Family Ties

Sloe Gin Fizz

Going into Mike's brother's house, I wasn't sure what to expect.  He never really talked about anyone in his family other than his mom.  Larry and his wife, Chris, met us at the door.  Larry had two black eyes.  That was not what I wanted to see, but it turned out that he was a plumber, and a pipe had fallen on his face and broken his nose.  The black eyes were from the broken nose.  It was hard to tell what he looked like; he had a huge bandage on his nose and black eyes.  His hair was dark, and he had brown eyes.  Mike had dark blond hair and hazel eyes.  I thought he probably was cute underneath the damage.  Chris was 100% Polish.  Her father and mother had been brought to the US by the church, and she and her brother and sister were born in the states.  They were both super friendly, and I liked them.  They had three young kids.

There were no other family members at Larry's house.  We talked, and they asked a lot of questions trying to get to know me.  We were going to go out together later in the evening after meeting Marie, Mike's mom.  Everyone was drinking Stroh's beer, which I had never heard of before.  It's an Ohio, West Virginia brew, or was, anyway.  The interesting thing about that was that you could get the regular beer strength six days a week, but on Sunday's only a light version referred to as 3.2 was sold.  It was good tasting beer, for beer, approved overwhelmingly by the German, Polish community.  I was warned that the next day, everyone in the family, all of the brothers and sisters, would be there.

We left Larry's house and went to Marie's house.  This is where we would be staying.  Mike's brother Tom sort of lived there.  He was single, 25, and a playboy, according to Mike.  He usually slept elsewhere.  Marie was pleasant but definitely a small-town person.  She had worked hard raising all of those kids, and she didn't mind telling you that.  For the most part, employment consisted of factory work, Sylvania, the old TV manufacturer, had a plant in Ottawa, and that is where most of the townspeople worked.  She showed me her scarred fingers, burnt many times over the years by handling various tubes for the TVs.  Her past time was spent bowling on several leagues and playing bingo.  She had bowling trophies all over the house.  Mike said that she could have been a professional bowler at one time.  She was attractive, she looked a little bit like Mike.  In a town of Catholics, she was a Methodist and always had been; her husband had been a Catholic.  He had died when Mike was in his early teens after their divorce.

She had made a nice dinner, fried chicken and potato salad, made differently than the southern kind that I was used to, but very tasty.  We spent a while after dinner with small talk, and then she left to go bowling.  So far, I saw no signs of Mike being "the black sheep" of the family.  I looked at some of the old pictures she had of her kids at various stages of age.  Everything seemed normal to me.

Larry and Chris picked us up to go to a "carry out."  A carryout was an independently owned convenience store like a 7-11.  The front of the store had merchandise, the back of the store was a bar with lots of tables.  They served food and drinks and had a tv for sports viewing, and there were lots of people playing cards.  And that little village was overpopulated with carry-outs.  Strange to me but obviously not to them.  And of course, everyone in the village knew everyone that lived there.

Mike had been the president of his senior class and obviously very popular.  Everyone who came into the place talked to him.  He went and sat with other people at times, and that was fine.  I stayed with Chris and Larry.  Larry brought me a drink, a Sloe Gin fizz.  I had never heard of it; in fact, I was trying to figure out why it was slow, but it was Sloe.  It tasted pretty good to me. It was like a fizzy, if you know what that was.  Tasted good, tasted harmless but knocked me on my butt.  I was limp, I couldn't move, and I knew my speech was slurred; actually, I could hardly even think how to say words.  I was in bad shape, but happy.  It seemed to me that everyone there was in a condition similar to mine.  I was getting really sleepy, I had been up since 3 a.m., and I was exhausted.  Larry and Chris took me back to Marie's and walked me, literally into the house, and put me in bed.  I didn't know where Mike was and didn't really care.  That was the last thing I remember.

I was able to sleep late the next morning; Mike came in and woke me up to eat a late breakfast.  I felt a little hungover and not talkative.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person on any occasion; a hangover just made it worse.  And it is scarce for me to eat breakfast, I had to force myself.  While I was sitting at the table, Mike sat down with a mirror and his contact lenses.  He was going to put them in.  When he pulled his eyelid down to put the lens in, Marie flipped out.  She freaking flipped her lid.  She gave a 20-minute dissertation on how gross and awful she thought contact lenses were.  Wow, it was hard not to laugh.  She asked me if it bothered me to watch him do that.  I told her no that I was used to it because he didn't usually take them out every night like he was supposed to, and a lot of times when he came over, they would be "lost" in his eye, and I had to help him try and remove them.  Well, she almost passed out when I told her that. Then she started carrying on about how she couldn't eat now; the thought of what I said made her sick to her stomach.  Well, good, now we were both nauseous.  She was a little odd.

