Eulogy For My Dad

Standing up and trying to do justice to a life like my dad's in just a couple of minutes feels all wrong. My dad was larger than life and it seemed that everyone who ever met him never forgot him. 

He was known by many names:

Art... Grampy... Arthur... Greepap... Artie... Gramps... Arthur C... Art F... Grandpa

My dad loved The Onion. If you aren't familiar with The Onion, it’s a satirical publication, mimicking the style of real news with headlines & articles filled with ironic and dark humor. He would email me headlines often and he would have loved this one that I saw yesterday: 

"Area Man Afraid Some Woman Might Come Out Of The Woodwork To Hold Him Accountable For Something". 

In his last days, dad maintained his terrific sense of humor and he and I were actually writing Onion headlines together. 

For example…he was screwing around with his oxygen mask….making fart noises & funny faces, so we came up with:

"Area Man Goes Viral On You Tube Playing 'Stairway To Heaven' On Oxygen Mask”

And this one is dark, but he loved it:

"Area Man Gets Last Laugh After Dying In Front Of Family Who Tried To Convince Him He Was Not Dying”

In true Art Fruncillo style, he joked around, hoping to make a terrible situation a little easier for us all.

The other day, someone asked me “What did your dad do for a career?” Well. That was always a tough one to answer. But as I’ve reflected upon his life these past days, I’ve realized that he achieved something that so many people do not. He lived life so fully. He ate it up until he was stuffed. And he still came back for dessert.

My dad once attempted to shovel our 1/4 mile long driveway in the woods of Grantsburg, Wisconsin after a huge snow storm (I can’t recall how far he actually got). 

My dad was always up for a road trip, and he went on many with all of us, to destinations all over the United States and beyond. 

When I got my first period, my dad sent me a dozen roses and a card that read, “Girl, you’re a woman now”. I was mortified. But that was my dad. 

Art would hate this early winter we’re having and by now would probably have said, “That’s it, I’m leaving for Florida and I’m not coming back until spring”  He often did leave for Florida, but he never stayed as long as he planned, because he inevitably missed his family and came back. 

When it came to driving, Art took things very seriously. He believed everyone should be able to drive a manual transmission and when I had nothing but a learner’s permit, he marched me right out to practice one winter night when they warned to stay in due to black ice. 

My dad could be the least technically trained musician in the room, but he’d be the one who had everyone on their feet singing and smiling. 

He pushed us all beyond our comfort zone and took us on great adventures that will never be forgotten.

When Art became a grandpa, he embraced it with a giant love. 

He would patiently let his grandkids climb all over him or squirt him with a hose and he would tickle them and wrestle with them endlessly. 

He played music for them and with them. 

He showed up at their events to support them. 

He exposed the grandkids to reality, even when their parents weren’t ready. The first time my kids ever heard the “F word” was in Italy, when grandpa told an overly aggressive flower peddler to “Get the fuck away” from me. 

He could be aggravating. But he loved deeply and passionately. He was a beautiful man. 

There’s a story my dad told often called the "Tree of Sorrows".

It is the story of a village where once a year all the inhabitants write down their sorrows, their problems and difficulties from the last twelve months. They then pin their list on a special tree, the tree of sorrows, for a day where all the villagers can read them. At the end of the day each person has a choice to take home their experience of the past year or choose the experience of another villager. As the story goes, they all choose to take back their own experience as that ultimately seems easier to bear than any of the others they have read.

I don’t want this sorrow. But this empty space in my life, in all of our lives, is a result of having had Art in it. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

The beginning of the end of the beginning of the end

The pure agony of the loneliness at the bitter end. You know you can do it because you’ve done it before. But you don’t want to do it. And then you are in it, coming ever so gradually to what will be acceptance and you wonder…when does it go from an end to a beginning? Because at some point, you go from the shattered and broken ending and emerge from the cocoon of loss into something. And it’s the beginning of whatever it will be. But if only you didn’t have to do the work. If only you could just fast forward right to the beginning. But no. It can’t happen with just a long run in the park or enough wine with a friend or even an interaction with a stranger that suggests you could possibly, ever be appealing to another human being again. No. You must stay still. Listen to your heart beating in your tightened, anxious chest. Let yourself feel those mother fucking feelings, and they will go ahead and come whenever they please. Because a book title or a pile of leaves or one single chord that begins a certain song can take you right to your damn knees. And to your knees you must go. Embittered with the injustice of it all. Clinging to all of the good and in denial of all the wrongs. Helpless to the wounds and left to wait for them to heal. And they will. 

