The Last of My Kind
On a trip to Dublin, I realized I’ll never have the kind of family those around me seem to have
In our house, there was only one voice, my mother’s, and it was the loudest sound. It was louder than the dishes she hurled at the wall on Thanksgiving when my father and I inquired which one of the breaded cutlets was veal because we were too hungry to play detective. Her voice grew even louder when we knelt down to collect the broken pieces as she dumped our still-warm dinner in the garbage.
There were punishments for not playing her games, and they were severe. When everything was closed and there was nothing to eat, we’d come to learn that her silences were deafening, too. That day she locked herself in her bedroom and watched her “stories” — soap operas centered in fictitious seaside towns, where everyone was hatching, or falling prey to, a sordid intrigue — on the highest volume the TV set would allow.
At 7-Eleven, we feasted on hot dogs and phosphorescent slushies, talking about the woman we used to know — a woman with flawed grammar, a taste for piña coladas, and a penchant for cartoonish layers of foundation. Yet, she made us whole with the ferocity of her love. We basked in the minor moments when she doled out affection like sweets; they made the rest of it easier to bear. Maybe it was the…
