It's not funny now . . .

By many definitions, my family of origin could be considered dysfunctional. We moved a lot because of changing financial circumstances, with many valleys and peaks. At one low point, my three siblings, my parents and I lived in a run-down, two bedroom rental with a suicidal pregnant junkie, two guys named Mike, one Mike's dog, our two cats, and thousands of cockroaches. My parents had one bedroom; my sister, the junkie and I shared the other, and the boys slept wherever they could. Later, my father told how he felt a failure as a father when he got up one morning and wondered why our white kitchen counters looked brown in the early morning light. When he got closer, he realized the counter was covered with roaches.

Many years later, I have my own family. I'm a single mother by choice, with two daughters, one biological, the other adopted from foster care. My younger child has mental health issues which occasionally cause explosive tantrums. One night my teenager and I were barricading the door with our shoulders as she tried to get in and hit us with a tree branch. Claire looked at me and started laughing. "It's kind of ridiculous when you think about it," she said. Later that night I confessed to her that I felt like a failure, that I wished we could be the kind of family that had cheerful meals together and played board games afterwards. She replied that she'd rather come from a fairly dysfunctional family with interesting people in it than a normal one. At that point I realized that I was no more a failure than my parents were. They reared four resilient, interesting kids who all have great memories of our childhood. Maybe my children would feel the same. Cockroaches are a fact of life in Florida. Mental health issues are a fact of life for far more people than we know. And perhaps my parents had more heart than common sense, a trait I've inherited as well.

Sitting with friends at dinner one evening, my sister and I started telling childhood stories. Until that night, I hadn't realized our childhood was unique at all. Didn't everyone live next door to the circus? Didn't other parents leave the door unlocked so that whatever kid was kicked out of their house would have a place to sleep? Two of those friends encouraged me to write a book, something I knew would never happen. Like almost everyone in my family, I'm very ADD; I've never finished anything I've started, except perhaps childbirth, but then that certainly wasn't due to MY persistence. But a blog . . . now a blog I could do. It's a format MADE for ADD people (Oh look, a chicken! I can blog about that!). A little now, some more later; certainly not with a plot because I'm not a linear-thinking person. And perhaps it might even earn me a little money from time to time.

So Tom and Lisa, here's your book. Sort of, anyhow. It usually wasn't funny then, often it's not fun now. But both then and now, sometimes what's gotten me through was the fact that it would make a good story later.