#IMomSoHard Page 3

  My dad sold used cars at Dewey Hensley Motor, and my mom was a revered school teacher. I have a younger brother, Matthew, and a baby sister, Megan. We didn’t go on fancy vacations or have expensive things, but I wanted for nothing.

  We lived “in town” most of my life, but from ages eight to twelve, I lived on our family farm after my grandparents died and left it to us. My dad is a salesman, not a farmer, so when he tried to raise pigs, it was literally a shit show. My mother was forced to move from her beautiful house, which they’d built from the ground up, into a drafty farmhouse full of mice. She might not have chosen farm life, but it was heaven for an imaginative little tomboy of a kid with too much energy. I’d walk to the creek (crick) and fish for catfish, camp out in a barn or the hay loft, and spend endless hours making tree forts. I helped the vet birth pigs, and I even tried to raise a runt myself, but it died when I decided to keep it warm by putting it too close to the Earth Stove and then forgot about it while I was watching ThunderCats. I had a thousand cats, three dogs, six pigs, and one boar named Boris. One time the pigs were mating, and, horrified, I asked my dad, “What are they doing?!” He replied, “They’re makin’ bacon.” Gross.

  I’m part of a good-’n’-horny Catholic family hailing from western Nebraska. I have at least fifty-five first cousins, and it’s anybody’s guess how many second cousins. When my mom’s side of the family has a reunion, they have to take an aerial photo, and they give us different colored T-shirts so you know which branch of the family tree you belong to. That’s what they tell us anyway. I secretly think it’s so no one closer than second cousins make out after a boozy barn dance.

  We’re a loud family. An open family. A call-it-like-you-see-it family. They let me be me, and thank God, because I could be a lot. There was always noise in our house when I was growing up. Good noise, like my friends Brandy and Kevin stopping by to raid the fridge while my mom was yelling up to my dad to put burgers on the grill. My parents insisted we eat meals together and talk to one another. No one had a TV in their room. We razzed each other about hairstyles and obnoxious eating habits. My mom set the tone for our family. She insisted on chaos, and I leaned into that hard. Chaos was all she knew because she is from a huge family. My grandmother Theresa had thirteen kids. She had seven, then none for five years, and then had six more!

  All of them were born smart-asses, but number 13, Susie, was born with Down syndrome. She was a great source of love, laughter, and a sense of lightheartedness. Every family member showered her with love and presents, which included her favorites: gum, ham and cheese sandwiches, and anything with Hulk Hogan printed on the front of it. She loved bright pink tracksuits and animal prints. She was happy to paint her nails, watch Dallas, and giggle with her whole body. She died five years ago, and at her funeral it was standing room only.

  Then there’s my dad’s side of the family. It’s just him and his sister, Lois, who has special needs. She can barely read, and she has a palsy and a speech impediment. And yet, with all of those challenges, Lois has held the same job for over thirty years at a college cafeteria, and she has dated her boyfriend Rick (also challenged) for nearly forty years. She has an active social life, which includes playing basketball and boccie ball in the Special Olympics. She calls me every week and sends me a birthday card with a five-dollar bill inside every year. There is no question that at several times in my life my aunt Lois had a better apartment, love life, and credit score than I ever did. She is a perfect human.

  While my folks came from different family setups, they both had a great sense of humor. My dad taught me the gratification of telling a good joke—or at least telling a joke that gets a big reaction. He is the world’s best storyteller. He’s animated and has impeccable comic timing. There isn’t a dirty joke he doesn’t know. When I was in first grade, I was sent to the principal’s office for repeating a joke I’d overheard my dad telling: “How does a chipmunk scratch his nuts?” Then he’d puff out his cheeks and scratch his face. I had no idea what was so funny, but it made my dad laugh to tears, so I made sure to tell it to my teacher, the teacher’s aide, my bus driver, and the school nurse the next day when I went to school. I was in trouble, but I wasn’t alone. Both my dad and I were grounded for a week. It was a valuable lesson in knowing your audience, for both of us.

