The first picture I ever saw of my biological father was what appears to be a work ID photo that comes up online when you search for his medical practice. As he is an old bearded man and I am not, I saw no immediate resemblance. I wasn't surprised we didn't look alike though. My mother had always said I looked "just like" her, and I believed her, even when my eyes contradicted the things she said. For instance, my mother used to tell me I was big-boned and that I would always be heavy like her, who had about a hundred pounds on me as an adult, because I had inherited that trait from her, who had inherited it from her mother, and so on.
In reality, my bone structure is bird-like. The bracelets that fit me best are usually intended for children. The clothes that fit me are several sizes smaller than the ones my mother would buy for me growing up, which was also confusing. My skin is paler than my mother's, and my eyes are a dark, muddled blue-green-grey compared with her bright, clear blue ones. We do look similar, but in the way a mother and daughter might when the daughter has taken traits from her father too. I was never the carbon copy I believed I was supposed to be, and so -- I realize now -- every trait my eyes told me didn't match my mother's just seemed sort of "off" to me.
I went back onto Ancestry.com to see what more I could find out about my biological father, and a series of yearbook photos came up, spanning from middle school through college. He was in all the clubs -- band, theater, National Honor Society -- and that's when I saw the first resemblance. He was delivering a speech in a high school play with his fists balled up at his chest, and my breath caught in my throat when I saw my freakishly small wrists -- and my forearms and my long-boned hands -- on his body. Another photo showed him almost in profile, and I recognized the jawbone and cheekbones I see in the 3-way mirrors in dressing rooms. His eyes are so dark that they look brown in black-and-white photos, and they are so small that their color is indistinguishable in low-res color photos, like mine. I guess they're probably the same color as mine too.
I didn't realize how much people look like their biological parents until I saw photos of him. I grew up with a biological mother who looked quite a bit like me and a social father whose hair and eye color looked sort of like mine and an adopted brother whose eyes were blue-green and hair was sandy brown and skin was a warm olive color, and I didn't know that blood relatives looked more similar than that. My mother used to tell me how she and her brothers looked so different from each other that people made jokes about what their milkman must look like. I pulled up their yearbook photos next. It was true they looked different. Their hair colors spanned from dark brown to red. Some were chubby and some were thin. None of them looked identical. But they all shared features. My red-haired uncle looked more like their father than any of them. Most of them had inherited his nose. That was the first time I realized I had that same nose too.
I had previously assumed when people said a baby had someone's eyes or nose or mouth that they were self deluded, that it was something people said to convince themselves and their children that they belonged. I was in my thirties with a child of my own, but it still took seeing photos of both my biological parents at the same time to begin to recognize "that nose looks like that nose" and "those eyes look like those eyes." I grew up thinking people could inherit physical features from their great-great-great-grandparents that had lain dormant for generations, which would explain why children don't always look like their parents, but if that's a thing that happens, it's not a thing I've actually seen happen. I've learned in the last few months that people look like both their parents, and when they don't -- when they have features neither parent has or they don't share a single physical trait with one parent -- there tends to be a reason.
I love seeing people with both their parents at once now. Immediately recognizing that the child is a mixture of the two parents and being able to pick out who passed on each physical trait gives me a deep sense of satisfaction that I can feel in my stomach. I don't know why.
Another odd thing that happened when I saw the old photos is I found I liked all my physical features better than I had before, even my nose. They'd all come from somewhere. Biology and the randomness of nature had selected them; they weren't just mistakes. I found photos of my known half-siblings online too -- my biological father's "real children," for lack of a better term. They have the same pale skin I have, the same colored eyes and hair. My half-brother has that same bird-like bone structure, while my half-sister inherited their mother's petite frame. We all have different noses.
I felt a sudden connection to my biological father and siblings. I had always wanted lots of siblings, but I hadn't expected to feel anything for the father. I didn't want to feel anything for the father. I knew there was a good chance -- I estimated at least 85% -- that he wanted nothing to do with me. I figured there was at least a 50/50 chance his children would feel the same way. But I wanted them all to know I exist. If they wanted to ignore me forever, that was their right, and I would respect that choice by leaving them alone, but I had a right to let my biological family know I exist.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Saturday, March 14, 2015
How I Found Him
I discovered a lot of new things from my 23andMe DNA test results. First, I learned that my ancestry is 99.9% European, which flies in the face of all the Cherokee blood my mother claimed we had. She used to tell me my great-great-grandmother was "full-blooded Cherokee," but when I asked her one day where she'd learned this, she said she'd assumed she had to be -- my great-grandmother had tanned so easily that she must've been biracial.