You can be so tired of starting over that you are sure you’ll never be able to do it again. But you’ll do it.

Again.

Dear Lola

Dear Lola,

I miss you, friend.

I saw this recently:

“A dog on a walk is like a person in love. You can’t tell them it’s the same old world.”

And this is so you, Lola. You were always, always ready to go. The fact that we had to spell out “walk” and eventually had to just say “w”, was testament to your eagerness and love of going. Anywhere and everywhere. And a wonderful companion you made, every time. Whether you were sitting on the bank watching your daddy fish or accompanying me in the car to a cross country race or chasing the stick over and over again when the kids tossed it into the water for you.

Mostly, I want to thank you.

Thank you for always being in a good mood. All I had to do was say your name and your tail, and possibly entire body, would wag. You were sweet and enthusiastic…always.

Thank you for being the most loyal friend. In my hardest and darkest moments, you were happy to lay with me, for hours and hours if need be. You didn’t complain or want to do something else. You were happy to just “be” with me. You helped me through some of the hardest times of my life just by being there.

Thank you for knowing things that it seems a dog wouldn’t know. I watched every member of our family find comfort with you at different times over the years. It seemed you knew somehow that your presence and the ability to hug you would heal and comfort in a special way. And it did. 

Thank you for being my running buddy for many years, for making me laugh when you “talked”, for being kind to Charley even when the last thing you wanted was another dog in the house. Thank you for learning to love Gerd even though men were scary. Thank you for always being willing to sleep in. Thank you for trying to get outside when you had to throw up, even though a lot of times you barfed right on the rug.

Thank you for being the best dog. 

I will miss you forever...

I meant to get a puppy, but may have ended up with a 95-year-old man

Puppies. So cute, so lovable. Yes, they can be naughty & destructive, but just like childbirth, we forget all those rough parts after a while. Especially when we have a really, really GOOD dog. Yes, I’m talking about you, Lola. 

My husband made his feelings clear. He wanted nothing to do with another dog…had no desire to get one….would offer no help and it is “all on you, Gina”. Whatev. I got this. I got Lola (now age 10) when my first husband had just left me and things worked out fine, didn’t they? Not to mention, there was no stopping the runaway train of needing to fill the rapidly emptying nest as child #3 was also about to graduate from high school and preparing to leave for college.

And…. AND, I was going to do it RIGHT this time. Lola, despite being the best dog on the face of the earth, sheds. A lot. And, well, that wasn’t what I signed up for when I got a Labradoodle. So, this time, I found a mix with a little more poodle, but a nice, wavy coat (best of both worlds, as they won’t shed OR get matted). And the puppies were older (14 weeks), so they had a head start on potty training. Yes, this was going to work out just fine.

The day I drove up to select the puppy, I reflected back on getting Lola and remembered how timid and afraid and anxious she was. How hesitant she was to eat and how much coaxing it took us to get her to play with other dogs (she was the runt of her litter). This may or may not have clouded my judgment as I ended up choosing the “outgoing” puppy that was running circles around her litter mates. And she had such a nice coat and this adorable face. Yes, this was just turning out to be PERFECT. 

So, I placed her in the car next to me on the passenger seat, on a nice bed of towels (just in case she had an accident) and I drove off, petting her soft fur and feeling, well, elated. And then I noticed the drool. Why was she drooling so much? She didn’t appear to be afraid, wasn’t shaking, but the DROOL. And all over my new Subaru! It was like a faucet had opened up, and it wasn’t long before she had, I kid you not, filled up about half the cup holder with drool. I was navigating through Friday traffic, mopping up the drool and then she started to puke. She puked three times in the three hour drive we had back from the breeder. I managed to catch most of it in one of the towels and by now, I’m sweating and thinking this maybe wasn’t such a great idea, but still convinced that it’s a fluke and she’s just a new puppy. It’s all going to be great. See how great it was:

If you went to the nursing home and picked up your 95-year-old, ancient relative and brought him home, I feel that we could relate. He drools? So does Charley! He needs multiple medical appointments for his various ailments? So does Charley! The quantity and quality of his poop is a constant source of concern and conversation? Same!

