My grandmother is known as the family pack rat and in some ways so am I. I have dissected recently the vast differences between us and what makes me a functional collector and her a hoarder.

When I moved in with her she was both upset and surprised that I had many childhood mementos with me. Normal things that carry sentimental value. Things like yearbooks and award ribbons. It both upset and surprised me that she felt that way.

She had been trying to downsize her condo since she moved into it thirty years ago. She keeps everything and refuses to throw it out. She has to give away and sell anything that leaves her place. She recycles ever piece of paper and plastic. Takes frequent trips to the retirement home to drop off old cards (which she claims can be used to make crafts) she drives clear across town to the recycling plant to drop off every piece of plastic we use, she stores things til she finds a purpose for them (things like rusty nails or dollar store bouncy balls.) And though this thinking may just save the planet if a couple hundred million people joined in, it has taken over her life.

When I moved in she gripped about me having too much stuff. I looked around at my two duffel bags and two smallish cardboard boxes that contained my whole life and I thought she was crazy. I remembered back to just a few weeks before when I had given away for free and thrown away everything I own. I had no sense of regret about it either. I missed none of it and while I re organized and with tetris like zen my grandmother's brick-a-brack in my bedroom closet I thought about just throwing it all away and seeing if she would notice. I soon found out she would definitely notice.

It was strange to me the attachment she had to everyday objects. She didn't grow up in the depression she hadn't experienced extreme poverty but still here she was afraid to give up anything and regretful if she did. I heard on a regular basis how she had taken her tuberware to a garage sale and regretted it years and years later because she couldn't bring herself to replace it and she did not want to live without it. I got lecture on throwing away yogurt cups after I had eaten them. To her everything was useful and I was extremely wasteful. Things were valuable to some extent. I found a can of coins from the early 1900's and researched their value they added up to quite a large sum of money but she would not part with them. However, despite the important significance of everything nothing held a place of honor in her home. Her walls were stark white. Pictures of her family sat on tables too cluttered to see any particular one. Mementos from her childhood were stashed away and dusty and discolored.

It was all so backwards. To me it was absurd the amount of effort she took to preserve everything. She wasn't even an earth loving hippie for Christ's sake! She would keep food in the refrigerator way past its expiration date because she thought it could still be eaten. It was all so ludicrous to me. So I decided to set myself to the task of figuring out why she was this way. It was like a puzzle at first a game of logic and reasoning but the answers hit me in the face like a frying pan. They were hard to acknowledge as true but I knew they were.

My grandmother had at some point decided that material possessions could never leave you and never be taken away from you. If you placed your love, devotion and affection into them they would never turn you away or leave you for another woman or leave the house at eighteen and only call every few weeks. They would not disappoint you. They could not harm you. It was basic psychology.

All the things she owned that had memories attached to them were stowed away so she would not have to acknowledge the pain of seeing them. She felt like being wasteful was being ungrateful for the few things she had left. She felt like keeping everything and truly cherishing nothing was the only way to live. It was the only rich way to live. Why buy something better when the old one still works is a good practice of prudish money saving but indulging occasionally is not a sin. To her, though, it was. The few times she had been indulgent in her life, loving my grandfather, having children with him, moving all around the country to follow him, it had all come back to bite her in the ass. It had all hurt her. I am sure somewhere in the back of her mind she had decided to never indulge in anything that could leave her. She never wanted to form attachments to things that could hurt her. So she kept everything and loved no of it. She did it so that she could at least have more of something than anyone else. So she could be rich in some way.

“You lived in Tennessee?” I asked my grandmother.
“Oh yes, we lived in five states all over what good did it do me?” She replied.

This was one of those golden nuggets of history I had been wanting to know. I had moved to Midlothian Illinois just a few weeks prior my decision had hinged on solving the mystery that is my father.

My mother and I have always had an open relationship and though I won't say that I do tell her everything I can tell her anything. She's over protective and affectionate. She's not afraid to tell you like it is and let you know when she is disappointed. She is loving and generous and keeps up on the latest tech trends so that she can keep a tabs on everything.