Next I looked at my blood relations in 23andMe's "DNA Relatives" database. Most of them were anonymous, so I could only see their maternal and (when they were male) paternal haplogroups, as well as a prediction of how closely we were related. I got lucky though. My closest relative was estimated to be a second cousin or first cousin once removed, and his profile was public. He listed his full name, a handful of family surnames, and a few locations where his family members had lived. None of the family surnames were familiar to me, though I only knew two from my mother's family, so I thought there was a good chance he was a cousin from my father's side. I sent him a generic message through 23andMe proposing we try to figure out how we're related. I had already received several messages of this kind from other cousins as soon as my profile went live, and I'd replied with the limited information I had, but none had been close relatives.
Then I browsed graduating class photos from the medical school my biological father had most likely attended -- the one where I'd been born. Someone had taken pictures of them and uploaded them to a website dedicated to finding anonymous sperm donor parents. I had heard of other donor offspring browsing photos like these until they saw a face that resembled their own, but looking at the sea of white male faces, I couldn't help but think we all looked kind of similar. I typed the graduate names into a spreadsheet so that I could reference it again as needed, including all the graduating classes that might have been in school at the time of my conception, plus a couple extra for good measure. Two overlapped with the surnames in my second cousin's 23andMe profile: Johnson and Von Trapp*. Only one had a corresponding photo.
I looked up my second cousin on Facebook, but his name was a common one like Chris Johnson*, so there were quite a few profiles that matched it. I narrowed down the profiles based on where they lived, weeding out the ones who lived in places he hadn't listed on his 23andMe profile. Then I browsed the remaining few for Facebook friends with surnames from his 23andMe profile. Only one Chris Johnson remained -- that was my cousin.
Using the information I'd learned from Facebook, such as his age and the names of a couple extended family members, I looked him up on pipl.com, which showed me his parents' and siblings' names. I started drawing his family tree. If he was my second cousin, our closest common ancestors would be a set of great-grandparents. If I built up his family tree back to great-grandparents and then fleshed it out to contain all their offspring and all their offspring's offspring, my biological father would have to be on it somewhere. I used pipl.com to determine family members and legacy.com for obituaries, which are sometimes blissfully detailed in their lists of survivors. Assuming the family surnames he listed on his 23andMe profile were likely to be the closest ones, such as his mother's and grandmothers' maiden names, I found grandparent names and filled them in. I found great-grandparent names and filled them in. I started finding offspring and filling them in, focusing the most intently on the Johnson and Von Trapp branches.
I ran into a brick wall on the Johnson side due to lack of detailed obituaries, so I tried making a family tree for the medical student with the same last name, James Johnson. His ancestry was easy to find online, and lack of overlap with Chris Johnson's quickly told me that he wasn't my father. That left one more medical student, the unpictured one, Joseph Von Trapp*. His wife and children and contact information were easy enough to find, but I had trouble finding who his parents were or where he came from. He had no Facebook or LinkedIn profiles -- compared to most people I know, he was practically living "off the grid." Finally I found an absurdly detailed obituary that listed him as a survivor. It was his mother's obituary, it was old, and it gave all his siblings' names and his long-deceased father's name, as well as how his parents had met and how his father had died.
I had done all my work to this point without paying for an Ancestry.com subscription, but it finally became worth it to give them $19.99 of my money. There was a census record that reportedly showed that Joseph Von Trapp's father and Chris Johnson's grandfather were brothers, and I wanted to see a scan of the hard copy so I could be sure of what it said. I paid. The scan proved it. Chris Johnson and Joseph Von Trapp were first cousins once removed. Chris was my second cousin, as 23andMe had predicted, and Joseph Von Trapp was my biological father by process of elimination. None of his brothers had been in the same school or town at that time, and no one else in the family had gone to medical school, so I felt 95% sure I was right. Now I wanted to find pictures of him.
*These are not their real names. I made up these names.
