Thanks Crazy Family

My grandparents graduated together from NYU Medical School and continued to work at Bellvue and do research for them as long as my grandmother lived, so they lived in an incredible NYU-owned apartment right on Washington Square Park. As a teenager my dad worked in a novelty shop around the corner that sold t-shirts with boobs and sarcastic posters and things. If I was lucky I'd get to walk there with my five older cousins, doorman smiling at the gaggle of Singers on the way out and me feeling like the grown-up queen of the world for getting to go on such an adult adventure before my fifth birthday.
When my eldest cousin was closer to her fifth birthday than her fifteenth, she and our mutual grandmother went for a walk in Washington Square Park.
"Dr. Perlman! Dr. Perlman!"
An enormous black man in a pink tutu bounded towards them, calling my grandmother by her maiden and professional name. My cousin stood in horror as Grandma and the Creature in Tule proceeded to have a very friendly chat. Thirty years later, I expect that same cousin in that same situation would have the same reaction, except she might make her desire to leave more pronounced.

My dad's sister's family was raised in Deerfield, Illinois with a very narrow idea of how things are supposed to be. Artistic endeavors exist to get you into a better college. You go to the "best" college you possibly can, get the "best" job you possibly can, do business, make money, get married, make babies, etc. My dad's brother was treated as the token family failure for never living up to these expectations.

My mom's parents never went to college and my mom had to write an essay for her father to explain what she planned on doing with her schooling to prove higher education wouldn't be wasted on a girl. She wasn't expected to marry a nice Jewish doctor, but she did. My maternal grandmother's greatest wish was for blonde grandchildren, and somehow I showed up despite my two dark-haired parents.
My mom has two brothers. One is a lawyer whose salary so astronomical it would make my dad's side of the family cry, but his debt is on par with Iceland and his third marriage is destroying the offspring it produced. The other two siblings are much more like me, with more intelligence and creativity and depression than directional drive. My mom's mom has had a few paranoid psychotic breaks, but only one or two in my lifetime.
On my mom's side there are ten cousins. One cousin had severe OCD (that's doing much better in the last few years, yay!), most of the cousins have been treated for depression and/or anxiety disorders, at least four or five have tattoos, and my brother and sister are two of the only three whose lives aren't primarily driven by something in the fine or performing arts.
My mom and my dad's sister are very civil to one another though they are secretly battling for my father and the entire world's love and affection. Still, my mom makes more sense on my dad's side of the family than she does her own.

I get a sadistic pleasure out of watching the two sides of my family interact, each making caddy comments about the other in the same key but for opposite reasons. I have a cousin on each side with the same name and only two years apart. They are both fundamentally artists and married around the same time and live in Chicago. But one went to an Ivy League school for undergrad, spent time as an investment banker during the boom, graduated Harvard Business School, owns a condo in yuppie-ville, etc. When we were little, he was my favorite cousin. He's goofy and loved to play with me and have fun all the time. The other cousin dropped out of high school and got his GED. He's an artist by profession, makes amazing things and has his work in magazines and people's homes and such, but doesn't self-promote at all and works obscene hours every week for little or no money. He's extremely shy and socially awkward, but he's also very tall and has a lot of tattoos and piercings so people think he's menacing and standoffish instead of nervous and quiet. Both cousins helped when my parents redid their kitchen.

My immediate family has been to Scotland and Switzerland and Tanzania and many other places as tourists. My sister has been to every continent except Antarctica. We travel and we gawk and we try not to be the obnoxious Americans going, "Hey, look at the funny clothes! You call this food? Where's the McDonalds?" My parents, with their exacting perfectionist tendencies for themselves and their children, also instilled in me an openness and acceptance of The Other. We want to see everything the world has to offer. Perhaps my mom, in trying to distinguish herself from her family, has been more severe in keeping her judgments. My dad won't stand for slow service at the drive-thru, but he will go to any religious service in any language if it's beautiful. Then again, we all laughed hysterically at the state fair llama show when the handlers spelled out "LOVE" with the llamas to Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight."

All this and more is why I'm bringing Neighbor Guy to my family's Thanksgiving. We are not Birdie's family, where Neighbor Guy would be par for the course. But whatever my family is or isn't, whatever I want them to have been or be, they are the sum of so many parts and an inescapable part of me that can't be broken by chaos or wild cards or inappropriate dinner guests.

For all this and more, corny though it may be, I am thankful.

Maybe next year I'll show up topless.