Things that freak me out

Cluttery crap

The food in my parents’ refrigerator

Mice

Weird undefinable smells

Polyester blankets

Murky ethics displayed by your parents that hint at something corrupt inside you.

I unfriended my Mom before sending this, and went through and unfriended a few other family members, exercising my facebook-given right to do so, and an inconsistent “single generation” facebook policy that my daughter ruthlessly initiated. She will not friend me. My son unfriended me when he took one look at this blog. In fact he unfriended himself from my account while sitting at my computer when I noted to him that my blog link would have probably popped up on his wall.

At first he said, “That’s not a good enough reason for me to unfriend you, Mom,” in a moment of magnanimous facebook-generosity. We looked at each other and thought the same thing, “But…I think…it’s probably better if I unfriend you…” I agreed.

Easier for me to unfriend my own Mom today. When in doubt, unfriend.

I unfriended my Mom because I am at my parents’ house right now. I’m writing from the kitchen table where I wearily played a fierce game of Sudoku from 2:30 to 4:30am because I couldn’t sleep. I won. But it didn’t help me sleep.

The murky ethics thing. The mice. Murky ethics like mice running around in your tired brain. Quiet! you silently shout while tossing around on the couch under polyester blankets that were once electric, so probably belonged to your grandmother who died in 1982.

You put in your earplugs. But you know the mice are there. Running around even more boldly because you can’t hear them anymore. The things that have hobbled your parents’ are too close to the surface for you to sleep. Their foibles, their misguided form of anti-authority that erupts when they feel backed into a corner. It’s heartbreaking to hear your father talk about moving from one real estate office to another because of a "misunderstanding." He admitted he was crushed – “But I walked into the xx office one minute later and they accepted me with open arms.” How do you get fired when you are working on commission? By pissing people off.

Jeez. I hope I figure some things out by the time I’m 76. Later he told me some stories about how two different people had screwed him over in the 70s. These are part of a long anthology of his called, "The Many Who Screwed Me Over." 

I remember when he left Petersen Publishing and we went from a middle class family in West L.A. to dirt poor, living in my grandmother’s two one room houses – the “middle house” and the “North house” out in Canoga Park. All eight of us. My Mom and Dad gave the oldest three kids the North house because it was bigger, the size of a double garage. In the middle house, two of my brothers slept on bunk beds in the bathroom/laundry room, and my parents slept on the fold out couch bed with my baby brother.

It was while living there that the whole terrible scene happened. It was while living there that my dad got colon cancer. For me it was less than a year: I got out at age 17 and headed North to Berkeley and never went back.

The old refrigerator that didn’t keep things cold. The ancient sink. The over-taxed septic system.

Those houses are gone now. Tract houses replaced them after my grandmother died.

I’m freaked out. My dad is cooking eggs that I don’t want to eat. We are on a mission today to child-proof this house for the inspection by Child Protective Services on Tuesday. There is so much crap that all I want to do is load up their truck and take it to the dump. My parents are hoarders. Though they grew up in the forties, they became like their own depression-era parents. The only reason you can walk around in this house is that it’s big enough for a whole lot of crap. They have a three-car garage full of crap. And now all my brother's and his wife’s crap is comingling with my parents’ crap. It’s overwhelming.

Every few years there is some crisis that requires some of us kids to come here and purge their crap. Like they are so broke we insist they have a garage sale to get rid of some of this crap. Or we have to make room for someone to move into a room that is full of crap.

I’m so freaked out I can hardly function. On the surface I seem fine. Zoe is playing with my adorable niece, and the sounds of those lovely voices make me feel calmer. I’m going to go get the truck now and start loading it up with as much crap as I can wrest from their watchful eyes and hoarding arms. It will feel so good to toss away all the pvc pipe and old broken tiles and Cool Whip containers and sea shells and broken gadgets and artificial flower arrangements.

Then I will drive home with Zoe. I will ask her to help me “discharge” all of my angst. Maybe we will have a co-counseling session to help me do this. When I listen to my daughter talking with my niece I think thank god for evolution (!).