Next I looked at my blood relations in 23andMe's "DNA Relatives" database. Most of them were anonymous, so I could only see their maternal and (when they were male) paternal haplogroups, as well as a prediction of how closely we were related. I got lucky though. My closest relative was estimated to be a second cousin or first cousin once removed, and his profile was public. He listed his full name, a handful of family surnames, and a few locations where his family members had lived. None of the family surnames were familiar to me, though I only knew two from my mother's family, so I thought there was a good chance he was a cousin from my father's side. I sent him a generic message through 23andMe proposing we try to figure out how we're related. I had already received several messages of this kind from other cousins as soon as my profile went live, and I'd replied with the limited information I had, but none had been close relatives.
Then I browsed graduating class photos from the medical school my biological father had most likely attended -- the one where I'd been born. Someone had taken pictures of them and uploaded them to a website dedicated to finding anonymous sperm donor parents. I had heard of other donor offspring browsing photos like these until they saw a face that resembled their own, but looking at the sea of white male faces, I couldn't help but think we all looked kind of similar. I typed the graduate names into a spreadsheet so that I could reference it again as needed, including all the graduating classes that might have been in school at the time of my conception, plus a couple extra for good measure. Two overlapped with the surnames in my second cousin's 23andMe profile: Johnson and Von Trapp*. Only one had a corresponding photo.
I looked up my second cousin on Facebook, but his name was a common one like Chris Johnson*, so there were quite a few profiles that matched it. I narrowed down the profiles based on where they lived, weeding out the ones who lived in places he hadn't listed on his 23andMe profile. Then I browsed the remaining few for Facebook friends with surnames from his 23andMe profile. Only one Chris Johnson remained -- that was my cousin.
Using the information I'd learned from Facebook, such as his age and the names of a couple extended family members, I looked him up on pipl.com, which showed me his parents' and siblings' names. I started drawing his family tree. If he was my second cousin, our closest common ancestors would be a set of great-grandparents. If I built up his family tree back to great-grandparents and then fleshed it out to contain all their offspring and all their offspring's offspring, my biological father would have to be on it somewhere. I used pipl.com to determine family members and legacy.com for obituaries, which are sometimes blissfully detailed in their lists of survivors. Assuming the family surnames he listed on his 23andMe profile were likely to be the closest ones, such as his mother's and grandmothers' maiden names, I found grandparent names and filled them in. I found great-grandparent names and filled them in. I started finding offspring and filling them in, focusing the most intently on the Johnson and Von Trapp branches.
I ran into a brick wall on the Johnson side due to lack of detailed obituaries, so I tried making a family tree for the medical student with the same last name, James Johnson. His ancestry was easy to find online, and lack of overlap with Chris Johnson's quickly told me that he wasn't my father. That left one more medical student, the unpictured one, Joseph Von Trapp*. His wife and children and contact information were easy enough to find, but I had trouble finding who his parents were or where he came from. He had no Facebook or LinkedIn profiles -- compared to most people I know, he was practically living "off the grid." Finally I found an absurdly detailed obituary that listed him as a survivor. It was his mother's obituary, it was old, and it gave all his siblings' names and his long-deceased father's name, as well as how his parents had met and how his father had died.
I had done all my work to this point without paying for an Ancestry.com subscription, but it finally became worth it to give them $19.99 of my money. There was a census record that reportedly showed that Joseph Von Trapp's father and Chris Johnson's grandfather were brothers, and I wanted to see a scan of the hard copy so I could be sure of what it said. I paid. The scan proved it. Chris Johnson and Joseph Von Trapp were first cousins once removed. Chris was my second cousin, as 23andMe had predicted, and Joseph Von Trapp was my biological father by process of elimination. None of his brothers had been in the same school or town at that time, and no one else in the family had gone to medical school, so I felt 95% sure I was right. Now I wanted to find pictures of him.
*These are not their real names. I made up these names.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Donor Conceived
A few years ago I started thinking about my biological father again. It's a topic that resurfaces in my mind every so often since finding out around age 12 that I was conceived with anonymous donor sperm. I made a list of what I knew about him:
I also knew the hospital where I'd been born. It was a university hospital. There are several universities and colleges in the area where I grew up, but as my mother has never been one to shop around, I thought there was a good chance the clinic had been at the same hospital and that my biological father had attended the same university.
I looked up the hospital online. They had a clinic devoted to Assisted Reproductive Technology, so that seemed like a step in the right direction. I called the clinic. I explained that I'd been conceived there with donor sperm and was looking for any information that might exist from my conception. The woman sounded unnecessarily hostile -- though this may have just been my perception -- when she informed me that they'd moved offices and everything from before the move had been destroyed. She said they don't keep patient records for more than ten years anyway, which means my mother's records would have been destroyed well before she'd told me I was donor conceived.