  Life wasn’t all roses and sunshine, though.

  I have a very strong memory from first grade. I was sitting with all of my friends at a reading table, and this one kid told me to look under the table, and then he showed me his testicles. Wait, yes, that’s a strong memory, but that’s not the one I wanted to tell you about. Anyway, my friends and I were all sitting at the reading table, and the teacher gave out colored cards to signify which reading group you were going to be in. Most of my friends went to the Orange group, which I quickly figured out was the “best” reading group, and I was put in the Yellow, which was just one notch below. That would define my academic standing for the next three years: just one notch below. I had decent but not great grades, I scored average on tests, and my teachers didn’t complain much. I was doing “just fine.” But “just fine” felt terrible. I wanted to be the best. I was driven, but everything just felt hard. Does everybody have to read the same paragraph thirty times to understand it? What I came to learn was that if I wanted to stand out, I would have to work three times as hard and three times as long.

  I was about nine when I really knew there was something off about the way I learned. I had a strangely exhaustive work ethic, so my mom and dad were proud of me, not for my decent grades, but because they would see me work for hours to get my homework done. No one else seemed concerned, but inside, I knew something wasn’t right. I’d be sitting in class, and all of a sudden I’d “come to” and find that the class was nearly over. Where did I go? What did the teacher say? How do I catch up? Did I just space out? What is space? Are aliens real? I like fishing. Hold on. Anyway, I couldn’t sit still, and if I wasn’t talking in class, I was doodling or thinking about the riveting conclusion to last night’s episode of Murder, She Wrote.

  And then puberty hit, and things got even more difficult. I was in such pain—I just truly hated myself. I am filled with dread at the thought of my children ever feeling for one second the way I felt for about four years.

  My parents were very loving and understanding about how school and puberty were kicking my ass. I was confused by girls. I was confused by boys. I rarely laughed, and the friends who stuck with me—God love them—found me difficult and exhausting. That’s a tough reality. All I wanted was for people to like me. And I just tried too hard to get their approval. I was loud in public and couldn’t keep quiet during assembly. I always needed attention. It was like I was a puppet and someone else had control of the strings. Turns out the puppeteer had ADHD, and I went undiagnosed until the ninth grade. (More on that later.)

  Cue the bullies. Girl bullies are not the same as boy bullies. Girl bullies don’t give you wedgies or push you in the hallway; they play a mental game. They are cunning, cruel, and creative. They mess with your self-esteem and prey on your insecurities. Plus, I was fun to pick on because I was reactionary and impulsive and a super easy target. I had a mullet with a perm, so there was that. My mom and dad both played very important roles in my learning to cope with assholes.

  My mom was a former high school special-ed teacher, and she taught a young gal named Jasmine, who was the youngest of six. Their mother was in prison, so all the kids lived with their dad. There is no reason to mince words here. The whole family was mean and loved to fight. Jasmine was no victim. She was tall, square-shouldered, and walked like a linebacker. Rumor had it that Jasmine was sick and tired of getting kicked around by her dad, so she punched him in the side of the head and blinded him in one eye.

  Jasmine absolutely loved my mother, probably because my mom was sympathetic. She saw what was going on behind people’s behavior. She would tell me, “Not everybody in this world is dealt a fair hand.” And my mom adored J
asmine. Years later, when my mom found out that the bullying toward me was starting to get physical, she talked to Jasmine because it was Jasmine’s crew that was giving me hell. Out of nowhere the bullying stopped. At the time, I thought this was clearly a sign that Jasmine wanted to be my best friend, so when I saw her I chirped, “Hi, Jasmine!” and without hesitation she looked at me and said, “F*ck off.” I smile just thinking about it.

  It was about this time I had a very important conversation with my dad that deserves a spot on the highlight reel of solid midwestern parenting. One afternoon after school, I was outside crying about all the stupid things I had said and done that day. My dad came and sat next to me. I settled down a little because I knew he would say the perfect thing to make me feel better. He led with “Kristin, every dog has their day.” What?! Was he calling me a dog? I sobbed harder. He continued. “Shit. I’m not doing this right. Okay. Deep breath. Kristin,” he said with heavy resolve in his voice, “sometimes you just gotta say f*ck it.” I’d never heard my dad say that word before. It was wonderful.