My father on the other hand is quiet, reserved and stoic. His way of saying I love you is by figuring out the minute facts of your life and letting you know he knows them. Like remembering my favorite color is the particular shade of electric blue or knowing that I am deathly afraid of bees. My father says I love you by redecorating your room a million times or by building you a doll house by hand piece by piece. Despite all of that I didn't really know my father. Why had he become this man so vastly different from my mother? Why did everyone say we were so alike and what was it about us that made us so different at the same time? Where did he grow up what had been his favorite foods and why was he so shy and patient?

I wanted to know all those things. When I was about to graduate from college with my bachelors I decided I had to leave Texas. I had no family there after all and I had a few very close friends but I was poor and struggling to make it in that small town. When it came to choosing where to go well the one question I had to answer was “What do I want out for this part of my life?” I could have gone anywhere to save money and get a fresh start. My aunt in California wanted me to come live with them. My friends in Seattle said their parents would love to have me. My grandfather in Arizona said I could have his house. My parents said that they wouldn't mind having me home. The offer to move to the south side of Chicago rang in my ears when I heard it. My grandmother and I wouldn't be what you call close at that point in time. We rarely talked. I hadn't seen her in three or four years and she was close to eighty. There was something there though, a twinge of hope and promise. Something worth knowing and understanding after all this time. I was named for her after all and everyone said our personalities were very similar and she had a direct line of memory to my father. That made the decision for me.

So it was about a week and a half after I moved in. I was still jobless and it was late. We were sitting at the kitchen table going through old photos in a rubermaid container.

“You know I stood at four weddings in two years?” she said to me.
“Really? Was that before you were married?” I asked.
“Yes actually. Can you believe it? A bridesmaid in four weddings in two years.”
“Grandma how old were you when you married grandpa?” I asked knowing that it was a sore subject.
“Twenty-two.” she replied sourly
“Same age as me.”
“Yep same age as you. I was too young I didn't know any better I should have known better.” She said not looking at me still thumbing through pictures.

My grandmother Marilyn had married my grandpa Frank at twenty-two. She didn't have my uncle and my father Mark until she was in her thirties though. My grandparents divorced when my father was fourteen. I think that was in 1976. My grandfather was an Epicurus soul according to my grandma only she wouldn't have said it so nicely. He was a Lothario, a player or a lover women and booze. As I grew older I had come to see that for myself. I didn't know if she had left him or if he had left her. I guess that was a question I would have to ask a while down the line when she trusted me. My grandmother had trust issues. It is easy to see why. I think for all my grandfathers faults she had loved him and he had humiliated her. She never remarried and dated only later in life but still rarely. It hurt me to look at photos of how beautiful she was and to see her at eighty still looking as if she was in her sixties. It hurt me to think of what he had done to her and how hardhearted it had made her. I have to say though that despite all of that she doted on my uncle Craig and my father. She was jealous of any one that would take them from her and for a long time did not completely adore my mother (who is quite easy to adore) out of shear principle. She has always loved us grand kids in her own way. Afraid to give her heart completely afraid we wouldn't love her back.

The truth is that in my family as much as we respect and forgive our elders there is a certain sense of detachment. We've lived all over the country. My childhood was much like my father's in that respect. My brothers and I dealt with it in different ways but I developed an ability to be unattached, devoid of connection to people and places. All we had that was constant and unending was each other. My extended family was always far away and though we stayed in touch it was with a certain sense of obligation rather than need. Because we all had each other and that was enough for us. So my grandmother wasn't exactly wrong in not trusting us with her love. It was not that we took that love for granted it was more like we could not experience it properly and she did not know how to express it in the right ways.

I remember when I first moved in with her that she always thought it was funny that I would say “I love you Grandma.” before I left the house or went to bed. She found it odd that I wanted hugs. She felt strange that I would worry about her sometimes or that I was scared when she was alone for too long.

When I first moved in I had a horrible job waitressing for this family owned place. The owner was a complete schmuck in all sense of the word. He treated me horribly and I only lasted a few shifts because I would tell him like it was. My grandmother after hearing that I was no longer working there never complained. If she had been unhappy she would have. It was always the opposite with her. When she was proud or pleased with you she never really said anything when she was upset you knew straight away.

It was like that with all the moments of her life. I remember going to a book store with her once. She told me “I should have wrote books look at how much these are selling for!” I replied “Why don't you? You had an interesting life.” All she said was “No one wants to read about all those mistakes and all those horrible things.”