I hadn't expected to learn much, but after hearing about donor numbers and sheets of non-identifying information some people receive from cryo banks, including facts like height and college major, I'd thought calling was worth a shot. It was frustrating knowing so little and having no way to find out more information, like when you have a song stuck in your head but you can't think of the lyrics and can't figure out any way to look them up. I put it away, as I always have when I've reached the point where there was nothing new to be done. The frustration feels overwhelming if I don't keep tamping it down and putting it out of my mind.
Then a few months ago I read about 23andMe's autosomal DNA tests. They had been prohibitively expensive the first time I'd heard of them on a PBS special, but now they only cost $99. I didn't think I'd find any close relatives on their "DNA Relatives" database, but I liked the idea of finally knowing my genetic ancestry. When people asked, "Where are you really from?" (in response to my "America" the first time they asked because America apparently doesn't count) I'd grown accustomed to saying, "Guess," and then telling them they were right, regardless of what they guessed. It made them so happy to be right, and for all I knew, maybe they were right. Their guess was as good as mine. I'd learned to take anything my mother told me with a giant grain of salt, so even my maternal ancestry was a pretty big question mark. I ordered myself a DNA test for my birthday, and I waited.
I recounted the things my mother had told me to my closest friends, and an odd suggestion came up that hadn't occurred to me. "She said the donor looked like your uncle? You know who else looks like your uncle?" My dad. I confided in a cousin about the DNA test, hoping she could help me by remembering more of the surnames on my maternal side of the family than I did. "Have you considered maybe your mom was just lying about there being a sperm donor? That seems like something she would do." The people I confided in who had met my mother all suggested the most likely scenario was that she had lied to me, probably in order to further alienate me from my dad. My cousin was particularly doubtful since our incredibly gossipy extended family didn't seem to have a clue I might have been conceived by interesting means.
I told my dad (when I say "dad," I always mean my non-biological social father, my mother's husband) that I was taking a DNA test out of general interest. I had still never told him what my mother had said about him not being my father, and I wanted to see if he would tell me himself. Instead he told me again how his great-uncle had once spent over a thousand dollars on a genealogy researcher and then refused to show what he'd found to the rest of the family. I'm not sure if my dad was waiting to see what I found before being forthcoming or if maybe he'd forgotten we weren't related. Or maybe my mother had lied.
Finally I got an email from 23andMe saying my results were live online. My "DNA Relatives" in their database numbered close to 1000 people, from 2nd cousins to distant. I searched the database for all the surnames I knew from my dad's family. Anyone claiming to have the same surname in their family tree would pop up. They were odd names, but I had a lot of them, gathered from a family tree with pictures my grandmother had drawn that hung on my dining room wall. Not a single match. Not a single one of my 1000 cousins claimed to have a single one of those weird surnames in their family tree. That's when I concluded my dad really wasn't my biological father. My mother might have been telling the truth.
- blond or brown hair;
- blue or green eyes;
- my mother said he was a medical student.
I also knew the hospital where I'd been born. It was a university hospital. There are several universities and colleges in the area where I grew up, but as my mother has never been one to shop around, I thought there was a good chance the clinic had been at the same hospital and that my biological father had attended the same university.
I looked up the hospital online. They had a clinic devoted to Assisted Reproductive Technology, so that seemed like a step in the right direction. I called the clinic. I explained that I'd been conceived there with donor sperm and was looking for any information that might exist from my conception. The woman sounded unnecessarily hostile -- though this may have just been my perception -- when she informed me that they'd moved offices and everything from before the move had been destroyed. She said they don't keep patient records for more than ten years anyway, which means my mother's records would have been destroyed well before she'd told me I was donor conceived.
I hadn't expected to learn much, but after hearing about donor numbers and sheets of non-identifying information some people receive from cryo banks, including facts like height and college major, I'd thought calling was worth a shot. It was frustrating knowing so little and having no way to find out more information, like when you have a song stuck in your head but you can't think of the lyrics and can't figure out any way to look them up. I put it away, as I always have when I've reached the point where there was nothing new to be done. The frustration feels overwhelming if I don't keep tamping it down and putting it out of my mind.