  He went on to tell me that if those assholes didn’t like me for me, then they could go piss up a rope. It might be lonely at first, but eventually others would figure out that I was worth knowing. He said I was a bright shining light, that I was beautiful, and that my time would come. And I believed him. So, from then on, when I went to school and girls would mess with me, I just said “Ef it.” (Ya know, to avoid the principal’s office.) My new attitude made it possible for me to not take myself so seriously. I started to joke about myself, my appearance, my sweet dance moves. All of a sudden, humor became my weapon of choice. After that, my life and friendships changed, and I laughed all the time, mostly at myself but also out of joy. Laughing is the ultimate “f*ck you.”

  Things got better for me. Much better. In fact, here’s something you don’t hear people say very often: I liked high school. Loved it, actually. It wasn’t perfect, but anything was better than middle school. After a few visits to a doc, I was taking a heavy dose of Ritalin every day. Ritalin wasn’t a cure-all by any means, but it helped me focus and it calmed me socially. It also gave me terrible anxiety and insomnia, because nothing’s free, but it did help me read a book cover to cover for the first time ever, and after busting my ass for years, I finally ended up in the Orange classes. Turns out I was pretty smart after all. Insert a big fat “I told you so” here.

  By the end of high school, I was popular-ish. I was in every club and president of most of them. I loved theater and choir, played a mean clarinet in the band, played volleyball, and was a cheerleader. I loved speech team, the musical, and yes, at one point I was in Clown Troupe. My friend Lynn and I would dress up and drive to the Grand Island Conestoga Mall and just walk around. As clowns. For fun. On a Friday night. Shocker, but I did not have a lot of boyfriends, though I did have some crippling crushes that left their mark. If everything I just wrote doesn’t indicate to you that I was a giant virgin upon graduation, then I am telling you now.

  But I had friends. Real friends. Friends I cherish today, especially my girlfriends. They loved me the way I was, which felt amazing. The lot of us would laugh over the smallest, stupidest things with our heads back and mouths open. We would blast Nirvana or Beastie Boys and go cruising Main Street. If you aren’t familiar with cruising, it’s where you pack a bunch of people into your oversize Buick and drive from Pump & Pantry half a mile down to Gas-N-Shop and then turn around. Basically, it’s a road trip in circles. You will put hundreds of miles on your car without going anywhere.

  After I graduated high school, I went on to the University of Nebraska. My parents followed me—but not intentionally. My dad changed careers, so they moved to Lincoln during my sophomore year. My memories of Central are stored in a time capsule because once my parents moved away, I rarely had the opportunity to go back. I have a deep love for the Midwest and the people there. In some ways it’s because I knew, once I left, I would never live there again—but damn if it’s not always with me.

  JEN

  I don’t think you can really say I’m from the “city”—it just felt that way to Kristin because her town only had those three stoplights. My hometown is Bellevue, which is roughly twenty times the size of where Kristin grew up. But that still isn’t huge. Bellevue was founded in the 1830s, evidently as a fur trading post on the Missouri River. I’ll let you insert your own beaver hunting joke here. The biggest things our town had going for it by the time I arrived were Offutt Air Force Base and a really great hot dog place with Skee-Ball, an arcade, and eventually waterslides. We also had a TG&Y, a mean rec center, and an epic sledding hill until it was leveled to build a Shopko and an Old Country Buffet.

  There was the river on the east side of town, cornfields to the south and west, and the stockyards of South Omaha on the north side. For those of you who didn’t have your senior prom at the stockyard exchange building, that’s where ranchers from all over would go to trade livestock. There is a saying in the Midwest that livestock smells like money. The stockyards aren’t operational anymore—I’m sure it’s all done online—but neither are my olfactory glands since driving anywhere near there meant driving directly into that “money” smell, which explains why my perfume application is consistently at “saloon madam” level.

