My family has this history of nervous women and boisterous men, who love each other. Of spiteful women and regretful men, who continue to love. This juxtaposition of attitude plays throughout each relationship, jumping roles when necessary.
I have eavesdropped on stories of men that snuck into the pastel bedroom of every mother in my namesake. These behaviors were disregarded, apologizing to an age where powerful men were prized and silent women were needed, and now it is too late. My willful women let time erase their trauma for the ease of surrounding parties. The objective being to stop the whispering of their name at reunions and on holidays. I take solace in knowing that the men I know are better than the men they knew, their embrace always being something of comfort instead of fear. The uncles and fathers and brothers and cousins and husbands laugh innocently with red plastic cups in their hands and pick apart Christmas ham with their calloused palms. They avoid napkins in order to jokingly threaten your shirt with greasy fingers.
My family has this history of jumbled memory, of forgetting your child's face and your husband's name. Of letting the shadow of a distant grandchild feed you breakfast in a living room that still plays vinyl records and has flower-printed wallpaper.
My great-grandmother and great-grandfather had a love story that my family treasures, a shining example every time there is a wedding in my family. They built a red house together and carved promises into the wooden pillars that held the house before being enclosed by walls. They carved their names into a heart on a tree trunk outside. They died six days apart; my great-grandmother of a rotting brain and my great-grandfather of a rotting heart. Still, my family coos of their dedication as my mind is fogged with the childhood memory of veiny hands and a mouth that dribbled oatmeal down the chin.
I wonder if they ever fought or slept in separate rooms. If their babies cried and they just let them.
My family keeps secrets, allowing our men to silence their pain and women to whisper behind each other's backs. We lose friendships and trust and lives, cry whenever it blows up. The explosion reflects on the pond like it's the Fourth of July.
Someone is always there to pick up shrapnel in a wicker gardening basket.
My family has this history of hospitals and sterile smells that burn your nostrils. We have this habit of hiding our patients away but letting them keep notebooks of every burning detail. I indulge in my perversions by cracking open yellowed pages and reading what suffering my predecessors endured.
My writing partner, my mirrored poet, my grandmother writes shakily of mental institutions and God. I have seen her handwriting deteriorate throughout the years, every birthday card I keep a collection of age for the both of us. I promised to type out her book for her, one of suffering and epiphany, but my heart beats too fast every time I read one of her slanting, inked pages. My disbelief in God muddles with my belief in her.
My overwhelming reassurance of her brain assists my faith. I have confidence in her recounting of the ducks she saw in her white room, ones that paddled through the waters of her brain contentedly. They reflect the ducklings that grew up on our pond in the backyard, each one named after a different grandkid. Some went missing along the way and we called out for them across the stagnant, green body.
Mental illness follows my family like a tip-toeing ghost, leaving frosted footprints down a hallway lined with pictures of my ancestors smiling in black and white.
We own a communal brain, all of us holding one wrinkled, gray piece. We swap them out on Christmas day while the smaller children look for a hidden, plastic baby Jesus in the living room. New mothers and fathers adopt anxiety, brothers and cousins take sadness, aunts take mania, my mother takes whatever is left over, my grandfather answers the phone in the office.
I see myself in them when my mother tells me that these miseries are inherited, that we follow each other's illnesses like breadcrumbs dropped in the woods behind the pond. These ailments are deafening and defining, enriching my family's history with a pain that is easy to write poems about.
(I question if this is self-indulgent or necessary.)
I pick them apart and I love them deeply, keeping every birthday card and letter. No postcards, for the red brick house on the corner holds bodies down like a weight, but there are always pictures of us on the back porch swing, smiling and intertwined.
I have memories of tea parties in the dining room, quilted pallets on the tiles of the living room floor for movie nights, my cousin and I playing dress-up before he became too much of a boy, our older siblings playing dominoes at the table. We always laughed.
My mother tells me that these miseries are inherited, but we both know they were always meant to be ours.
I wish peace for my family, unity for my family, happiness for my family. I have witnessed enormous strife that awaited no reward. My temper becomes a ticking bomb as I watch my loved ones detonate around me, falling like blasted ducks from rainy Texan skies.
I look at my mother who looks at her sister, who looks at their mother, who looks at their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, with whom they treat with gentle hands and hymns.
The best thing my family did was to create more; always providing one another with someone to hold onto when the pond overflows, or when the garden is blooming with pinks and golds.