She had the intestinal parasite giardia from the beginning, which resulted in diarrhea that required a full hose rinsing after “picking it up” so that a person could even use the back yard at all. And if she actually had a head start on potty training, it was clearly not on a grassy surface. One favorite memory was when she shat diarrhea all over the sidewalk right outside the neighborhood coffee shop, with plenty of onlookers trying to enjoy their bacon gruyere scones & lattes. I bent down with my plastic bag to pick (read: scrape) it up, clearly leaving behind a foul smelling stain on the sidewalk. Have a great day, everyone! She needed TWO medications to treat the giardia, and hell, we need to treat the other dog too, because it’s so contagious. They actually told me to WIPE HER BUTT EACH TIME AFTER SHE POOPED (I did not). And giving this dog medication? Um, she wrote the book on contorting her neck to eject the pill from whatever food it was hidden in, subsequently swallowing the food and releasing the pill out onto the floor. The kids were nearly in tears watching me force the medication down her throat. 

Around this time, I also noticed she had sores under her belly. In my delusional state, I decided they were from playing rough with her litter mates and still must be healing. And maybe Lola had inflicted a couple of new ones, too. Right? RIGHT? I also noticed that her fur was getting very thick. It felt a bit…. matted (Oh, you remember when I said that she had the perfect coat that wouldn’t do that, don’t you? Well, shut the fuck up about it, ok?). I took her to the groomer and said I really loved her fuzzy puppy look, but maybe we need to trim it back a bit because of the matting? “Oh, we’re going to have to take her all the way down”, the groomer said. What could that even mean? Well, it meant this:

Oh, and by the way, they said, she seems to have some sores that were likely caused by water getting trapped under the matted fur, so it would be a good idea to keep it short for the summer. So now I have a skinned, pink hued dog who has open sores and will need even more frequent, expensive grooming. 

So on our, I don’t know, SEVENTH trip to the vet in two weeks, I mentioned the sores to the vet and she checked them out. It’s a bacterial skin infection, says the vet. OF COURSE IT IS. And she’ll need antibiotics. I said, what about the antibiotics she just got done taking for two weeks for the giardia?? Oh, those are different antibiotics. I begged, pleaded and may have even shed an actual tear, suggesting that surely they MUST have a shot they can give her so that I do not have to face another round of medication torture (I took that opportunity to show off the wounds on my lower arms & hands). I was then introduced to the pill shooter. And feel free to get in touch if you would like more information about THAT life changing device, because it was a guiding light in the storm of feces and open sores that was ensuing. 

Honestly, I can’t remember when the prescription dog food was suggested in all of this, but at some point, it became clear that even after being treated for giardia her diarrhea wasn’t going away. Let’s put her on a bland (aka, super duper expensive prescription food) diet to see if it clears that up. OH, and be sure to keep her on it during the entire time you’re treating the bacterial skin infection because antibiotics often cause diarrhea, too. How many times has this exact thing been said to the caretaker of a 95-year-old man?

Am I boring you?

Bottom line…. the prescription food worked for a while and then suddenly it didn’t. She regressed completely with potty training and starting shitting in the house. Or even sometimes in her kennel. Mom, remember the day I was late for our birthday pedicures because I had to clean up dog shit she had walked in and then run all over the house? Good times. Kind of reminds me of when grandpa had that accident in the car and you cleaned him up in the gas station restroom and he came out with his coat tied around his waist and no pants on. 