  Now I have to admit, I wasn’t born in Nebraska, though I do consider it my home. As anyone who is military will explain, you move around a lot. I was born at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in DC, lived in Falls Church, Virginia, and then landed in Nebraska for kindergarten. My brother was born in Japan, and we also lived in Illinois. When you’re military, you either pick where you’re from or just call the place you lived the longest your hometown.

  There were two big reasons to go on base: the bowling alley and the commissary. My dad had the pleasure of taking us to the bowling alley pretty regularly, and my mother had the “pleasure” of taking us to the commissary every payday. The bowling alley was two basements below an airplane hangar and served beer. The commissary on payday was two levels below hell and sold beer. At the bowling alley, I mastered the only sports I am, to this day, any good at: those you can do while drinking. At the commissary, I learned you need to get there early, bring two carts, be prepared to stand in a checkout line that begins at the rear of the building, and of course, keep your hands out of the bags until you get home.

  That said, I was always really proud of my dad, grandfather, and uncles for serving in the military. I loved when they dressed up in their class A’s, and I loved going to base with them. We’d drive past the rows of stately brick homes occupied by the highest-ranking officers, past the missiles, past the landing bombers, past the art shop that my grandpa had helped open, past the temporary housing, and past the officer’s club, knowing it was pretty cool to be a part of an American institution. I’d giggle when my relatives were saluted once we were on the base. They weren’t getting that sort of attention at home, I can promise you.

  My childhood wasn’t all bad and wasn’t all good; hey, neither was I. But I leaned into the fun of things, the laughter, the magic stuff, the mystical stuff, the stuff that could take you away, versus the stuff that kept you submerged in your own and other people’s crap. One of the tough things about growing up near a military base is that your friends move away all the time. But I was lucky to have my family all living relatively close. I always had someone’s house to go to when ours was empty or when people were tired of me. Nowadays, I worry about living so far from biological family. What will my kids do when they need to go to Grandpa’s and build a mini stage to perform Shakespeare or want to pick tomatoes?

  I always had my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and my cousin, and now that I know how terrible it is to raise kids and not have family nearby, I understand how much of a blessing that was. I was also lucky to have my brother.

  My brother is responsible for keeping me alive for much of my life—and also responsible for dressing me in a wizard costume, tying me to a chair, and thr
owing me down the basement steps when I was nine. He’s your typical older brother. Always showing off how great he is and beating me at Monopoly. Not only did he get the genes for good teeth, he’s great at math and English. That’s some bullshit, right? He has a BS in math, an electrical engineering degree, and an MBA, and he’s getting another master’s degree. Greedy. In our twenties, while I was at the bars, he kept himself busy teaching adults math in a GED class—and he’s just generally nice to boot. My poor mom has to act like she loves us equally or I have a total meltdown, but trust me, I know who the favorite is. And I get it. My brother’s a dream.

  Sorry, Kristin, and every other friend I’ve ever had, but my brother has always been my best friend. I feel like we are twins born two years, four months, and sixteen days apart. We have the same ideas about stuff, can predict what the other will say, laugh at the same dark jokes, and have a genuine respect for one another. That’s why, when I used ice and a quilting needle to pierce his ear to go with his sweet 90s mullet, we took equal punishment when my mom went bananas. I didn’t get her anger at the time, but now that I’m a germaphobe and have grown ears in my own womb, I know I would not handle a DIY piercing well either. It’s one step above a prison tattoo.

  While we’re on the subject of unauthorized pierced ears, my grandmother would frequently take me to the Southroads Mall, to Claire’s, and get my ears pierced along with hers. You read that right: frequently. My grandmother Mimi was also like my twin, but born fifty-four years, one month, and three days earlier. She shared my love of jewelry. (I don’t need lots of fancy jewelry; I just need lots of jewelry in general.) We had the same sense of style: I favored grandma style, she preferred teenybopper, and we met in the middle.