That wasn't the only time that she had mentioned her life was a mistake or that she had made too many mistakes. She always said it without so much of a glance in the other direction. I mentioned to her once that her life “couldn't have been too much of a mistake because she had two great kids and three awesome grand-kids.” She simply replied “What good has it done me I am alone and living in this small condo and have nothing to show for it.”

How could someone think that the living flesh of their flesh was a mistake? I knew and still know that she loves me and my dad. She doted on my father and I could see in the way she talked about his childhood that she was completely in love with him and my uncle. How could someone love so much and still think it was a mistake?

My only theory on this is that my grandfather was part of the equation. My father and uncle, in my opinion, do not really look like my grandfather. To me that have always looked like my grandmother's side of the family. However the genes must have skipped a generation. I have the same steely light blue eyes as my grandfather. I am sure if it were not for those eyes she would not feel the way she does. I see it whenever she stares real intently into them that she sees something familiar and unpleasant. I know this because I see it too every time I look in the mirror.

My uncle has always been in the limelight for his artistic skills. An avid painter and wood worker since high school he is still a starving and drug addicted artist. He is still in debt because of his habits and because he took five years in his late thirties to finally go to college to get his bachelors in the most useless degree ever, art. Since he can't pass a drug test he is unable to do anything useful with his education. My uncle is my father's older brother and as my father calls him “The Favorite.”

My father is a painter and wood worker too. In a much more practical matter. He has spent years making my mother's house beautiful from top to bottom. As many times as we have moved my father has painstakingly spent every minute of free time he had painting huge wall pieces, building ornate cabinetry and installing new flooring. Our homes have always been filled with the beauty that my mother designed and my father built.

I remember when I was young that his clothes always smelt of musk, saw dust and lacquer. When he would go away out to sea I would sneak into his closet and just smell. When I was a teenager I would steal some of his flannel shirts or his sweat pants and wear them. It's no wonder that as I got older I too became an artist in my own way.

My father has huge paintings of Italian scenery lining the walls of my parents home in Missouri. When people marvel at them he always says “Oh I just copied another painting.” and shrinks away from the subject. No matter how many compliments he gets he never takes credit for his paintings.

My grandmother was going through old paintings and art my uncle did and was talking about how talented he is. His paintings are weird and filled with the over compensating and arrogant incomprehension that “true artists” often posses. I mentioned the paintings my father has done to my grandmother as she chattered away and she said “Didn't he copy those from a picture?” And there it was.

The truth is my father used a picture to paint those paintings but he did not copy it. You can tell by the meticulously straight lines, the lack of texture and the blocky ungraded shading that they are truly unique.

He refuses to sign his art so do I. For different reasons I suppose.

I think with my father and his brother it has always been a competition for approval. My father has given our family a great life. We have never been monetarily rich but we have always been wealthy in other ways. And yes my parents are crazy but they are decent and honorable people. Both my parents posses integrity and fierce devotion to their children. My father has always been our defender and watchman. My uncle is strange and reclusive. He has never been married, he has been searching for some elusive fame his whole life and has never found it. Instead of filling his life with goodness and shedding his vices (like my father has) he has built for himself a prison of unhappiness.

It hurt me very deeply when my grandmother said “Didn't he copy it from a picture?” because I knew that of all the things in this world that she should have been proud of was how much better he was than his brother. My father is better at everything. My father has built for himself a better life than could have been expected. He has brought her more joy than my uncle ever could. And yet I could see why my father felt he was second rate. I could see that hint of small but greater than approval my grandmother held for my uncle. And it saddens me because I know that she will always love the people who hurt her more than she loves those that would never ever think to do so.

My grandmother for many years would only refer to my grandfather in the following terms:

Him
Big Shot
Big Spender
Schister
You know who

I found out a few weeks after moving in that he had left her. Apparently he had gotten in touch with a lawyer buddy that my grandmother called “Shitvitski” and decided to get a divorce. I find it strange that he was the one to initiate the separation. After all his cheating, drinking and abuse he was the one that left her. It makes me wonder about what had happened between then that was so hard for him to handle.

I was reading one of the many tabloids my grandmother had laying around the house I think the title was “Cheaters and Beaters” or something salacious like that. She walked in the room and said to me “You know I had a talk with him once about other women. When he was still married not when he was single.” I looked up. Despite the elusive language I knew exactly who she was talking about.

