DEAR SEAN:
My mom doesn’t want anything to do with me, I haven't seen her in like six years, and she doesn’t even wanna meet her granddaughter, my daughter. I feel so alone and just, like, I don't know. I don’t have any family who cares. Why are families so [bleeped] up?
Sorry I cussed,
FAMILY-LESS-IN-CHICAGO
DEAR FAMILY-LESS:
When I was growing up, there was an embroidered proverb hanging in my aunt’s laundry room. Framed in glass. The text read: “You can’t choose your family.”
I remember this because when I was supposed to be folding clothes I would be looking at it, thinking about what it meant. This is one of the first things I learned how to read, ironically.
I always wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of embroidering such an obvious statement.
I mean, hello? People can’t choose their family? This is no newsflash. So why embroider it? This would be like embroidering: “Yes, you can eat pickles.” Or “Your mother’s brother is also your uncle.”
It’s funny what you think
about when you’re folding towels. And my aunt was big on folding towels. Her towels had to be just so.
In my life I have since learned that every woman has her own way of folding laundry. My mother, for instance, folded clothes one way. My aunt folded things a different way. And when I got married, I was taught that males should not fold anything because we have the domestic intelligence of lukewarm pizza.
Every time I fold a towel in my house, a random woman appears out of the shadows to unfold my towel and refold it the correct way.
This is also true when it comes to loading the dishwasher.
Dishwasher loading is a sacred art only known by the chosen sages who walk among us. Once, at my in-laws’ house, I literally saw the same dishwasher reloaded five or…