So yeah. She ate my shoes and my glasses, but that’s regular puppy stuff. While aggressively playing with a rope, it flew out of her mouth and across the room, knocking my wine glass over and splattering the entire radiator & couch. But, that's regular puppy stuff. The 95-year old man stuff was what I really, really, wasn’t expecting. I now have a container of Metamucil on the counter, which I mix with pumpkin puree and add to her food each morning and evening (this is definitely karma kicking my ass for making fun of my friend’s mom in high school, as she cooked meals of hamburger & rice for their dog, Snuggles). But it’s working. And when my husband yelled (ok, he didn’t yell, but it felt at least like all caps when he said it) “It’s not my responsibility!” as Charley shit on the rug right by the door while we were trying to get dinner out to the backyard, I flashed ahead to the potential of ancient family members living with us, Metamucil on the counter, strained familial relationships running amok. 

I suppose I asked for it. And today, when I took her to the groomer for a “quick face clean up” and they did this….

well…. I realized that she’s like that 95-year-old man, who doesn’t give two shits what ANYBODY thinks and is just happy when he can feel comfortable with his balls hanging loose and never mind if the grandkids saw him naked in the kitchen taking his meds. 

So, I packed her ugly, shaved-and-disproportionate-to-the-rest-of-her-body head into the car, with extra towels for the drool. I shook out her vomit when we pulled into the cabin driveway (she finished puking on the road - we almost made it!). I mixed up her Metamucil/pumpkin/prescription dog food dinner. And then, I tossed the stick to her over and over and over again in the water, figuring her shaved head must feel great.

Because, goddammit, I love her.

The Mom Driven Restaurant

Recently, I was chatting with my dad about the “chef driven restaurant” phenomenon. Isn’t the whole point of the “chef” that she/he brings the inspiration for food in said restaurant? Has that not always been the fundamental purpose of the chef?

The chef. Drives. The restaurant.   

Duh.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s kind of like foraging. That thing that people have done for thousands of years for, you know, SURVIVAL, is now a weekend hipster activity, to be fully documented in artistic angles on Instagram. So a chef driven restaurant is a thing. Ok.

I searched the internet to see what the hive mind had to say about all of it. I mean, I’ve been to a couple of restaurants that I suppose are considered chef driven. I even saw bone marrow on the appetizer menu at one and thanked my lucky stars that being a vegetarian gave me a pass from even having to PRETEND that I wanted to try it. I mean, come on. Why is this something that needs to be eaten? Also, don’t we need to know the specific species said marrow comes from? I feel like we do. Buffalo? Wild Boar? Elk? Cause all that shit’s on the menu, too. Is the marrow kosher? Was the animal fed organic grain or was it grass fed? Did it get fresh air & sunshine? Was it scared before it was slaughtered or did someone softly whisper “thank you” to it while stroking its fur and slitting its throat? 

You think I’m joking around here? Because what I’m saying is, if you’re going to eat bone marrow, let’s go all the way with it. Questions need to be asked. And they need to be answered.

I found a blog somebody wrote describing, blah blah, chef driven restaurant concepts, blah, blah. I could feel the boredom oozing from the blog post. But mostly what I found were reviews and lists of various chef driven restaurants. So it turns out that nobody really knows what it is, other than the newest term for a foodie restaurant where it’s going to be really hard to get a table this weekend.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a foodie, too. I gotta have my balsamic vinegar and it’s gotta be the 25-year aged stuff from the specialty store that costs the equivalent of six months salary for an exploited kid in China who is making pairs of jeans I’ll buy in back to school sales next month at Target (I feel bad about both of those things). I use way more fresh herbs than dried and I spend a lot of time making a sandwich. I frequently caramelize onions. But the thing is, when you are a mom and you have had more than one occasion to really need to pinch pennies and even during times when you don’t have to pinch them, you’d still rather save on that meal so you have a fighting chance of going on a vacation sometime in the next decade, you think about things differently.

And so, let me introduce you to the Mom Driven Restaurant. It’ll feel familiar. You’ve been there. But hey, since we are reinventing things daily that already existed….

Mom knows that the family will inhale the white vegetable lasagna just as quickly if the provolone cheese is the shitty grocery store brand. Or even if the provolone is actually crappy Crystal Farms mozzarella and not provolone at all.

