Nuclear Family
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For my family—despite our many fractures and diasporas, we’ll always be united by our ability to laugh at ourselves. No pressure.
Your Dad Is Less Than Thrilled about Your Childhood Dream
Dear Julie,
It sounds like you are enjoying summer camp in Maine. I have no doubt your chief concern in receiving this “care package” from your parents will be the bag of Starburst candies we have enclosed per your request. I’m sure you will also wax nostalgic at your mother’s attached note detailing her progress with her tomato garden and how much your little sister has grown.
However, I ask that you also take a moment to consider this personal note I have included expressing some concern about the content of your last letter to us.
Specifically, you mention that you and a girl named “Mandy” intend to apply to the same university, an institution in Virginia that allows you to bring your own horse to campus. I would assume this is a two-year college. Suffice it to say, I question the academic rigor of any environment that advertises the accessibility of livestock as a chief amenity. You also mention a collective goal shared with Mandy and two other new acquaintances to move to Florida after graduation and open a stable you will name “Four Girls Farms.”
I am seriously concerned about your academic and professional ambitions, or apparent lack thereof. Your mother requested I table this discussion for several years, but as I told her, my own summer after seventh grade, auditing physics courses at Caltech, was instrumental in my decision to pursue a career in medicine. All of which is to say: though the momentary pleasure of sailing over an obstacle on horseback may feel like an ascent, I encourage you to aspire to greater heights for yourself in life.
That said, as a neurologist, I was pleased to see in your last enclosed photo that you were wearing protective headgear.
Dad
Your Mom Wants to Reassure You That What She Just Caught You Doing Is Totally Natural
Hi sweetheart—
I hope I’m not embarrassing you by slipping this under your door. I didn’t know if the reason you didn’t come down to dinner is that you felt bad about what I saw earlier when I walked into your room with the laundry. I’m so sorry I didn’t knock first. That was a violation of your privacy and as a therapist I should have known better. Just so you know, I didn’t say anything to Dad at dinner. In the future, I will assume that every time your bedroom door is closed you are doing private things in there.
I also wanted to let you know that I noticed the picture of your cousin Paul nearby. I’m not sure if there was any connection, but if there was, that is also totally normal! Often, some of our first intimate feelings are inspired by members of our family. I remember when I was about your age, I had some very confusing feelings about my brother (Uncle Ken), who was a point guard on the Bronx Science basketball team and very handsome growing up. I can show you pictures sometime if you like.
I hope this letter makes you feel less embarrassed.
Love,
Mom
Your Dad Does Not Care to Negotiate with You about Hanukkah
Dear Julie,
I received your handwritten note in my office requesting that your mother and I supplant our traditional eight small gifts at Hanukkah with one “Super Nintendo” video game console, to be bestowed upon you the first night.
Unfortunately, as I told your mother, I do not think this is a sound investment for reasons having nothing to do with our religious beliefs. (After all, as even the most unobservant Jew may note, Hanukkah is in fact a third-tier holiday that has benefitted from a massive PR campaign here in the States due to its proximity to Christmas.) The fact of the matter is that I am well aware of current research studies in my field on the long-term effects of video games on brain chemistry. As their results are yet unproven, I would be as negligent in allowing my own daughter to be a test case for this potential mental erosion as I would in allowing her to ingest off-market SSRIs in Phase One clinical trials.
That said, I will happily factor in the spirit of your request when purchasing your gifts this holiday season. I’ve asked my research assistant to cull detailed information about various Super Nintendo games in an effort to replicate aspects of the experience you seek. You can expect books on various legends (though “Zelda” may be fictional, The Decameron is thought to be based in reality) and fraternity and brotherhood in contemporary Italian culture (Super Mario World), as well as several CDs of minimalist synthesizer music with repetitive melodies.
Love,
Dad
The NordicTrack in Your Dad’s Office Just Wanted to Say Goodbye
Julie.
What does one say to a lover at the moment when their mutual exploitation has come to an end? A lover whose flesh one has used to forget mortality, to pause the march of time, to deny one’s own innate solitude? It would seem that moment is upon us: the goodbye we both knew was inevitable from the moment your hungry eyes alit upon my sturdy frame. For each of our encounters, though we enjoyed delusions of privacy, was ever more closely observed by a third party, the reaper of mortal souls that stalked us as if prowling a rocky Swedish shore in a classic film by a countryman of mine you are too young to know. Yet my pain at our parting today is neither unforeseen nor unique. Nay, it is the innate suffering of man/machine, as inevitable as the eventual slowing of the heart, in your case, or the decaying of the wood laminate in mine. It is the lonely ache that lies within all of us conveyed by the monotonous whoosh of my resistance rotor or your heart’s robotic percussion, both tonelessly scoring the mechanical emptiness of life itself.
