Oh, the Choices I've Made!

The Family Tree. A.K.A. Don't Cross the Streams

My mother married my father. She was twenty-four and he was forty-five. He had grown children from a previous marriage just a few years younger than my mom. I remember seeing them all together thinking it was strange they all seemed to be the same age, but these adult people were actually my brother and sister. I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 when my brother, Steve, lived with us for a short time, and my aunt Elizabeth, my mother's sister, came to visit. She and my step-brother fell in love, got married, and had two children. This is where the family tree gets a little bit tangled up. My aunt is my sister-in-law, my step-brother my uncle, my cousins were also my neice and nephew. To add to the confusion in my young mind, my oldest sister and my twin aunt and uncle are the same age, because my mother got knocked up at age sixteen and her mother was pregant with the twins at the same time. The three of them are two months apart. That's as far as I got climbing this freaky family tree. The days when I question the reasons I am estranged from my family are the days I take a moment to look back at the crazy and it makes sense.