Mom knows how to prepare a meal that can go into the trunk of a vehicle on a 15 degree November day and stay hot while being transported to somewhere in rural Minnesota, only to be reheated when a rogue cousin or brother-in-law shows up late, hungover and everyone just HAD to hold the food for them.

Mom might be a vegetarian, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t be seen in the kitchen rolling meatballs or cutting up chicken. These people need to EAT. (mom was later seen purchasing a Luna Bar at the Super America in between house showings… she didn't have time to eat lunch)

Mom knows how to make Chipotle Chocolate Covered Flan de Mango, but she also understands the time and place for that pan of bars with the sweetened condensed milk poured over the top. You know the one. It sits in the 9x11 covered dish on the counter and the family feeds off of it all weekend, like wolves on a deer carcass.

Mom knows about mason jars as glassware. She invented that shit! And long before mason jars started showing up in restaurants as ironic wine glasses. Mom knows that when there’s no budget for replacing the glasses that get constantly broken by children trying to earn a star on their chore chart, a mason jar will do just fine, thank you.

Mom knows about carbs. Hell, she’s probably done some time on Weight Watchers. But the truth is, mashed potatoes and bread are going to help stretch that meal and get everyone away from the kitchen (and mom) a lot faster (mom has been saving her calorie points all day so she can wash down her salad with a full bottle of wine). And sure, mom has made the homemade french cheese braid and everyone seemed to like it, but her research shows that the family slathers butter on and inhales a slice of pretty much any other kind of bread just as quickly as that french cheese braid.

Mom understands food as art. And not this kind of art, which includes four total bites and a trip through a fast food drive through on the way home from the restaurant:

This is the food art that mom is talking about:

The mom driven restaurant comes with free lessons in tables manners and free nutrition classes, held conveniently at the table, while you eat.

Mom is sorry that you got fat. But it’s not going to stop her from overfeeding you each and every time you come home. 

Look, your foodie trends will come and go. But when the shit hits the fan, get your ass home and find a table at The Mom Driven Restaurant. It's just plain good for the soul.

Back To...

We have at least nine separate bus stops at our corner. And today is the first day of school, so they’re all out there in droves. The kids are in their hip new school clothes (soon to be replaced with the regular dirty t-shirt and sweatpants), clean backpacks filled with fresh, empty notebooks and sharp pencils (soon to be replaced with candy wrappers and molding lunch box food). The parents are clutching cups of coffee (secretly wishing they had added a ‘bump’ this morning) and wrestling with dogs on leashes, wondering how their kid can possibly already be in (___) grade and trying not to think about that new gray hair they noticed in the mirror this morning.

This is the first “first day” in 16 years that I am not making back to school breakfast. I’m not taking a first day picture. I didn’t make something fun for kids to eat after school and I don’t have a special dinner planned. In fact, we badly need groceries and to be honest, I’m simply trying to find the will to get dressed. No, all my kids and bonus kids are off, elsewhere, having their ‘other lives’...

Early this morning, I woke to my usual daily rage about the yipping dog down the block. And as I lay there mentally preparing for the conversation I will eventually have with the owner of said dog, here came the busses. As I listened, the same old feelings of anticipation/excitement/fear/nostalgia came flooding in. I remember so vividly standing at the bus stop with the small humans I created, wondering aloud with them about what they’d do that day or listing the friends they already knew in their class to help relieve first day jitters. Later, the humans got larger and were not necessarily created by me and sometimes we were dropping off in a car rather than waiting for the bus. But the conversations were always the same. And because, through their life circumstance, my kids attended a few different schools, I always tried to keep some tradition alive. But here I was this morning, just listening to the busses and wondering how all the kids are doing and also wondering if it was too soon to send another good luck message (the answer is yes, it was too soon).

I guess I could have driven out to Stillwater and forced my son to endure a picture he doesn’t want me to take. But to what end? It seems like this year, I just need to face it. The jig is up, Gina. And there isn’t a photo or back to school cake that’s gonna change it. Life moves on. Oh sure, I was included on a text message “first day photo” from my husband’s ex-wife of Raena off to 7th grade (should I be exceedingly delighted over this since ex-wife has perfected pretending that I do not exist in the world?). But even that felt like further evidence of my failure to accept the truth.

