mizChartreuse || redefiningSuccess

Hello! My name is Charlotte, and I am a functioning member of a dysfunctional family.

That is the overall lesson I learned during the first 24 hours of this “family vacation” I’m on with my 20-year-old sister Chloe, 12-year-old brother Zeke, and our mother.

Now, we all joke about and laugh at dysfunctional families (Family Guy, The Simpsons), and I’m sure plenty of people can relate to that background in one way or another (whether it’s alcoholism, codependency, authoritarian religious upbringing, etc).  And while the dynamic may be humorous at times, it is one of the most insane things of which one can be a part.

Chloe is a beauty queen. She won the Miss Illinois crown this past summer and now the American Coed National competition is down here in Orlando, Florida. (For the record: I am not really a big fan of beauty pageants. While people may argue that they may help women’s self esteem/poise, it’s also an incredibly superficial industry and at the end of the day a business, first and foremost [and a lot of them cost way too much to enter]. But I digress; I’m here to support my ambitious little sis who is awesome at what she does.)

Chloe with the younger Illinois winners of each division

Saturday night my mother tells me they’re coming to the city to pick me up at 4:30 a.m. Sunday (did I mention we were DRIVING?). I called her back and told her that 4:30 wouldn’t work, and could she come around 7 a.m. maybe?

“Oh, NO NO NO NO NO, 7:30 is WAAAAAY TOO LATE!” she exclaimed. “Chloe has to be there at 4 p.m. Monday!”

Uh, yeah. So leaving at 7:30 makes no sense since it’s only about 18-20 hours from Chicago to Orlando.

“No, I refuse! We’re coming EARLY! The latest we’ll come is 5:30. We want to take our time driving!” (In my mother’s case, the story/world usually changes to whatever she happens to believe is true at the moment.)

So, she refused. Fair enough.

Another reason for my stance against departing at 4:30 a.m. is because Saturday night was also Diana’s birthday celebration at Flatiron. Missing her birthday was not an option; she’s one of my bestest friends. If my mother were actually to scoop me at 4:30 a.m., I would inevitably be still awake and HOSED. Hell, they may as well have come to the bar to scoop me!

I’d told her I was going out Saturday night.

“To a bar?” Yes. “Really? You hang out in bars?” Do you know how old I am? “Iye, that is not a thing of the Lord. When’s the last time you went to church? You need to come to Willow Creek with me.”

Pleh.

But I knew that there was no way my mother would come in the a.m. at all. Because she functions on African time and is quite the scatterbrain.

So we went out, and the night was wonderful.

And by wonderful I mean ONE OF THE BEST NIGHTS EVER. One of those nights where you don’t remember leaving the place, but do remember getting out of the cab and instantly puking all over the intersection of Drunk & Cermak.

Sean woke my still-drunk ass up at 11 a.m., telling me there were no missed calls on my phone or anything. I could barely peel my mascara-encrusted, dry-contacted eyes open to check my phone for real.

Long story short: Mom & Co. didn’t show up until 3:30 P.M.

So much for “Oh, NO NO NO NO NO, 7:30 is WAAAAY TOO LATE! I REFUSE!”

3. Thirty. Pee. Freakin.’ M.

And to top it off, they pulled in front of my house while I was on a phone call with my incarcerated father with whom I’ve not spoken to in about a year because I never answer the phone when the “Private Number” shows up. But this time I did, and I was having a great catch-up conversation with him. And then my sister starts calling incessantly on the other line and my mother continues to lean on the horn of the Toyota RAV-4 we rented for 30-seconds straight.

SHE was being impatient with ME? And it’s 3:30 P.M.? Amazing.

*****

The Drive

And we departed. Nothing is overly notable about the drive down other than the fact that my family is really good at attacking one another and then kind of immediately brushing it off. The results of this type of behavior is inevitably the harboring of resentment which grows over time and then fucks kids up when they become adults. Arguments erupted at the frequency of approximately every half hour, sometimes sooner. I wanted to play my music and my mother wanted to play country music and/or Christian, which makes me want to puke, to which she’d respond: “Oh, things of God bother you? That’s a sign of being lost, being bothered by praise music.” Well, call me lost then, if that’s how you see it. I still prefer my Lady Gaga and her Illuminatified Beautiful Dirty Rich jams.

Then there were the nice moments. Chloe and my mom put in the Taylor Swift CD and I actually liked it (despite the fact that all her songs sound the same but they’re still pretty good)! I think we listened to the album version of “You Belong with Me” about four times.

Props, Tay, for being fab, but Kanye PUT YOU ON THE MAP and made you relevant.

My mother could drive for about two hours at a time before I had to take over. I drove the night shift from about midnight til 6 a.m., and wonderfully, everyone was unconscious or drifting, so I could play what I wanted.

For some reason, the tracklisting of the CDs my love Sean burned for me were out of order, and the records played randomly. And I liked it.

Dear GOD I LOVE INCUBUS. Make Yourself and Morning View are two amazing records that are SO nice for long drives (Not disregarding S.C.I.E.N.C.E. or Fungus, but they’re not the most calm albums). Morning View, especially, is so soothing when driving in the wee hours of the night.I understand and appreciate the importance of the order of tracks, as they show the album’s progression and denouement. Still, listening to the songs out of order gave me a bit of a different perspective; I couldn’t anticipate which song would come next and I was really listening to the lyrics and truly relating to the messages and musical talent.

Those two records take me back to a very volatile, special and interesting period of my life. I was overcome with memories: following the band on tour, late night Scrabble games with Angelique, waiting three days to illegally download portions of their Cribs episode on 64K dial-up connections.

“I Miss You” encapsulated how I felt about Sean, whom I’d only been away from for mere hours. ”Drive” embodied the feelings of uncertainty and fear and control in regard to life, a place that in which I know so many people in their 20s have a tendency to be. So does “When It Comes” and “Consequence.” Then we have “Make Yourself” and “Pardon Me” and the “Out From Under” (Resist! Unlearn! Defy!) anthems that give one the sense of empowerment and individuality, especially when faced with a fundamentalist Christian family member who is unable to have rational discussions. Ahem.

Fiona Apple’s records Tidal and When the Pawn are also beautiful, piano-driven, good albums for driving which are soothing and wash over you like a wave of classy art amazingballness.

*****

We arrived here to our Ramada Hotel on US-191 (about a mile from the Disney resort) around 11 a.m. Monday, but couldn’t check in until 3 p.m. (bullshit with which I take much umbrage). Could you imagine if we had actually left at 7 a.m. Sunday? A simple math check would show how ridiculous that would have been, and the four-hour wait we endured yesterday was rough enough. But we killed time, got some foods, checked out the dumb tourist shops on this strip, and eventually check-in time came.

People were asking me how things were going and how I was handling my mother’s narcissistic personality, and I told them, “It was nothing too bad; nothing out of the ordinary that I can’t handle. Other than the fact that she talks NON-STOP, the drive down was tolerable for the most part!”

All that was soon to change as Monday progressed.

Stay tuned for part II.