Then a few months ago I read about 23andMe's autosomal DNA tests. They had been prohibitively expensive the first time I'd heard of them on a PBS special, but now they only cost $99. I didn't think I'd find any close relatives on their "DNA Relatives" database, but I liked the idea of finally knowing my genetic ancestry. When people asked, "Where are you really from?" (in response to my "America" the first time they asked because America apparently doesn't count) I'd grown accustomed to saying, "Guess," and then telling them they were right, regardless of what they guessed. It made them so happy to be right, and for all I knew, maybe they were right. Their guess was as good as mine. I'd learned to take anything my mother told me with a giant grain of salt, so even my maternal ancestry was a pretty big question mark. I ordered myself a DNA test for my birthday, and I waited.
I recounted the things my mother had told me to my closest friends, and an odd suggestion came up that hadn't occurred to me. "She said the donor looked like your uncle? You know who else looks like your uncle?" My dad. I confided in a cousin about the DNA test, hoping she could help me by remembering more of the surnames on my maternal side of the family than I did. "Have you considered maybe your mom was just lying about there being a sperm donor? That seems like something she would do." The people I confided in who had met my mother all suggested the most likely scenario was that she had lied to me, probably in order to further alienate me from my dad. My cousin was particularly doubtful since our incredibly gossipy extended family didn't seem to have a clue I might have been conceived by interesting means.
I told my dad (when I say "dad," I always mean my non-biological social father, my mother's husband) that I was taking a DNA test out of general interest. I had still never told him what my mother had said about him not being my father, and I wanted to see if he would tell me himself. Instead he told me again how his great-uncle had once spent over a thousand dollars on a genealogy researcher and then refused to show what he'd found to the rest of the family. I'm not sure if my dad was waiting to see what I found before being forthcoming or if maybe he'd forgotten we weren't related. Or maybe my mother had lied.
Finally I got an email from 23andMe saying my results were live online. My "DNA Relatives" in their database numbered close to 1000 people, from 2nd cousins to distant. I searched the database for all the surnames I knew from my dad's family. Anyone claiming to have the same surname in their family tree would pop up. They were odd names, but I had a lot of them, gathered from a family tree with pictures my grandmother had drawn that hung on my dining room wall. Not a single match. Not a single one of my 1000 cousins claimed to have a single one of those weird surnames in their family tree. That's when I concluded my dad really wasn't my biological father. My mother might have been telling the truth.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
My Biggest Regret
My biggest regret about the state of my relationship with my mother is what it did to my relationship with my maternal grandmother. My grandmother was the nicest, sanest person in my family. She was cheerful, kind, and generous with her time, attention, and any money she and my grandfather had. She was the only babysitter I ever had growing up, and she would cook for me, help me sew clothes for my dolls, and let me help water the enormous number of flowers in her yard. When I went away to college, she wrote to me every week -- as she wrote to all her friend and family who lived far away -- and I wrote back occasionally too.
By the time I graduated from college, my mother's mental illness was already starting to be apparent to people who met her. She would say cruel things to people's faces -- not just to me and my dad, but to her brothers and parents who she loved too -- and you never really knew what mood to expect from her when the phone rang, but she was often yelling and angry. It was around that time that I started shaking every time the phone rang.
I was living far away, working full-time, and engaged to be married. During one phone call with my mother, she asked where we were holding the wedding, since my fiance and I lived about a thousand miles away from our parents, who also lived hundreds of miles away from each other. I told her we'd decided to get married in my hometown so that my dad -- the only parent of the four who we knew wouldn't be able to travel long-distance -- could attend. My mother was angry. It was a convenient location for her and everyone else in my family, but she said since I was doing it for my dad, I obviously didn't care about my grandparents, who also live in that same town. "I'm going to tell them the truth about you!" she said. I didn't know what she thought "the truth" about me was, but I knew it wouldn't be good. She told me that as soon as she hung up the phone she was going to call her parents and tell them all about me and how I don't love them at all.
When my mother hung up the phone, I called my grandparents. As soon as I could get through, my grandmother answered the phone sounding unusually tired and unlike herself. I told her I just wanted her to know that, no matter what my mother tells her about me, I loved her and Grandpa. She said okay and that they loved me too, but she still sounded tired. I'm not sure if she sounded that way because of things my mother had said, the fact that her only daughter was so clearly mentally ill, or just because she was getting old and tired.
