship. We learned to really enjoy each other. And that is why when Dad and his wife, Debra, told me they were going to have a child I couldn’t help but instantly hate the baby. Two can be as bad as one; it’s the loneliest number since the number one
We knew early on that the baby was going to be a girl because, as my father put it, “The invasive medical establishment has taken it upon themselves to give Deb every test known to man because she is older.” At 43, I merely saw Debra as joining the ranks of Annette Benning, Susan Sarandon, and, God bless her, Madonna. Deb having a baby at 43 didn’t strike me as irrational or weird. But my father having a baby at 53 sure did. The Charlie Chaplin and Larry King references were never far from my tongue, which I bit throughout nine months of new-age pregnancy. The baby was my foe. I was jealous about 90 different ways and at a loss what to do about it. The way I figured it, the baby would get good New Dad from the start. All my hard work, all I had been through with my father, would benefit this little bundle of joy. She would probably get the best of everything: no divorce, no alcoholism, no angry Dad. Instead, she would get nice, caring Dad, do-you-need-any-cash Dad. And, what was worse, now that I was an adult and far from home, she would be an only child — which all of a sudden appeared enviable. She would get Dad all to herself. She sucked. She wasn’t really my sister at all. Surprisingly, people were quick to agree with me, at least about the sister part. Everyone assured me that we wouldn’t really be sisters. I would be more like an aunt. After all, we wouldn’t be growing up together, we would just be related from afar. The mathematics of a post-nuclear family is a bit stunning. When my sister enters kindergarten I will be entering my 30s. When she goes to prom I’ll be a soccer mom. By the time she is legal to drink, I’ll probably just be coming out of rehab myself. When I’m 50, she’ll be 25, the age I was when she was born. We weren’t sisters; we were victims of circumstance. Learning to love the one you’re with
There are moments in life that can shake our reality and twist us into new people. We do not control these moments, prepare for them or choose them. They are the details of circumstance that render us changed. I would like to say that when Shiloh, my baby sister, was born, I experienced such a moment. Yet, it was actually some time after her birth that I felt her effect. Her actual birth, amidst various roots, barks, herbs, dulas, midwives and family, struck me as just more of the same new-age Dad and Debra I now knew. When they had a Native American ceremony to plant (yes plant) Shiloh’s umbilical cord (which I understand was no easy thing to get a hold of — damn medical establishment) I could not help but hold my own magical rolling-of-the-eyes ceremony and imagine a tree sprouting tiny Shiloh babies. But lest you think me totally inhuman, Shiloh did get to me. Right in the heart, right in my most vulnerable spot, right in the space in the pit of my stomach I like to cloak with sarcasm. Shiloh turned out to be the funniest and most amazing and brilliant child. I can only assume that she will attend Harvard and shortly thereafter change the world, for she has already changed mine. Shiloh began loving me before I had the chance to really manifest some good hatred her way. She smiled at me with that special brand of delight reserved for children’s faces and slowly started the process of thawing the ice that pumped through my heart. I allowed myself to notice her. Then I allowed myself to revel in her. When she gave me a kiss goodnight without prompting, I realized that she was an independent force with her own ideas about sisterhood. When I realized she could imitate the family dog with unreserved passion, I knew that that I was dealing with a child of superb wit and sophistication. When I watched her put on her coat, grab the car keys and announce to the room, ” I’m going to pick up a video, be right back,” I knew this child was 2 going on 30. When she wouldn’t go down the big slide without me, I nearly cried. And when I looked into Shiloh’s face and saw my own visage I could only smile and think, “Kid, I like your style.” Though at first she was the alien baby that all babies start out as, she soon became a very small but very real person who connected me to my Dad even more. Through Shiloh, I see my father as a father all over again. I have stopped resenting his generation (somewhat), and I have started to see more of the faults of my own. I now imagine my Dad caring for me once upon a time the way he cares for Shiloh, and I realize that parents love their children much more than we ever know, and my love for my parents is much greater than I ever realized. I see an old soul in Shiloh, and I see a sister. I just can’t wait to get her out on the beach so I can wreck her sandcastles. Related Sites |
