I first started writing this in January of 2005, which was months before I started nursing school and months before I got kicked out of my house. My mom gets mad when I put it that way because I didn’t actually get kicked out, it was more of a mutual understanding after a few horrible arguments that both of our lives would be better if we didn’t live under the same roof.
If you’re bored and you take the time to look through the old old archives, you will hopefully see how much things have changed. I think, for me, the biggest change in my family life has been the strength that has formed in the relationship between me and my brothers.
My favorite (recent) story starts the night it started snowing. I was supposed to work my second job that night, but when we got a foot of snow in 2 hours, I figured it was best not to risk getting stuck. I ended up walking to a bar a few blocks away to join in happy hour with my brothers and sister-in-law. They’d been drinking since about 4 pm and it was nearly 6 at this point. Which, if you don’t know, is a long time in our family. We pretty much injest everything – food, water, pop, coffee, air – as fast as we possibly can. They were many, many drinks in by this point. Tree branches had already started falling down outside because of the heavy snow, and I looked like a snow man by the time I arrived at the bar after a 10 minute walk in the treacherous weather.
My siblings and I are very different. Simply, I am the impractical one like my father and Fro is the level headed one like my mom, but we’ve all got a little mix of all the best of our folks in us. Jerry and I tend to like dive bars, while Fro and his wife prefer martini bars. Jerry and Fro are very into business and money and economics, while I obviously have nothing to do with the business world. Fro’s life went off without a hitch (scholarship, job, marriage, MBA, all by age 28) whereas mine, uh, didn’t. (I do have more bachelor’s degrees, though.) Fro is the middle child, and he once said, “You know, no matter how different we all are, if you get us all in one room and provide us with enough booze, we all turn into our father.” He is 100% correct. Fro, the most conservative of the 3 of us, was drinking dirty martinis like shots and pounding Guinesses when I arrived.
He took one look at my snowmanesque face and shoulders and said “Fuck. Is it snowing?” I politely asked him if he had looked outside, and he said he assumed the predictions weren’t going to actually come to fruition. It was generally agreed that no one trusts the weathermen on tv and we all thought that when they called for 2 feet of snow, we’d be lucky to get 6 inches.
The drinking progressed and we eventually headed to Walnut Street. Jerry, the baby of the family, drove me while Fro and his wifey walked. Apparently, they fell down about 5 times. Jerry nearly killed us after trying to parallel park, and we all decided we were staying put for the time being. We went to Cappy’s, where Fro, in a drunken moment of emoness, said something along the lines of how nice it was that we weren’t snowed in at our parents’ house in our hometown and how cool it was that we were all together in the snowstorm, just like we were little kids again. Fro even took to throwing snowballs at us, which was made better by the fact that he was wearing glasses, a necktie, trenchcoat, and a cardigan.
The wifey got tired and, in a rare instance, Fro, Jerry and I found ourselves out at the bar. Just the three of us, which happens all too rarely. We talked about politics, work, money, our parents, and pretty much everything we could think of, until Fro decided he wanted to put on a puppet show.
He then took a $1 and a $5 bill and put on a play in which Abe Lincoln invited Washington to the play. Washington paid for the good seats (the rim of a martini glass) whereas Lincoln had the cheap seats (the rim of an ashtray). The play ended with Lincoln getting shot in the head with a spitball.
Fro decided he wanted to walk home, and Jerry tried to stop him. This ended with Jerry saying “Look, you’re a grown ass man. You do what you want.” Jerry and I stayed until closing, and then we walked out into the winter wonderland.
Jerry was alive in 1993, but he was very young and I don’t think he remembers the last time we had snow like what we got that night. When we walked out onto Walnut Street, the snow had hidden all the cars and it was quiet and actually very beautiful. I followed his footprints down the road, and he insisted that I stay at his place because he didn’t want me to fall walking home.
I settled in on the old comfy couch I gave him when he moved into his apartment, and he made me grilled cheese. He did his Woody Allen impression of the Moose bit while I ate, and then he helped me dig out my car the next afternoon. Little brothers are pretty much the best.
Fro texted us sometime the next morning to let us know that he had only fallen down 6 times on his way home, but he was shit faced and wearing dress shoes during the walk, so I guess that’s pretty good.
It’s nice to know that there’s two awfully big guys in the world who can make me laugh and treat me like the baby of the family, even though I’m the oldest. I guess that’s how brothers and sisters are, and how it is when you’re the only girl.