I saw my grandma a couple more times after that, but she didn't come to my wedding. My mother said it was because she didn't want to embarrass me with how poorly she got around. My mother came to the wedding though, dressed in some old knit pants and a t-shirt and a wheelchair she didn't need. She wore no shoes, and based on the oiliness of her hair, I don't think she could have showered within the last two weeks. She was wild-eyed, and one of my bridesmaids mentioned that she appeared to be high.
One of my uncles escorted her there, and they left before the reception. By that time, my parents had divorced and my mother had moved back in with her parents, where her brothers came by a couple of times each day to do the laundry and cook their meals. That was how they lived until both my grandparents died and my mother had to find somewhere else to go.
By the time I graduated from college, my mother's mental illness was already starting to be apparent to people who met her. She would say cruel things to people's faces -- not just to me and my dad, but to her brothers and parents who she loved too -- and you never really knew what mood to expect from her when the phone rang, but she was often yelling and angry. It was around that time that I started shaking every time the phone rang.
I was living far away, working full-time, and engaged to be married. During one phone call with my mother, she asked where we were holding the wedding, since my fiance and I lived about a thousand miles away from our parents, who also lived hundreds of miles away from each other. I told her we'd decided to get married in my hometown so that my dad -- the only parent of the four who we knew wouldn't be able to travel long-distance -- could attend. My mother was angry. It was a convenient location for her and everyone else in my family, but she said since I was doing it for my dad, I obviously didn't care about my grandparents, who also live in that same town. "I'm going to tell them the truth about you!" she said. I didn't know what she thought "the truth" about me was, but I knew it wouldn't be good. She told me that as soon as she hung up the phone she was going to call her parents and tell them all about me and how I don't love them at all.
When my mother hung up the phone, I called my grandparents. As soon as I could get through, my grandmother answered the phone sounding unusually tired and unlike herself. I told her I just wanted her to know that, no matter what my mother tells her about me, I loved her and Grandpa. She said okay and that they loved me too, but she still sounded tired. I'm not sure if she sounded that way because of things my mother had said, the fact that her only daughter was so clearly mentally ill, or just because she was getting old and tired.
I saw my grandma a couple more times after that, but she didn't come to my wedding. My mother said it was because she didn't want to embarrass me with how poorly she got around. My mother came to the wedding though, dressed in some old knit pants and a t-shirt and a wheelchair she didn't need. She wore no shoes, and based on the oiliness of her hair, I don't think she could have showered within the last two weeks. She was wild-eyed, and one of my bridesmaids mentioned that she appeared to be high.
One of my uncles escorted her there, and they left before the reception. By that time, my parents had divorced and my mother had moved back in with her parents, where her brothers came by a couple of times each day to do the laundry and cook their meals. That was how they lived until both my grandparents died and my mother had to find somewhere else to go.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Car
When I was in high school, my parents bought me a car. My mother had always complained that my brother's insurance didn't allow her to drive his car, so when she started talking about driving mine, I asked her if the insurance on it covered her. After all, I was new to both driving and insurance. I had no idea how this stuff worked, but I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. I guess my mother misunderstood my question because she promptly told my grandparents that her ungrateful daughter wouldn't let her drive the car SHE had bought for her. Every time she met someone new (I know this must be hyperbole, but it certainly seemed like every time -- it certainly wasn't confined to relevant situations), she told them about how I wouldn't allow her to drive my car. A car SHE had paid for! A teenager didn't trust HER with a car!
I should mention here that my mother did have a history of what might be called reckless driving and was close to losing her license on account of how many speeding tickets she had and how many accidents she had caused. So she was more than a little defensive when she thought I fancied myself a superior driver. The frustrating part for me was that, on the occasions when I tried to explain to her audience what I had been referring to about the insurance coverage, she just talked over me.
For the next few years, every time we got together with my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins for holidays, she would pull this story out of her repertoire and tell it again. Her indignation at not being trusted with my car got her worked up every time.
I finally stopped hearing her complaint at not being trusted with my car when she drove it while on Ambien, fell asleep at the wheel, and rolled the car into a shallow ravine of some sort, totaling it. (P.S. She called me afterward and told me I was responsible for paying several thousand dollars to have the car fixed because it was "my car." I ignored most of the things wrong with that claim and instead reminded her how she hadn't wanted my name on the title and so it was not legally mine at all.)