Ok, let’s stop for a sec. I know how this sounds. I’m THAT woman. That middle aged woman who doesn’t have anything else in her life but being a mom. But here’s the thing. I DO have other things in my life. My life is so full, I am constantly cleaning up the mess when it overflows. It’s just that...I really love being a mom. Maybe I’ll do something yet in my life that’s more important. But, I don’t actually think I will. I created these cool people who are pretty fucking amazing and I don’t regret one single moment I spent attending to their every need and driving them to music lessons and reading endless books with them and volunteering in their classes while my own career was literally expiring and probably overparenting to the nth degree. And this life transition of kids growing up and moving on. Well, it’s hard. And for that I’m not going to apologize. In fact, I’m going to avoid work just a little longer and go into the basement and dig through the photographs and cry as much as I feel like. 

I went on social media this morning to share the first day fun with my various contacts (masochistic fool that I am). In addition to the smiling faces and cute, nostalgic comments, I suspect there are others out there feeling melancholy. Not the “I’m so sad summer is over” of kids going back to school (who will be back soon enough to drive you crazy), but the melancholy of life. Life changing. Life moving. Life is good...great, even. But man, life is hard sometimes.

Peace, friends, as you swim in the sea of change...

(and to my kids: I’ve got a great dinner planned for the next time we are all together!)

Living the Questions

And then one day, there I am on an airplane, traveling hundreds of miles per hour toward my past... As we take off over St. Paul, I can just about spot my house, a tiny dot near the new light rail and on a block filled with beautiful trees and plenty of eclectic people. I look down and think about my life in that tiny little dot on the face of the earth. And then I wonder if it is perfect or disastrous that while my relationship with my family of origin is a complete conundrum of huge fuckedupness, I am heading back to rediscover a family member who was left behind.

Thirty-nine years ago...

I have no memory of what I was told in preparation. And really, I don’t have much of a memory of the actual event. It’s more of a feeling...

I’m in the backseat of our car and looking out at the building where my brother is going to live. I know that his mom lives there and he has to go back to live with her. I feel very, very bad and sad. 

Did I hug him goodbye? I don’t know. Did I cry? I don’t remember. What I do know is a narrative that has been given to me over the years by my parents. It’s a combination of facts or myths or a likely mash up of both about mental health issues, drug addiction, guilt, the injustice of the court system, social workers, birth parent rights, and more. It’s a complicated yarn that ends in “we’ll just have our own baby.” But I don’t know how any of that was possibly reconciled in my six-year-old brain. I was told that I got very sad. I refused to go to birthday parties. I wasn’t my “Gina Sunshine happy girl” self. 

Ya think?

What I often wonder now is who thought that after three years of being brother and sister, it was ok for two little kids to NEVER see each other again? Somehow, through the narrative I was given, I just sort of accepted it. But where were the adults? Where?? My husband says things were different then. I know on one level that he’s right. We had to just sort of accept things in the 70s that the children of today would be protected from by their helicopter parents. We weren’t always given an explanation, or maybe we didn’t even ask for one as we just went off to slide down the brown California hills on pieces of cardboard or to sneak into the abandoned yard with all the frogs in the pool, where we weren’t supposed to play.

But the truth is, after the hippie tales about the six foot tall marijuana plants in the backyard and “don’t eat the green brownies, Gina” trail away, I need to find a way back to that six year old self and mourn the loss of my brother. It wasn’t ok, what happened. Or at least it was pretty, damn devastating.

Because, I truly lost a brother. And it was worse than death, because he was still out there, somewhere. How was he doing? It was all the mystery. Did he remember me? I would never know. Did he have a good life? Nobody seemed to know, but the people who ran into him on the street and reported back to us were pretty confident that he didn’t.

Over the years, Joey became a phantom. He was the tiny, adorable, blond and curly-haired ghost brother who lived in my dreams, day and night. Maybe things would have been different if we had stayed in California. Maybe I would have bumped into him sometime or wondered about him and looked him up in a phone book. 

