TELL ME ABOUT A PATTERN

I’m not proud of the fact that I’m still 12.

My psyche still wears a training bra from Sears even as my corporeal form spills out of the sides of an XL Spanx Bra-lellujah. At the physical age of 45, I have emergent jowls, “bunny lines” and something growing on my back called— get ready for this— a senile wart. 

“Don’t call it that,” my beautiful, young dermatologist laughed as I stood in her office this morning. “The medical term for it is ‘seborrheic keratosis’.”

“Yes,” I said. “But Google says it’s otherwise known as a ‘senile wart.’”

“Stop. You’re so funny,” she said, making a note on her laptop.

But enough about my body. Like I said, I’m actually 12. Even as I’ve bloomed and bled and birthed and (now) begun to sprout barnacles, my brain has remained the same wet little wad of chewing gum it was in the 7th grade. I find myself stuck in the same patterns over and over again, still reactive, still shrill, still wondering when I will feel comfortable and unafraid.

When I was a kid, the success of any family outing was entirely dependent on my older brother’s mood. How combative or critical he might be feeling that day, how easily his hair-trigger might be tripped. At the time I thought I was his only victim, but now I see that my parents were hostages, too. My poor mother, all lipstick and nervous giggles, desperately trying to salvage the dinner. My father, grim and grieving (though I didn’t recognize it as grief until I discovered that people mourn normalcy, the lives they thought they would lead.) My brother was a victim too, a walking diagnosis that was so obvious in retrospect but not in 1985. I dreaded going anywhere with him. Actually, the hope was worse than the dread— the hope that this time it would be normal, that we’d eat at Bennigan’s like a normal family and chat pleasantly about homework and Gremlins 2, and no one would have a meltdown over something arbitrary. It never happened.

Last week my parents invited me, the 45 year-old, out to dinner on a night when my own kids were at their dad’s. That childish hope was reactivated instantly; I was surprised by how quickly it shot up, like a stand of bamboo. I rarely have my mom and dad all to myself, and deep down I still feel cheated by all those failed Saturday nights that ended in angry car rides. The three of us were going to have a nice, normal dinner at a restaurant. We were going to have a great time. And when my 13 year-old son found out about our plans and asked if he could join us, I quickly said yes, because of course I would like to have my eldest son with me, even though he can be disruptive, even though he can be critical, even though it’s not always easy. Of course!