I should mention here that my mother did have a history of what might be called reckless driving and was close to losing her license on account of how many speeding tickets she had and how many accidents she had caused. So she was more than a little defensive when she thought I fancied myself a superior driver. The frustrating part for me was that, on the occasions when I tried to explain to her audience what I had been referring to about the insurance coverage, she just talked over me.
For the next few years, every time we got together with my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins for holidays, she would pull this story out of her repertoire and tell it again. Her indignation at not being trusted with my car got her worked up every time.
I finally stopped hearing her complaint at not being trusted with my car when she drove it while on Ambien, fell asleep at the wheel, and rolled the car into a shallow ravine of some sort, totaling it. (P.S. She called me afterward and told me I was responsible for paying several thousand dollars to have the car fixed because it was "my car." I ignored most of the things wrong with that claim and instead reminded her how she hadn't wanted my name on the title and so it was not legally mine at all.)
Heart Attack
One evening when I was home from college for the holidays and talking with my boyfriend on the phone, my mother burst into my room and announced she was "having a heart attack and just thought [I] ought to know." I told my boyfriend I had to go and hung up the phone. Being completely honest, I didn't think she was having a heart attack, but I did know that whatever was going on required my attention. Her tone and choice of words had told me that.
I dug out a little bottle of low-dose aspirin and told her to chew one up. I had read that chewing aspirin during a heart attack can help. I figured even she knew she wasn't really having a heart attack when she declined on the grounds that "it'll taste bad." Then she calmly dialed 911 and informed them that she needed an ambulance (the first of many times she did this over the years), and I watched, feeling helpless and wondering if it was my fault she was doing all this, because I'd been on the phone with my boyfriend instead of talking to her, or if there was another reason I didn't know about. I was 99% certain she was physically fine -- not even having an anxiety attack, let alone a heart attack -- because the ways she behaved when something was actually wrong and when she just wanted attention were distinctly different. But I knew even if she was 100% fine and someone convinced her not to call an ambulance, she would talk for months to everyone she met about how she wasn't even allowed to go to the hospital when she was having a heart attack. Heartless daughter, ice water in her veins, etc. -- the usual spiel. I feigned being supportive out of lack of better ideas.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital in my car. My mother had canceled our family's health insurance plan about a decade earlier because "they don't cover anything anyway" and "that money could be going toward something else." A few hours and over $19,000 in medical bills later, the doctor informed us that my mother had not had a heart attack and was, in fact, healthy as a horse. He asked what she had eaten recently and diagnosed her with indigestion, a side effect of having eaten Taco Bell after 9pm.
I dug out a little bottle of low-dose aspirin and told her to chew one up. I had read that chewing aspirin during a heart attack can help. I figured even she knew she wasn't really having a heart attack when she declined on the grounds that "it'll taste bad." Then she calmly dialed 911 and informed them that she needed an ambulance (the first of many times she did this over the years), and I watched, feeling helpless and wondering if it was my fault she was doing all this, because I'd been on the phone with my boyfriend instead of talking to her, or if there was another reason I didn't know about. I was 99% certain she was physically fine -- not even having an anxiety attack, let alone a heart attack -- because the ways she behaved when something was actually wrong and when she just wanted attention were distinctly different. But I knew even if she was 100% fine and someone convinced her not to call an ambulance, she would talk for months to everyone she met about how she wasn't even allowed to go to the hospital when she was having a heart attack. Heartless daughter, ice water in her veins, etc. -- the usual spiel. I feigned being supportive out of lack of better ideas.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital in my car. My mother had canceled our family's health insurance plan about a decade earlier because "they don't cover anything anyway" and "that money could be going toward something else." A few hours and over $19,000 in medical bills later, the doctor informed us that my mother had not had a heart attack and was, in fact, healthy as a horse. He asked what she had eaten recently and diagnosed her with indigestion, a side effect of having eaten Taco Bell after 9pm.
Dad Is Dying
Nine years ago, after I graduated from college and was officially living on my own, my mother told me I should come home for Thanksgiving because "Dad's not doing so great, and if you want to see him, this may be your last chance." When I got home and realized my dad wasn't actually dying, I asked her why she had said he was. She explained, "I wanted to see you!" I don't know why she didn't try saying that first.
A couple holidays later she lied about my grandmother dying, but I knew what was going on by then.
A couple holidays later she lied about my grandmother dying, but I knew what was going on by then.
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