But, as was the theme of my childhood, the geographic cure led us elsewhere. And once my sister was born, with all her medical problems and life and death scenarios, Joey became even more of a phantom, because I guess who could continue to talk about the past when the present & future was so fucking in your face and immediate and filled with emergencies?

Nineteen years ago...

After my first child was born, I became sentimental. Having a baby daughter was so amazing and I was full of romantic thoughts of all things “family”. I began to think more and more about Joey. By now, he had taken on a mythical place in my life. He was part of a story that I regularly told and my good friends to this day remember me talking about him from the day they met me. It went like this:

“After I was born, my parents decided to be socially responsible and take in foster children who needed homes, rather than have more kids of their own. A girl lived with us briefly, and then Joey came to live with us. His mom was a drug addict and at 18 months he was malnourished and wearing 3-6 month clothing. He lived with us for 3 years and when my parents decided they wanted to adopt him, his mom decided she wanted him back. They went to court and she won. So then my parents said, screw social responsibility, we are going to have our own baby. And finally my sister was born when I was 8. And I was right next to the doctor at 2am when she came out, born at home in our living room.”

Of course, the story is much, much more complicated than this, and I continue to learn new facets of it. But it became encapsulated into family narrative so strong that I lost any sense of my own self within it. Even today, it’s hard for me to reflect on the experiences just for myself, separate from the feelings and experiences and hopes and dreams of my parents.

So there I was with my newborn baby and I wanted to look up Joey. My mom suggested I contact his grandmother, with whom she still was in contact via Christmas cards and who was supposedly a good person who had always tried to help my parents. I wrote a letter to her in search of contact info for Joey (that was when people wrote letters...on paper). My goal was just to tell him that I thought of him often and wanted him to know that...and that I had always thought of him as my brother. I really didn’t have any grand plans of a wonderful reunion, nor did I even know if he'd care enough to want to be in contact. What I received in return was a letter from his older sister Karen, who stated that she and their mother thought it was a very bad idea for me to contact him because “he wasn’t doing well at all and hearing from me might upset him or make it worse”. I backed off, but not before I got right up on my high horse in judgement. Who did this Karen think she was telling ME if he needed to hear from me?? (I now know she was totally and completely right). Karen, who had the advantage of leaving the dysfunction and going to live on the east coast with wealthy relatives and now had a great life (I had no idea if this was actually true, but this was the info I had been told). And his MOM!! What did she even care? Oh boy, I was really fired up. I was his sister!!! He was my brother!! But what could I do? Joey continued to elude me. This phantom boy who followed me down the streets of Woodacre. The curly haired kid who tumbled off the bunk beds when we were playing and scared me half to death. My little brother.

Three months ago...

It’s weird how one moment in time changes everything. One little decision that seemed so big but took seconds to execute. And sometimes the odd chain of events that leads up to it doesn’t really make that much sense, but makes all the sense in the world.

One cold Sunday a couple of months ago, Gerd and I were catching up on work at the dining room table before heading off to see Hannah’s violin concert. I absentmindedly floated over to Facebook, where my good friend had posted a picture of her with her birth mom. Their story is a very happy one, that begins with an unwed mom giving a baby up for adoption, the birth mom finding the baby 40 years later and continues with a relationship between the birth mom, her extended family, my friend and the adoptive family that raised her. It’s basically an amazing and touching and wonderful story...

So that day, while I stared at the picture of Renae and her birth mom on the computer screen, my thoughts led to family and eventually to Joey. I began to wax poetic to Gerd and he asked, “Have you ever tried finding him on Facebook?”. Well duh, of course I had looked him up on Facebook, but now that I thought about it, it had been a while since I had tried. Over the years, I had searched his name on those people finder type sites and occasionally would come up with a phone number, but I never had the guts to try calling. In the time since I had tried to contact him so many years earlier, I had plenty of examples of not-so-great endings to family reconnections that ended in lies, accusations, stealing and dysfunctional relationships. And let’s face it, I didn’t need any more of those. So, I always tucked my phantom brother back into my heart, locked in the space where he had remained since I was six.

But today, well, it’s pretty easy to find someone who isn’t trying to hide. And so when I randomly punched in Joseph Hoberg, up popped four choices, one of them a face that looked like it might be...could be..... I considered that his face might look familiar just because I just wanted it to be true, but the dude did live in California and had a picture of some redwoods on his profile, so... maybe... 

