Family Funnies

Family is a funny thing.

Not haha funny, really. Funny, as in, it's crazy what we will say to one another that we would never allow anyone else to say to our clan members. I'm allowed to tell my sister she's acting like a spoiled brat. You don't want to be within earshot if someone outside the family attempted the same thing, though.

Funny, as in, I share genes and blood with my two youngest sisters and in fact, look more like Chara, who's adopted.

Funny, as in, my parents raised me in such a colorblind and family-is-family world that I only just realized last year that I'm the lone "white child" borne by my mother. All her other four children have black biological fathers. Yes, even my adopted sister. It's as if she decided, having seen my comparatively alabaster skin when I was born first of five, that she preferred brown babies. Maybe because they looked more like her beloved father, my grandfather, whose death when I was 12 nearly destroyed her.

Funny, as in, how unquestioning my kids are that Gabi and Xochi are their aunts, no matter how many times the kids around them ask about the "brown girls" who pick them up from and take them places. Even my older son's black classmates find the girls a curiosity, wondering aloud how people so brown could be related to my very white-skinned son. It's funny to see their faces as I explain that Gabi and Xochi are my sisters. Does not compute in their heads, even though my kids, having known nothing else except this family, find nothing remarkable about the differences in their skin colors.

Funny, as in, no one else in this world can infuriate me as much as my two teenage girls bickering about secretly looking at each other's texts and Facebook affronts; and in the next minute inspire such protective love in me that I feel it in my chest as if someone was holding my heart in their hand and squeezing it like it was a sponge.

Funny, as in, my younger son calling my ex-husband Papai, when Papai is not, in fact, his father. He's just the only one Dash has known in that capacity and so Papai fills the role beautifully - from love and hugs to worrying and fretting about his discipline (or lack thereof). Papai takes Dash on the weekends he sees our son, Luca. Papai is everything to Dash anyone would expect of a Papai - and it makes total sense in my funny little family that Papai is okay, nay, happy, with that.

Funny, as in, family is why I drink and why I don't drink as much as I used to. Like sometimes I need a dose of Mommy Juice so I can stay patient just one more hour but I end up drinking just half the glass because otherwise it's too much and turns into an unhealthy habit that cuts five years off my life during which I could be enjoying grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And watching my sons and my siblings experience the same infuriation and passionate love for their own kids - emotions that reach their arms around me every day and take turns putting their hands over my eyes.

Love, anger, love, frustration, love, love, impatience, love, love, love, crazy, funny, family love.




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Location:World Way,Los Angeles,United States