PTFD (Post Traumatic Family Disorder)

I might be in the throes of familial PTSD (again). It feels like that. I'm very very busy beating myself up, but have managed to remained quite productive in the process. I have cooked all afternoon: a fritatta of "mustgo," garlic french bread soaked all day in egg and milk then mixed with broccoli, green onion, chickpeas, kidney beans, manchego, a cube of maytag blue. Then roasting pasilla peppers for spinach enchiladas, the smoke perfuming the air like blessings, and S. and I said a prayer for Gatsby, a member of the Core, the sweetest little guy who had lived a wonderful long life and finally said goodbye to us on Saturday. He was with his family and they are heartbroken but thankful that he was not in pain. These are G-Man enchildas. We set up the assembly line: dredge tortilla in green spinach/pasilla sauce, spoon in cheese and onion filling (S. had prepped the corn tortillas by lightly frying them in a little canola oil--it helps so much with the pliability of the tortilla and makes assembly a snap) roll them and nestle in a baking dish. We decided not to put the sauce on until we heard from C & T, but that was over an hour ago...we might be eating these, who knows. Hey, at least I used light sour cream.

Back at the ranch...I am overwhelmed by the (apparent) inevitablity of my body, niggled by this feeling that there is no other way but the way of the gene pool. But it's not like I haven't been to this place before. It sneaks in the backdoor of my consciousness every time I spend time with my family, and it fucks my shit UP.

There's my father. I won't even go into that. During our time in Ohio recently, he was devasted by the failure (undercooked potatoes, musty fish he'd spent a fortune on) of a fish meuniere-like dish (sp?) I'd requested. My family takes food "failures" so seriously that they can kill a good vibe with one burnt swoop. My brother, the protein "no starch" man who exercises maniacally to manage an anxiety disorder that will eventually kill him, no matter how thin he gets, bragged about how he dropped weight "even during the holiday party circuit. I would just eat some shrimp, drink a few glasses of red wine and ... I still lost!" Wine as food group. Must remember that one. My sister. Lovely, bigger, all the time. I feel close to her, but she only lets you come so close, and she's married to a (whackjob) chef, which doesn't help one iota. A 95 year old grandmother, still kicking hard but starting to get paranoid, the mother to my mother, my dear mother, small, beautiful, vulnerable. She was recently diagnosed with IBS, and I am convinced--have been for a very long time--that she suffers from the same knawing anxiety that runs down my brother and me. We are too much of this world in a way only Rilke or dreams can attempt to explain.

Here are some pictures.


Top pic: Dad and my niece Mary
below that: My mother, opening presents, weeping. She's a weeper.


That's me on the far left, my brother in the center and my sister on the right. We're in my parent's kitchen. My brother is putting the finishing touches on a caesar salad. I am, conveniently, hiding my body behind my brother.













me and my niece Isabelle--just what I am doing with my tongue is the matter of some debate