Forgive me if I sound bleak. As a Scandinavian, I have a predisposition toward fatalism.
And it is undeniable that my entire existence as an exercise machine is one of futility: always moving, but never reaching my destination. Mine is a life confined to basements, windowless “bonus rooms” and, as in your father’s case, drawn-curtained home offices whose dim lighting mirrors their occupants’ inability to access levity and happiness. I was not merely a bystander to but an active participant in your father’s psychological descent. My limbs became additional surface area on which he piled unopened mail, receipts, once even a banana peel. I provided a home for physical manifestations of his mental chaos, while my own existential dread mounted. I collected dust.
Until today, when your father and mother terminated their failed attempt at what was supposed to be an everlasting love of their own and determined that there just wasn’t room in your father’s new apartment for an exercise machine. When your mother, suddenly panicking about her physical appeal to future partners, decided she would prefer to invest in a new contraption in my stead, the enigmatically named “elliptical,” manufactured from soulless synthetics in Stamford, Connecticut. When, after years of broken promises and undiagnosed ailments on your father’s part, your mother finally named the isolation she has felt for years. When your father surrendered to an insta
bility for which he secretly loathed himself, a deep pain that only I witnessed whenever he entered his office at dawn under the guise of working on “research,” but really to make manic phone calls to old friends who remembered him fondly from childhood, before his circuits began to short. As an object that bore witness to the fracture of your parents’ dream of sharing a life, I have come to represent the detritus, the shrapnel of divorce—just as in my youth, two years back in 1993, I represented an exciting new way for everyone to get defined, sexy calves and burn up to nine hundred calories an hour.
Speaking of sexy, then there was you.
You were twelve when we met. I was your plaything, an object of mystification and intrigue. With your baby sister and your wiry-limbed friends, you dabbled, pulled my handles, feigned strangling one another with my ropes (my youth was an era without warning labels, back when lawsuits were for the dignified). But last year, at fourteen, you changed. You grew withdrawn. You talked incessantly of food. You watched television shows that consisted solely of models walking down runways, their eyes seemingly empty sockets. You quit the basketball team. You logged your caloric intake. Friends receded into the deep background. You jogged for hours.
Your parents, despite their differences, discussed in my presence your welfare and whether they should worry. They decided it was fine. They’d keep an eye on it; if it got any worse, they’d take you to a therapist. Only I knew the truth. After midnight, when the house was quiet, I’d wait for the sound of your bare feet at the top of the stairs. I knew it was me you were coming to see. When you climbed astride me, breathtaking in a sports bra and hunter-green knee-length mesh shorts bearing the logo of the Concord Academy Chameleons, our bodies moved together in a perfect rhythm, tiny beads of sweat playing on your upper lip, so stiff with determination. After, I always felt a sense of accomplishment, that this is what I was put on this earth to do. But despite the fact that you returned night after night and spent hours atop me, you took little pleasure in our time together. For you, our love was purely utilitarian, a destructive need driven by hatred for yourself, not love for me. And I, in turn, unwittingly metastasized this cancer. In part, it was our encounters that sent you to the hospital that night in April.
At least we were epic.
Not so epic, I’m afraid, is my disassembly now. I can imagine no more degrading a fate than to be shoved into a Saab hatchback (though at least the make of the car pays tribute to my ancestral home) and later resurrected in the dusty “Electronics/Miscellaneous” section of the Goodwill in Kendall Square, my uniqueness homogenized amidst hot plates and other first-generation electronics whose parts have been discontinued. Yet perhaps this is a poetic end for me. After all, technological progress—like a waning love affair, like the sun disappearing over a Södermalm horizon, like life itself—only moves in one direction.
My power button will now switch to “Off.”
—CPS (Classic Pro Skier ™)
Your Very Intense Aunt Just Has a Few House Rules
Dear Julie,
We’re all so excited to have you and Jane down to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving next week! I’m so glad we live close enough that we can open our home to you two during this stressful time while your parents are figuring everything out.
In the past, when you’ve visited here with your family, you’ve stayed at the DoubleTree, so obviously this trip is going to be a little different. Our family has a few guidelines for guests in our home that help everything run smoothly around here. If you wouldn’t mind passing these along to Jane, we would all really appreciate it.
General
Just as a reminder, this is a no-shoes household. Please remove your shoes on the porch and place them on the white rack marked “Guest” before entering the house. Please do not use the mahogany rack—this is for our immediate family. If you are wearing long pants, please check the bottoms to make sure they have not come into contact with any dirt. If they have, just open the front-hall closet and you will find a shelf with a few pairs of clean “house pants” that are for guests to use. You can change in the closet.
