Loren

I was driving past Chuck 'E Cheese's and contemplating irony. Wouldn't that be a great first line of a novel?

Here's what I mean: I had two siblings, my older sister, Sara (henceforth "evil bitch"), and my kid brother, Tobias, who was the sweetest little kid you'll ever meet. Tobias died when I was about eight. Leukemia. But Evil Bitch lives to darken the lives of those around her another day. Tell me, where does karma factor into that?

My entire extended family continues to amaze me with their ignorance and sometimes just their sheer stupidity. Here's a gem:

When I was getting married, my dad's mom was dying of cancer, and she gets me this set of aluminum pots as a wedding gift.

I had said, "oh, no thank you, grandma, they give you cancer."

And the woman says, "oh, nonsense, I've been using them my whole life."

I actually had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Well, there you go."

I realize that just from that example my family might come across as merely being lovably absent-minded, but it's really much worse than that. I have five teenage relatives outside my immediate family, four of whom are doped up and/or knocked up. All are fantastically obnoxious. And if my older relatives are any indication, it gets worse with age.

However, right now I was going to pick up one of the cool members of my family, Sean. Sean is going to be so awesome when he grows up. He's his mother's son, if you know what I mean. We both have a tendency to answer back and be rather crude. About a year ago when he was two, one of my evil bitch aunts (the title isn't reserved for my sister) came to collect some money we supposedly owed her. So she goes over to Sean and in this very condescending voice says, "My name is Grace. Can you say Grace?"

And this little two year old looks up at her and with this perfectly straight face and clear voice says, "Can you say Sean?"

Both he and I are what my husband likes to refer to as "smart asses". But then again, my husband is practically a goddamn saint. I mean, apart from calling me a smart ass I have never heard the guy swear. He is polite to absolutely everyone, does not lie, cheat, or steal and is over all your average goody-two-shoes. Don't get me wrong. I do love him dearly and he's my best friend in the world, but his inability to break rules and have fun irritates me. Tobias is no better (my kid, not my brother. The original Tobias didn't live long enough for me to make him into a smart ass). He's basically a mini Alan, even though he looks exactly like me. Likewise, Sean, who in terms of personality is more like me, looks just like his father. Of course, Tobias doesn't have Alan's genius with numbers and computers. He will never do anything for a living that involves math. Because although I have actually had drama and English teachers come up to me and shake my hand because of some of the things he's done in their class, the kid just sucks at math. I'm pretty sure he's flunked every single math course he's attempted since pre-algebra. Most of the science classes, too. Music he does do, though. He's got a great voice and can sound good on just about any instrument. He owns every cast recording ever made. He likes his privacy If we periodically left food outside his door, I'm pretty sure he could happily stay in his room for a straight two weeks with his music and his books and his thoughts. He is a dreamer.

Than there's Maria. Maria is the only one of our kids that Elfangor named. We picked Sean's name just because we thought "Sean Fangor" had a nice ring to it, and like I said, Tobias was named after my brother. Alan, like the big, macho man he is, cried at the end of West Side Story and entreated me to let him name our daughter Maria if we ever had one. Sure enough, she was born three years later, a beautiful, brilliant girl who really didn't take after either of us. I mean, there were parts of us, like my hands and Alan's smile. But for the most part she just looked like herself. From when she was very little she excelled in all her classes. Seriously, she was in a gifted pre-K program (I hadn't known that such a thing existed. I mean, God forbid one shouldn't get into a good kindergarten, because then you wouldn't get into a good elementary school, high school, college… then your life just sucks, you know?) She was the perfect blend between Alan's goody-two-shoeness and my tendency to be a smart ass. And unlike the other two, she never really got closer to one of us than the other. She gets along quite well with both She's very organized (this is why people always ask whether she's adopted) and actually seems to enjoy school (strange child). And while no human will ever understand math at the level Alan does, Maria certainly comes closer than most people you'll meet.

Anywhoodle, mothers tend to ramble on about their kids. I apologize. I used to hate it when people did that to me. But unlike the other mothers, I acknowledge that my kids probably aren't as cute as I think they are.

So anyway, I was driving to pick Sean up from daycare. It was a beautiful day. You know the first few days of spring when the wind is all nice and warm and the air smells like grass and you just feel pretty good about the world? It was one of those days. Slightly dampened by the Everest-sized pile of bills awaiting me at home.

I was driving the big Victorian house which sits on the corner of the street of Sean's daycare when my cell phone rang. I checked the caller ID. It was my husband's cell phone.

"Alan Fangor fanclub," I answered the phone.

I could actually feel him roll his eyes through the phone. I say the same thing every time. "Listen, Tobias is at Jake's house. I was going to pick him up but the traffic is horrendous. Would you please get him?"

I gasped in horror. "And delay the mind-numbingly boring busy work for twenty more minutes?"

"Thank you, Loren." He hung up.

I pulled into Sean's daycare center and was greeted by a very hyperactive group of two to five year olds.

"MOMMY!" he screamed, nearly knocking me over as he threw his little arms around my legs. I knelt down and picked him up, kissed his face and stuck him on my hip. I signed him out and than we headed for Jake's house. Jake is this really nice kid who lives across town from us. He's come over to our house a couple of times, and it's funny, because he and Alan just clicked. They just sat there and yapped about everything and nothing for hours and hours.

When we got to his house, I saw a lot of parked cars. Also a lot of little old ladies. By the looks of it, they were hosting some sort of family reunion. Poor Jake. I stuck Sean back on my hip and headed inside. Some distant relative of Jake's greeted me at the door. Inside, I saw a lot of people basically looking miserable to be there but trying valiantly to appear convivial. In the corner I saw Tobias sitting and talking to Jake and Jake's cousin, a very pretty girl. Rachel. She had an attitude. I liked her.

"Hey," I said as I approached them.

"Hi Loren," Rachel said.

"Hi Loren."

"Hey, mom."

Suddenly Rachel and Jake exchanged looks as if they had just thought of something. Their faces cracked into identical scheming grins.

Rachel said, "Loren, could you be a really awesome person and do us a favor? It's a living hell here, claustrophobia is taking its toll on my health, and they're going to make us sleep in sleeping bags in the bathroom. Could you, like, adopt us for the weekend?"

"We'll do all your chores," Jake added. "And run all your errands and basically be your personal slaves, but, please, I cannot take one more old lady who I've never seen before squeezing my cheek and telling me how grown up I look."

Rachel nodded vigorously in agreement and they both looked at me pleadingly.

Ah, family. Nothing quite like it.

"Believe me, I sympathize," I said. "Sure."

"Thank you so much!"

All three of them charged (in the most discrete manner possible) to my car, desperate to get away from that place. We drove home.