I told Gerd I was going to message him. He said, no 48-hour rule? (the 48-hour rule is a thing my therapist instituted with me, because believe it or not I have, at times, gotten myself into trouble with running my mouth/emails a bit too quickly. Mostly, I follow the rule, but you know how that can go...). And I didn’t think I needed 48 hours this time, because I was just putting a toe in the water with a Facebook message that I was certain would land in his “other” folder and disappear forever, leaving me wondering for another 40 years. I said something like “Hello, this might seem odd, but I once had a brother named Joey Hoberg and I’m wondering if you could be him?”

Then, an unfortunate thing happened and Gerd left to run errands. When left alone, I have, at times, been known to obsess over things a wee bit. And so I immediately began to scour whatever was public on Joseph Hoberg’s Facebook page and after seeing the names of some of his friends I determined that it WAS in fact him and I immediately clicked on “add friend” without even thinking and the 48 hour rule must have gone and run errands with Gerd. 

Later, I asked Joe if he got my friend request or my private message first and he didn’t recall (poor guy never had a chance with my trigger finger, huh?). But, after we determined that we were, indeed, the long lost brother and sister that we actually are, it was wild what happened. A rapid fire communication ensued and we tried to share memories as best we could from our years together. But mostly, there I was again, with more of a feeling than a memory. And it was a feeling beyond what I was expecting, if I was even expecting anything specifically. It was like everything in my life from that time on started to look different. And the estrangement that is occurring currently with me and my parents was actually a blessing in this case. Because instead of getting a narrative inserted into my memory, I was able to just “BE”. To simply be there, with my brother, remembering or trying to remember a moment in time. I didn’t have to share it with anyone. It was just for me. For me and Joe. My brother.

In talking with Joe over the weeks that followed, he mentioned that the time with me represented something innocent for him. Before things went to shit (which they really, really did for him). And that’s exactly it. Even though our lives took a very different path, we both have our shit. And the time with him? Well, I was a KID. I had a brother and he followed me around. It was before. Before laying in bed for hours worrying that my sister and my parents would die. It was before my dad’s alcoholism blossomed. It was before my sister spent weeks and weeks in the hospital, nearly dying and thankfully always living. It was before I felt like a misfit and structured my entire existence for so many years around trying to fit in. Psychology tells us that what we learn to TRUST is so important when we are kids. And what I could TRUST was that my little brother would follow me around. Sounds simple, huh? But I don’t know... I think there hasn’t been a lot else I could trust in my life. Not really, truly trust. I wept and wept those first days of talking with Joe. He said he cried, too. Because I never forgot him. 

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So there I was, zooming through the sky in an airplane. Clouds and mountains and grass beneath me. Loving family and estranged family behind me. I had thought almost every day for the previous month about hugging my brother. My grown up brother. He is not a phantom.  

I have always been frustrated about my lack of memories. I want to conjure memories that just won’t come. My childhood friends reminisce about our escapades and I have nothing to contribute. It’s like I’m hearing someone else’s story. I heard an article recently on the radio about memory and specifically childhood memory. They talked about how the significant and frightening experiences tend to stick more in our memory as a self-protective instinct, going way back to early man kind. For example, if a child burns their hand in a fire, remembering that moment keeps them safe because they learn not to touch fire again. I couldn’t figure how my memory of laying awake in bed at age 10, worrying my family was going to die, was doing anything to protect me. Or how foggy memories of my dad, high on California weed and embarrassing me in front of my friends, was doing anything to improve the quality of my life. Maybe I got the weird backlash of evolution gone awry. But reconnecting with Joe gets me thinking about memory in a whole different way. It’s like knowing he also has fuzzy memories yet feels that I’m his sister makes it ok for MY memories to be fuzzy. They are fuzzy for us both. I recently came across Rilke, writing: “...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue... and the point is, to live everything. LIVE the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along someday into the answer.”

I got off the plane. I hugged Joe. My brother. And 39 years later, we are living the questions. Together.