I said “Really?”

“Yes sir. I hate those men but I think the women are just as bad. They think they are so much better than the wife. They like being better than people. That is why women do that you know?”

I eyed her warily. She got in moods sometimes where it was hard to tell what kind of response she wanted and with me it was usually ninety percent sarcastic. She didn't always appreciate or understand that. Especially in conversations like this. So I looked at her intently. Trying to figure out what she wanted me to say. For her my grandfather has always been a sore subject.

Though I had noticed that shortly after I moved in she had started to refer to him by name very frequently. I couldn't help but notice that every once in a while it was even tender. One night I was looking through her jewelry and found a ring with gray pearls in it. I looked at it and asked her “Hey is this one of those Sarah Covington pieces?” She looked at the ring for a second with a mixture of longing and sadness and then took it in her hand.

“No.” was all she said.

“Oh. Well where'd you get it? It's pretty.” I replied.

“Frank gave it to me. It's real you know.” She said handing it back to me so I could put it away. I looked at the ring in my hand. I had never once seen a wedding ring or band mixed in with her jewelry or stowed away in a box somewhere. I had never heard her admit that she had kept any relic of affection from him. Nothing except for that gray pearl ring slipped in amongst costume jewelry. Inconspicuous along side the rest of the fake and gaudy clutter that filled her whole house.

I knew as I returned the ring to its rightful place that she loved him despite everything. I knew it and it cut through me like a hot knife because I also knew how much he had hurt her. How much she resented him for shucking away the life they had. How much she resented him for not giving her a penny in their divorce. For making her raise her two sons on her own even when they were married. For convincing her that he had loved her in return. For never apologizing. For gaining her trust only to throw it in her face. For leaving her when she was no longer as young, gorgeous and vibrant as she had been.

He had hurt her and yet she loved him. She loved him and that is what made her so bitter everyday. That is what made her think her life had been a mistake and that she had made all the wrong choices. She still had the embarrassment of loving him. Despite all the good that ever came out of their union she still had that hurt and shame to bear to the world.

Part of the reason my father and his mother don't have a great relationship is because of that pain. He is half of his father after all. Every word of criticism, every time she refused to say his name was a shot at a piece of the man that she had with him. Even though my father became a million times the man my grandfather ever was.

My father is devoted to my mother and has been for many years. He gave up drinking and refuses to touch addictive substances. He would never leave or abandon his children and has supported all of us past that point of requirement. He has never denied us anything we have asked of him and he could give to us, though he often made us earn it. He has done everything in his power to give us better lives than he ever could have dreamed of having as a child.

Despite all of that I know that my grandmother sees in him his father. She both loves and hates that piece of who he is. I know this because she feels the same way about me and my brothers. I know because what she says about him is so contradictory sometimes that it seems like you are talking to two different people. A person who loathes their mistakes and a person who refuses to love anyone else.

My grandmother has lived most of her life in denial. I am sure that when my grandmother tells me all the things my grandfather did to her that it took a long time for her to accept. For me this has always been an alien concept. In my immediate family we have always been the kind of people to acknowledge and push forward. My mother used to complain when the transition would not come easily she would say “Stop burying your head in the sand.” I was taught that acceptance and strength was the only way to meet any adversity.

My grandmother has never admitted my uncle's drug use or that my father ever had any problems of his own. My father once told me how my grandmother had done laundry and came in with a bag of wet weed and asked my father “Why does Craig have a packet of spinach in his pocket?” You can blame that on ignorance but in a way ignorance is a form of denial.

My father refused to be in denial of anything. He would often study hacking techniques so that he and my mother could sloop through my email and myspace accounts when I was a teenager. He figured out how to set parental blocks on the television. My father (and I blame this partially on the war and partially on his hyper vigilance) would wake up at any little noise in the night making it impossible to sneak out of the house.

I think in some ways this form of protection and acceptance was his way of making amends for the sins of his father and mother. He could not do as they had done. He could not turn a blind eye to the mistakes we made or the accomplishments. But I think my father has always been waiting for the hat to drop or the shit to hit the fan because he knows it will eventually.

This strained our relationship for many years. It took me a long time to figure out that this was one of his ways of saying he cared. When we would screw up he would punish us or tell us we were wrong. Nothing slipped by him or my mother. We never got away with anything. For a while I thought that he didn't love me that he thought, despite all my achievements and attempts to make him be proud, that I was a screw up.

