Tonight my mother and I got ino a little tiff because I wanted to give my brother $200 in hopes that he would finally enroll in a GED course.  My mother went off.  She said he wasn’t going to go to the class and that he’s had all these opportunities to go to different schools and he hasn’t taken them and this would be a waste of my money.  Now let’s be for real, I know the liklihood of my brother taking $200 and spending it on a GED class he has been avoiding for at least 8 months is slim.  I thought that by showing him that I believed that he would do the right and take some steps to get his life back together, it would motivate and empower him.  Call it my Christmas wish.  He’s only 17.  In my humble opinion, that’s just too young to throw your life away.

Well, you would think the argument would stop there, but my mother kept going.  I don’t really understand why, but my faith in the men in my life – namely my father and brothers – really pisses her off.  She always tells me you can’t change people.  I know that.  After spending years trying to change boyfriends, my father and now my brother I know that.  But I also know that people can change themselves when they want to.  I don’t see the harm in encouraging my brother to get a GED and explaining the numerous benefits of having any education in this economy.  The one thing my brothers know about me is that I never give up on them.  Yes, I get frustrated, a lot, but I’ve never given up on them.  So this Christmas, I’m going to tell my brother that whenever he’s ready for this GED course, I will help him financially.

My mother left the room muttering, “You can’t save the world Eva.”  I’m not trying to save the world, Mom.  I’m trying to save my brother.

peace,
e.

I’m reading the secret life of bees, and i got to part that involves a kiss and the feelings you get inside and love.  I think of love often and the funny way it works. I think of myself in love – an idea that I can’t figure out if I’m scared of it or if I’m just really over it. I think of abstractly. I thought of it abstractly. Until last Sunday, when I learned that he was here.

This is my new little brother, I call him baby k. it’s crazy, I found out about him on sunday (even though he was born last tuesday), i got a picture of him on Monday and I fell in love with him exactly three seconds later.  Every time I look at this picture (which is all day since it’s my blackberry background), I smile.  That is love.  That is something I haven’t been able to feel in a very long time.

Ours is not a traditional family.  Every additional sibling is a total surprise.  My father, as it turns out, is incredibly fertile, as are the women he chooses to date.  Unlike my other siblings from my father, I have been expecting Baby K for a few months now.  His mother is pretty stable, so I’m sure I can maintain a strong relationship with him.  I wish I could say that was the case with my other siblings

especially her. My little sister.  I have seen her only once, when she was born. I felt like this when she was born.  Although I was much younger then, I couldn’t help but smile to look at her, to think of her, to dream of her.

And then she was gone.  Due to circumstances out of her (and my) control, she was adopted.  Her adoptive family left the country back in the 90′s and my father has not done the best job of keeping track of where she is.

I miss the tiny baby I met for a few moments.  I wonder what kind of woman she is turning into.  I wonder how she would look at Baby K.  I’m sure she couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

peace,
e.

I don’t know where I’m gonna go with this series but I have about three in mind.

When J was born, his parents were married and they lived in the suburbs.  His father, who once had his shit together, was beginning to crumble.  First he lost his job, then he turned to drinking, then he became an alcoholic.  Or maybe he was one all along, it’s difficult to tell if he was a functioning alcoholing who lose control or if his binges were the result of depression from being another mouth to feed instead of the provider.  At any rate, his drinking got out of control and J’s mom divorced him.  Since she had been the sole bread winner, the family’s financial situation didn’t change when J’s dad moved out.

Because of her fear of his abusive and violent behavior when drunk, J’s mother moved the family and refused to tell J’s dad where they lived.  She still took J to see his father very regularly and he grew up knowing his parents loved him.  He went to Montessori, then public school, then charter school for middle school and finally independent schools for high school.  Although J was popular, he never really had many friends.  For sure he didn’t have one truly close best friend.  Maybe that’s where the trouble starts?

As with most boys, J was a little troublesome.  Although he annoyed his sister a lot and talked back under his breath, there wasn’t anything really remarkable about his behavior as a child.  He was the baby and therefore was totally spoiled.

No one really noticed anything until he got to high school.  Suddenly J was a thug.  He was talking back, he got into fights and suddently he knew just a little too much about gangs.  He confided in his sister that the bloods wanted him but she figured he was just a suburban kid trying to act tough and that nothing would come of it.  Unfortuanately she could have been more wrong.  While she was correct about him not  joining because he didn’t want to get beat up, no one was clear how involved he was in this mess.  Suddently he needed protection, so he hung with tough kids to protect himself.  He still got into fights but it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

His family should have been worried when he started sleeping all day and all night.  When punishments just didn’t seem to matter.  When his grades started to slip.  When he said he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep playing basketball.  When he started screaming and stepping to his family.  When he pushed his mother.  All these signs and nothing really happened for two year.  Finally, J transferred to a Christian school where he was surprised everyone was so nice to him.  His grades started to improve but his attitude still sucked.

He had a rage in him and no one could figure out why was J so mad.  For real, why in the world was J so mad.  His mother felt she had done all that she could.  His sister tried to be there for him.  Even his father tried to intervene, but J was gone.

A couple of weeks ago, J took his mother’s car in the early hours of the morning to deliver a package for that gang.  He said he had to do it because he was on their hit list and this was his way to make ammends.  He delievered the package but on the way home he was stopped because one of his headlights was out.  Besides that fact that he was out after Windsor’s curfew, he also was driving with out a license.  So J got a ticket and was told that if he was ever caught diving without a license he would never get his licence.  This doesn’t seem to faze him much, as with everything else these days, he simply doesn’t care.

J’s family worries about his safety.  They can’t tell if it’s pride, denial or stupidity that allows J to think that everything’s ok.  We all wonder, what in the world happened to J and is he going to get it together in time to get his life back on track.

peace,
e.