Team Building, Family Edition

The air was hot and humid as if god thought Southeastern Louisiana was a good place for a sauna. Even taking a simple breath was hard in this climate, like trying to breathe through a daiquiri filled straw. I looked down at my ten-year-old hands, blistered from handling the heavy shovel. The sweaty shirt I was wearing clung to my thin frame, and specks of dirt blended in with the many freckles on my skin. As my new family continued shoveling dirt under our sinking house, I silently asked myself what I had gotten into. Was this worth leaving home and my old life for?

“C’mon girl, we’re paying you to work,” my stepmom said with a knock-off Marlboro Light hanging from her mouth.

I awkwardly lifted the shovel once more and dug into the heap of dirt on the sidewalk. This was our first team-building exercise as a new family, and I was not impressed. I thought back to the moment my life changed forever. It had been the previous year, and I hadn’t yet been sentenced to hard labor. The moment came not with the word of my father getting remarried, but instead from a simple photograph. An image that left me feeling like I’d stepped in dog poop while running through the sprinklers barefoot. My soon-to-be siblings sat smiling at the camera. They were sitting outside with crossed legs, and Walt Disney World was in the background. Their bright smiles looked forced, which annoyed me because I couldn’t imagine having to work for a smile at Disney. I’d never been out of Texas or Louisiana at that point in my life and envied their tan skin and normalness. They seemed shiny to me. The kind of life I always wanted, but would never have. I felt like Pigpen and assumed they were the Charlie Brown and Lucy of their school.

After the photo came the choice, the decision I had to make. Would I stay in Texas, living with the grandparents who’d raised me since I was two? Would I continue to run overpriced lemonade stands with my best friend Sara in the summertime? Would I start the neighborhood newspaper, publishing the pushy interview I got from frazzled new parents whose baby cried in the background? Would I hold onto my Texas twang, love for Frito Pie and Waylon Jennings? Could I trade armadillos for alligators? Scorpions for flying roaches? The dust for the swamp? One family for another?

Making the decision to start a new life would be difficult for anyone, but for a ten-year-old, it seemed monumental. So, I did what any younger sibling would do and looked up to my older brother. The decision to leave Texas that summer and move to Louisiana was ultimately fated by Clint, although I don’t know if he knows it. He was the one constant I’d ever had, and the idea of being an only child excited me from a greedy perspective but left me feeling lonely. Moving to Louisiana was one of the hardest decisions of my life. My dad was somewhat of a stranger to me at this point. We visited with him a couple of times a year, whether it was him driving to see us for a long weekend or me and Clint flying into New Orleans. We were the only kids I saw traveling alone at that point, which was during the ‘80s.

I remember studying that photograph for months before the time finally came to meet our new family. The wedding came next, followed by the move. My brother, Clint, and I left the safety of our small world in Texas, under the long time care of our grandparents, and moved across state lines and in with our new family. At this point, my mom had yet to leave Florida, her abusive husband, and drug-fueled lifestyle. My grandparents finally became just my grandparents again. The teachers at school thought my stepmom was blood-related, often noting our resemblance. Family trips consisted of a three-hour drive to the Florida panhandle to visit my new grandparents and aunt. During these trips, I often felt like an intruder on someone else’s vacation. This was long before I realized that the discomfort I felt came from inside me, rather than a projection from someone else.

I finally had the normal family I wanted, but we were far from average. My dad had to navigate living with other people again after having been a bachelor for almost a decade. There were no more Parents Without Partners toga parties. We followed a chore chart and made the equivalent to twenty-five cents per hour. I had to share a room with my new sister, who was four years younger than me, and had no understanding of the word “space.” There were new schools for the four of us kids. New friends. New lives.

I missed home and wrote letters incessantly to those I knew in Texas, including my best-friend, great-grandmother, and great-great-aunt. We called long distance once a week to check in with my grandparents and catch up on the neighborhood back home. There came a point, after my mom sobered up, left Florida, and moved back in with my grandparents when I decided I didn’t want to live in Louisiana anymore. Looking back, even as a kid, the pain my grandparents were going through was obvious. They were in their fifties and lost their purpose in life. I was desperate to get to know my mother, as growing up, we saw her far less than we did my dad. I missed the normalcy I knew. The friends I had, my familiar school, the neighborhood pool.

After several therapy sessions and fights between my new and old family, I changed my mind again and decided to stay. I could see the stress it was putting on the growth of the relationships in my new household. The atmosphere had changed from being stuck together, navigating uncharted territory as a new family to springing leaks, leaving gaps in our security. The structure my dad and stepmom had put into place was failing, and it felt like my fault. There’s more to be said about the guilt passed around like a communion platter, along with the persuasion techniques of dirty players, false promises, and empty threats made from both sides.

Ultimately, the easiest thing to do was to retract my desire to leave and hope that everyone forgot about it. Of course, that was like wishing for a white Christmas in Southeastern Louisiana, but it quickly stopped being a topic of discussion. Those first couple of years as a family, I found myself asking the question of if staying was worth it. Had I made a terrible decision by leaving home? Could I let this new notion of family sink in? Could I be comfortable? Did I belong?

As we continued shoveling the massive pile of dirt under the house, I looked around at the dirty faces of my family. We were sweaty, tired, and hungry. As a family of six living on one income, we rarely ate out, but that night we shared delivery pizza. So much had already happened in such little time by this point. Looking back, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be. This assurance would be later confirmed by my father’s sudden death in the next decade, followed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, struggles with addiction, and an eye-opening experience involving a DNA test.

I looked at the dirty face of my stepsister, handing me a cup of syrupy kool-aid. At the same time, my step brother gave me a plate of pepperoni pizza. Clint moved over so I could sit down, and my dad and stepmom sucked on their cigarettes with the kind of satisfaction one can get from physical exhaustion.

I realized that my new family wasn’t shiny, just like my old life wasn’t shiny. Where I came from was different than where I was, but it wasn’t any better or worse. Without realizing it, I’d already had the family I wished for, and this was the silver-lining. I finally figured out that family could be remade again and again.

I would end up remaking my family dozens of times over the years, with each move to a new city and introduction to a person meant to stay in my life forever. Appearances can be deceiving. And family doesn’t have to shine. It’s perfectly fine to sparkle with specks of dirt instead.