Kitchen
I’ve already been to Natural Foods and bought all the ingredients we need for healthy meals next week. As you may remember, Paul has two scheduled snacks each day, so between these meals and snacks, there should be no need for you to go into the fridge for any reason during your visit. I would love to avoid a repeat of Memorial Day weekend 1994, when someone in your family left a soy sauce bottle ajar and some soy sauce dripped into the crisper.
Bedrooms
When you make your bed each morning, please tuck the comforter into the bed frame first, then lean all pillows against the headboard in descending order of size (with small circular pillows in the front). Next, please use the French-lavender room spray in the top drawer of the nightstand to freshen up the duvet.
While spraying, please hold the can at least two feet away from the duvet.
Small circular pillows: these should not be slept on, as the fabric is very delicate and contact with any liquid (including any saliva that may escape from your mouth during the night) can cause permanent stains. Please place these pillows in the wicker basket next to the closet before you go to sleep each night.
Bathroom
Please only use the tan towels. The small green towels with Indian-corn embroidery are purely decorative, in honor of the season. If you see any blue towels, do not use them—these towels belong in the master bathroom. There should never be any blue towels in the guest bathroom. If you see a blue towel in the guest bathroom, please let Carl or me know as soon as possible.
After showering, always make sure to squeegee the shower door to avoid streaking. Please do this as soon as you turn off the shower or streaks will set in. Do not wait until you have toweled off. If for some reason you forget, please turn the shower back on for 3–5 minutes to re-steam the glass, then squeegee it correctly.
Please do not remove any body hair in the bathroom or anywhere else in the house. This is not typically an issue for our family, as our hair grows fine and blond. If you must remove hair from any part of your body during your visit, please do so in the backyard, using the hose. Since we have been experiencing freezing temperatures this week, please avoid getting any water on the patio, to prevent black ice.
Friday morning
Our family has a tradition of starting the morning after Thanksgiving with a ten-mile run at 7:00 a.m. I know you and Jane aren’t athletic types, so we will plan to go without you so no one is slowing anyone down. If you happen to wake up before we get home, feel free to lounge on the living-room couch (please make sure to keep the slipcover on at all times) and watch TV until we get home and can make breakfast as a family. There shouldn’t be any need to open the fridge before then. Instructions for the remote controls are in the blue binder under the copy of Germany: An Ideal Nation.
Can’t wait to see you both Tuesday and give you a few much-needed days of relaxation!
Warmly,
Aunt Andrea (and Carl and Paul)
Your Mother’s Goddaughter, Who Has Always Been Like a Sister to You, Was a Real Bitch Last Weekend
Dear Julie,
My mom told me you were upset last weekend when you guys came up to visit us and I went to that pool party and didn’t invite you. She wanted me to say I’m sorry.
But first of all, I didn’t realize you would have wanted to be invited. You always seem like you’re morally opposed to anything popular people would want to do. You constantly talk about how you hate makeup and dresses and the only famous person I’ve ever heard you talking about having a crush on is Bill Clinton, which is obviously weird. Anyway, I’m sure you can understand why I didn’t think you would care about having fun with normal high school kids.
I feel comfortable saying this because we’ve known each other our whole lives and I’m saying it for your own good: in my opinion, if you want to be included in stuff like that, you might want to change some things about how you pre
sent yourself to the universe. Here are some ideas I had that I think would majorly improve your life.
If you don’t want anything to change in your life, disregard this list.
1. CLOTHES: I know you like to wear used clothes, but some of the outfits you wear just look dirty—like the coat with the fake fur hood that you were wearing last winter when we went down to NY for our moms’ college reunion. No offense, but that really just looked like a dog. Maybe that’s a popular style at your high school … but you don’t live very far away from me, so I have a hard time believing it’s that different.
2. PERSONALITY: Obviously you have a good sense of humor, but sometimes it gets really annoying that you always have to be joking and making fun of everything. After a while it’s not funny anymore. I have definitely talked to a lot of guys who don’t like that personality in a girl. Again, maybe it’s different at your school, but if it was really that different, you would probably have your own parties to go to on the weekends or would have at least had a boyfriend by now.
3. HOBBIES: Do you have any? Writing doesn’t count (I’m only counting hobbies that are social). I recommend sports. In my case, all my friends are on the field hockey team, and it leads to a lot of bonding experiences. Also, when we travel to away games there are parties in other states, which are good opportunities to practice flirting, etc.
4. FRIENDS: I’ve only ever met one of your friends from school, but my mom said that’s the person you hang out with the most. First of all, I can’t remember her name, which is a bad sign. All I remember is that she was wheeling her backpack around on a cart with mini Trolls and Koosh balls clipped on to it. Obviously you can understand why someone would think that’s queer. So it’s also possible that you’re not getting invited to things because people don’t want to have to invite her. You just have to ask yourself if you’d rather only hang out with her for the next four years or actually expand your social world.