Now it was time to go meet the rest of the family for their Christmas get together.  One of the brothers lived in Indiana and had to do Christmas there too, so Mike's family did a Christmas Eve get together.   There were 7 kids, including Mike, in his family; 5 of them were married and had kids.  Fred had 5 kids; all of the other brothers and sisters had 2 kids, each except for Chris and Larry, who had three.  Also present were Chris's mom, dad. And siblings.  This was a first for me; I had a small family.

After dinner and present opening, the stories of "poor Mike" started flowing.  You know how families like to put one of their own on the spot.  There were lots of stories from the brothers and sisters but not from Marie.  The picture painted was that of a spoiled, overactive, constantly into something child and teen.  He pretty much got what he wanted, and his "keepers," the brothers and sisters, had kept him out of trouble.  Marie wasn't even aware of many of the things he had done.  This was a good time to tell them that he represented himself to me as the family's black sheep.  That got a big laugh and brought on more stories about him.  And a dirty look at me from him.  He was busted.

The out of town folks started leaving at about eight.  Marie left when they did.  We stayed for a few more hours, playing cards and drinking.  Then the next shift of people started leaving to go to midnight mass.  I wanted to go because they said it was beautiful, but Mike, the not quite good Catholic, didn't want to go.  We just went back to Maries's.

The next day was Christmas.  We went back to Larry's house for the day.  We ate leftovers and sat around doing nothing except watching TV and talking.  Chris's dad came back over.  He had a very thick Polish accent, and I had a hard time understanding him.  He was unsettling to me; he was a "toucher," and I was not; he never missed an opportunity for hugging, putting his arm around you, standing as close to you as was physically possible.  I just didn't like it and was uncomfortable with it.  I would look at Mike like, "would you please do something?" but he didn't.  Sometimes Larry would come and pull me away from him.  At midnight, we went back to Marie's.  I had to pack, and I was tired.

The next day we left for Columbus around 11 am.  It had snowed again, and the roads were terrible.  I just had Mike drop me off because the flight was delayed due to the weather.  It was making me nervous, just sitting and waiting.  Finally, we boarded the plane, but we sat on the runway for a long time.  Then the flight attendant announced our departure but also told us the seatbelt sign would remain on.  We would be running into turbulence from a huge snowstorm that was impacting the east coast.  There were not very many people on this flight, probably a dozen.  Pretty soon, we were hauling down the runway, and we were off.

Turbulence.  Turbulence?  What an understatement.  For my second flying experience, this was terrifying.  We would drop constantly.  The plane sounded like it was going to disintegrate.  Did I say we dropped?  It was making me queasy.  I wanted to cry but didn't want to look like a big baby.  Somewhere down the road, they announced that all of the airports had closed, including National Airport and that we would be the last flight in.  There would be no connecting flights leaving the airport that night.  The closer we got, the worse the shaking and vibrating and dropping got.  Finally, they announced we were in landing mode.  I was uptight, and I wish I had been out of sight.  National Airport with the runways ending at the edge of the Potomac River during a blinding snowstorm was not where I wanted to go.  Landing petrified me anyway, and landing in this weather on those runways just made me want to pee my pants.

Well, here we go.  We hit the runway and started sliding, I guess maybe it was a controlled slide, but it didn't seem that way.  We were barreling down the runway going who knows how fast and sliding.  There were emergency vehicles with their lights on that we were zooming past.  Were they there for us?  The engines were roaring in reverse, or so I was told, and we were still going fast and sliding.  I was beside myself with fear.  I closed my window shutter; I didn't want to see the water coming, I couldn't swim.  Not to worry, I would freeze pretty quickly.  I looked around, and I wasn't the only person who looked terrified.  We finally made a huge turn and then stopped.  I flipped my shutter open; we were at the end of the runway; I could make out the break in the water and see Gravelly Point in the distance.  We made it, but just barely.  We sat there for a while in silence, and then something started pulling the plane back to the terminal.

And people ask me why I am not crazy about flying, can you blame me?