Care Bear

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Care_Bears

My Irish twin married his high school sweetheart, years after they met working at DiNoto's deli in New City, down the big hill from our home off Germonds Road, and across the street from her private Catholic school "Albertus Magnus", also in New City. She worked as a pretty counter-girl selling cookies and pastries up front, while my brother and his friend Mike Ryan washed bakery trays in the back. Unfortunately for my shy brother, his friend said he liked her first, which I suspect was a secret way of motivating him into finally asking her out, and it worked. My brother told everyone that as soon as he met her he knew she was "the one" for him, even after college and his jobs in the city.

They were the first couple in my family of siblings to marry and have children, squeezed as they were into a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side that I only visited a couple of times (once for the birth of my first nephew), because Dave and I lived in Colorado. They soon moved to Hoboken after my second nephew was born, and that's where Annie lived when the Towers fell, because I finally got through to her from my office phone at The Denver Post, as she described to me (as best as she could) a scene from a horrific, real-life nightmare that unfolded right outside of her living room window with my baby nephew crying in her arms, cut off from my brother in the city, who once worked for an Internet start-up in one of the towers.

She has never been verbal or communicative (just like my brother), so I didn't expect to have a relationship with her, as the quintessentially shy and aloof Irish-Catholic girl. She could be chilly, distant, and arrogant, like the most difficultly clannish Irish can be, and those were the traits I distanced myself from the most, because that's the intended effect: keep away! And so, as I write to you today, she has never once called me on the telephone, nor written me a letter, or sent me a card, nor has she ever answered any of my correspondence through email, laughingly telling my brother once as I visited their home that he was "horrible" to me for not staying in touch, which is about as far from family as you can get. What's the point of marrying? To become more isolated and alone?

It didn't make any sense to me, and it still doesn't, but like I wrote, I didn't really have any high expectations for her, given my brother's ongoing difficulties, and her own family. Her mother chain-smoked into a thin reedy shape (like a twitchy, over-caffeinated, tea-drinking Mick, you know the type), while her father always hung back behind his strong silent cop facade. When I asked her parents what they planned to do now that they were retired, they gave me a long blank stare, broken finally by his wife "....nothing....", followed by a nervous quick shrug. Okay....so....no traveling? "No. We're just gonna stay home." Huh. Nice talking to you, I guess. Of course, it wasn't.

Her older sister and brother-in-law provided even less conversation, drinking beers morosely at my brother's family holidays, supplying very little effort. Her sister was a bit "butch", but that could be a persona crafted from years of elbowing her way through ER's as a nurse. Her husband seemed to have a slight lisp, deferring to her like she was the boss who ran the show, and their one kid said absolutely nothing the entire time they were at my brother's house in New Jersey. There wasn't much to do in their quiet suburban neighborhood but sit in their kitchen eating and drinking, which I grew up doing. It was intolerable.

My brother likes nature, hiking, sports, music, food, concerts, museums, and photography, but Annie often seemed like she was just there for the ride as his addition, and nothing more. I often thought that, excellent student though she purported herself to be, she went into Occupational Therapy because it seemed like a steady job to have, like her sister's nursing career, because I have honestly never received any sort of care or healing vibe from her. Ever. Not once. Not once has she helped with my mother's extensive therapies that she needs for her M.S., nor has she ever helped my brother with his sports injuries related to his martial arts training, and that's her own immediate family! She does absolutely nothing for anyone else, except perhaps herself and hopefully my nephews, some of the time.

It's a surprisingly selfish way to be, for someone who spent all that time and money (and her parents) to become a part-time housewife realtor (and she did the one task I gave her related to that poorly last year), and an occasional therapist. What the...? Why do all that work to stay at home? I didn't get it, except perhaps she's embarrassed to tell us that she feels the most fulfilled as a wife and mother, which is fine by me, but why not just say that? What's with all the creepy silence?! It's frighteningly dysfunctional, which makes me glad that she didn't take to the O.T. life after my nephews were in high school, and she became certified to practice it in New Jersey. I wouldn't hire her!