However, years down the line I realized that all he was trying to do was give me the life and parent he had never had. His father cared about no one but himself. My father has labored intensively to sacrifice for us. His mother would deny that her child were anything but perfect. My father realized we were humans that had to live in the world and he prepared us for such.

If I have learned anything it is that the sins of the father shall be overcompensated for on the next generation. I have to give accolades to both my parents though. Despite all the muck and grit and dirt that their parents shoveled in heaps onto their lives they have learned to climb to the top of it all; to level it; to build something new out of it all; and then to give it to use a shiny splendid sculpture of the past.

When I look at my grandmother and see all the pain her denial has brought her. How she has had to live through things again and again and again. Forgetting then healing over then ripping the wounds anew I can see how that pain has been passed down and used to make something better.

I can't blame my grandmother for the way my uncle turned out. After all the choices he has made have been much of his own and a lot of the time no matter how hard you try to make it right some things are just not meant to be.

I know this all too well because my own brother and I are vastly different. Despite how great my parents raised me and Junie (my youngest brother) my brother Bert (the middle child) still managed to turn into an insufferable asshole. My own brother much like my uncle has disowned our whole family. He has turned his back on what is most important in his life. He is selfish and unappealingly arrogant. He has a one track mind which I hope never meets drugs or alcohol. (Then again I am sure I would much rather prefer that my brother was the way he is because of alcohol or drugs. At least then I would know it wasn't him saying all the countless horrible things he has said to all of us.) And worst of all I really think he does not care how much any of it hurts anyone else.

I wonder what it was like for my father to grow up in the self proclaimed “favorite's” shadow. I am the oldest in my family and the only girl. And while I believe my parents love all of us kids equally I have always been the one they placed all their hopes and dreams on. I am sure the same follows for most eldest children. I am sure my grandmother felt the same way about my uncle. And despite all my father's achievements, three kids, a great career, a happy marriage, a stable financial situation, good health and plenty of love brought into the world he still pales in comparison to my uncle who has none of those things.

You can not blame her though. She had told me that it took years to have Craig. She had to go through a painful gauging of the cervix and also other treatments in order to conceive she was already in her thirties by time she had my uncle and then two years later she had my father. Now I am sure that as I said before she loves my father and uncle equally but I think she placed her dreams and hopes on my uncle. Those dreams might not be what everyone expected them to be. I think besides the drug use (which she denies) he has fulfilled them for her.

My grandmother told me how after high school she had wanted to go to modeling school but that it was too expensive so she went straight to work. She hated working and in those days it was difficult to be a young working woman. She has told me that she regrets marrying my grandfather and following him all over the country. She feels like she should have stayed in one place. She wishes that she could have gone to school, waited to have children til she was much older (older than she already was) she wishes she could have lived the life of an unattached actor, model, dancer, artist or singer. She envies her own siblings who all did just that. She wanted the exact opposite of the life she had and she put all those wants, dreams and aspirations on my uncle. He succeeded in living up to them for her.

My father like most younger siblings did the exact opposite of his brother, who he thought was a screw up. He has lived the exact opposite life even though they were raised by the same people. My uncle has lived the life my grandmother has wished she could have. As right or wrong as that is, it is the truth. He only lived up to what she wanted.

Like I said I don't entirely blame her. You can only conceal who you are and what you want for your life for so long before it slowly seeps out around you touching everything. Showing up in peculiar places like how you smile or the way you carry yourself. You can only keep unhappiness a secret for so long before everyone figures it out.

My childhood wasn't horrible but my parents struggled and fought and clung to kick their way out of what they had been given. I saw what not having an education did to people's lives. I saw what having children young did. What military life was like. I saw all the crappy jobs and the crappy housing. I lived through the grit of it with them. Despite the fact that they are debt free and happy now I know it was not always that way. I saw it all and it spurned me on to do all the things in my life that I have done so that I would not repeat their same mistakes. I am sure that my uncle has done the same. I fulfilled my parents dreams and so did he.

So in some ways it is no surprise that things turned out the way they have for my dad and his brother and even from my brother and me. It makes me sad and hurt but also I have realized that sometimes you become exactly what everyone wanted and expected you to be.