My Family is So Weird

I think I have mentioned numerous times that my grandmother, her brother, and sister live together in a two-family haunted house in Mt. Vernon, NY. My brothers have named them "The Gang".

I love them, but they are a difficult bunch to get a long with. They have a set way things should be done (like everyone else), but they feel something is right for you, the ends justify the means. For example, if my grandmother feels you are overweight, it is equally acceptable to start putting you down, telling you are unattractive, and getting family members to start calling you up telling you you need to lose weight then just saying she is concerned for your health and handing you a Weight Watchers pamphlet. This pretty much goes for everything.

Then you add a few other elements, such as the fact that my grandmother is a hypochondriac, you have to take them with small doses.

One of the hardest elements with dealing with my family though is they have the worst communication skills out of everyone I know. Sometimes I think, and please forgive me if this is not very politically correct, that the people in my life who grew up in bilingual households and whose households although bilingual did not put a premium on correct grammar/language/communication skills have something of a difficulty communicating. I see a similar trend with my husband.

For example, The Gang has to put a definite article in front of every noun. The start many stories "did you see what happened to the grandmother? She has to go back to the doctor about the lungs."

Translation: Your grandmother is not feeling well and has to go see a pulmonary specialist. I *think* (but I could be wrong) that this is because in Italian, you do refer to everything as "the" whatever. La Nonna (the grandmother), il polmone (the lung-I hope that is masculine or else I have the wrong definite article).

So my aunt loves to tell stories about the goings-on in the extended family. The Italian population of Mt. Vernon is mostly related to me in some way or another, but I missed out on much history because I didn't grow up there. So it is not uncommon for my aunt to have to explain to me who she is talking about sometimes. This is enough to make you pull your hair out.

Aunt: Oh yes, that happened once up on the farm [in Pittsfield]*. When he was a baby, my cousin's mother's son got struck by lightening!

Did you get that? She meant her cousin. You get that tidbit of information after you ask if your cousin's mother was Aunt Laura. Yes. Then you ask if she had a another child you did not know about through another marriage. No. After 20 questions you don't even care why she just didn't say "my cousin".

Yesterday, my grandmother had an accident. She fell out the window or something. Deo Gratias, she is OK. Before I explain what happened, allow me to give you the story as I heard it:

Aunt: Did you hear what happened to The Grandmother?

Me: Um, no. (Wondering where I would have heard).

Aunt: She had an accident this morning.

Me:Oh no, what happened?

Aunt:She got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. She tried to go the one way and went the other and fell on the glass. Oh, she could have gotten all cut up!

Me: The one way and then the other?

Aunt: Yeah!

Me: She got disoriented? Lost her balance?

Aunt: Yeah, the balance!

Me: On the glass?

Aunt: Yeah, yeah, the glass!

Me: Do you mean the window?

Aunt: Yeah, the window (impatient now). Oh, if they blind wasn't there, she would have gotten all cut up. Oh, God forbid! You know why? When you get up from your sleep, you're supposed to stand there a few minutes before you move.

Me: Oh.

Aunt: And now she keeps trying to ge a glasser to replace the glass and can't get nobody. She just has the screen there and no glass.

By now, although I felt bad for my grandmother, I wanted to get off the phone because trying to make sense of the conversation is making my head hurt and thinking "oh, forgetta-bout it!"

You got what happened? My grandmother got up in the very early morning, lost her bearings, fell on the window shattering it. Thankfully she is not injured badly or cut up. I assume the glass was old and brittle and broke easily as it does with old windows. I think she keeps trying to call someone to replace glass, but I think these days you just have to replace the window.

This is the norm when communicating with my relatives. Conversations with them take a bit longer than most.

*My "Uncle Mooshki" (Mooshki being the Neapolitan pronunciation of "mosca" or fly) was my great-grandmother's first cousin. He married my gg's sister, started a dairy farm in Pittsfield, and had like 20 something kids to tend the farm. She eventually died in child-birth of a "shredded uterus" and her sister married him to help take care of the family. The fun fact is supposedly Uncle Mushki (how do you spell that?) was a good friend of Norman Rockwell, which I don't doubt because if you ever been to Pittsfield, I doubt many other people lived there. Apparently many of the 20 something kids are featured in his paintings.