She didn't speak up when my grandmother needed transferring to a hospital for an infection from the rehab facility she was in for the elderly, preferring instead to ignore the old women in wheelchairs turned to facing the wall by some minimum wage orderly who took their sweet time changing the sheets in their expensive rooms. It was one of the most shockingly abusive things I have ever seen in the healthcare industry. I was the one who went up to the desk (after visiting with my grandmother), to inquire about my grandmother's transfer status to Nyack Hospital, to be told by the office staff that they had called the ambulance service for her transfer, and we were all waiting on that. Huh...I turned around for support to see my brother, his wife, and their two sons standing mutely behind me, powerless and motionless, like they were avoiding capture and eye contact upon penalty of death.

The last time she seemed to have any impact upon healthcare was her first job after graduation from the pricey Boston school her working class parents paid for, after she bragged to us about having a total academic scholarship, when we were all broke and in college, which turned off us S.U.N.Y. kids about as much as possible, even when she told it to us over a few beers as part of her point of continued disdain towards us. She worked in Westchester for a depressing hospice run for children with terminal cancer, living for free on their campus in a small apartment that my brother stayed in, under the false pretext of living with my mom during their engagement period, like the rigidly Catholic stance her family portrays to outsiders.

I visited them there, to gently inquire why children would need occupational therapy. What did she do, exactly? Again, even over several bottles of beer, it was excruciating to get any information or the barest of answers out of her. She hemmed and hewed, finally saying that she rotated their limbs to prevent them from getting bed sores. Oh....that must be hard for you, since none of your patients ever recover. Yeah, with a shrug and a downward look. We were there for a graduation party to start that she was giving for one of her fellow classmates, which included a girl from my school (hi, Shiela!) who has since helped my mom with PT, when she did that type of work.

They even had a theme for the party, giving each other cutesy cards and little stuffed animals that they giggled over like schoolgirls, because they had dubbed themselves "Care Bears" while in school together, after a dopey cartoon made for kids and the greeting card industry. I was surprised my brother didn't say anything, because we typically outed obviously gay stuff in cartoons, like the infamously purple-triangle "Tinky Winky" from the twee children's show "Teletubbies"*. My classmate Sheila was a total hippie burn-out in high school, smoking cigarettes and pot at "The Wall" with the other low-class metal-head kids, even dropping out of Honors English class (which I stayed in), as well as Honors French. I talked to her about dropping after the few first classes, because I was scared as the youngest kid in every single class I attended at school, and she said the same thing back to me, then actually did it.

I was shocked to find out that she earned an O.T. degree for something as "square" as being a healthcare aide, because she had never once mentioned having an interest in science, let alone attending advanced science classes in high school, in any of the sciences! Her friends in high school attended B.O.C.E.S. in the afternoon for grease monkeys who wouldn't attend college (in lieu of matriculated classes at Clarkstown South), and carried cosmetician cases with their dummies to experiment hair dyeing on. I actually thought she dropped out of school senior year, because she was really into doing LSD, like the harder core Rockland rednecks who came from seriously addicted farm families. "Why excel?", they said in response to us. They were going to die anyway! That was her crowd, back in the day. So, it was a bit of a shock to see her there at my future sister-in-laws party, especially since I now worked in publishing, just like my advanced English Literature skills in school directed me to.

Sheila avoided talking to me at all, or making eye contact, or making the obligatory awkward small talk, preferring instead to adopt the gay "Care Bear" identity that this strange group of girls had. I suppose it was in deference to their training, like brothers-in-arms have after serving in wartime together, but as I watched them pass these little kid items between one another, I thought it was one of the gayest things I'd ever seen in my life, and I suspect that my brother's wife knows the powers of observation I have by now. Perhaps that's the real reason behind all this "radio silence" her and my brother use as a weapon against anyone and everyone. I called out my parents recently for his latest communication blackout, which was met with the same patterned resistance that reeks of enabling, but that ends today, my dear readers, because now you know that I know. I know.

Murphy's Law – Care Bear Lyrics

I just broke a bottle
I just broke some glass
I don't know much more to
And I'm kicking your ass

So what if I broke a bottle
So what if I kicked his ass
Quit counting on me
You're a pain in my ass

I don't need no doctor I can't pay the fee
Don't need no social workers counting on me
I'm not sick there's nothing wrong with my head
Better leave me alone you're gonna end up dead

Care bear
Caring on me

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletubbies