miriam lives in queens. she is probably about 22 years old (all i can remember is that she is older than my brother but younger than me). she has a 4 year old daughter. her younger brother, reda is pursuing a degree in criminal justice.
about 10 years ago, i was on vacation with my dads family. we got the "hotel phone call" at 2am. my mother was in an accident. they told me she was gonna be ok, so i didn't think much of it.
four days later, i got home and saw my mom. she looked like she had been thrown out of the back window of a Ford Bronco at 60 miles per hour and rolled down the highway for fifty or so feet. she looked like that, because that is what happened. what we didn't learn about on the hotel phone call, was that fadila, my mothers best friend of the last couple of years, had a heart attack during the collision. she was dead.
fadila was algerian. she was a little younger than my mom. they met through fadila's husband, a man named rico who was a host at the restaurant where my mom worked. mom and rico kept in touch after he moved back to queens from pennsylvania and at some point, she met fadila and it was love at first sight, only with a platonic friendship instead of a romantic relationship.
they were inseparable for three years or so.
i didn't like this,
at all.
i saw my mom very little at the time, because she worked full-time as a waitress to support my brother and i while she went to school full-time. she's a warm lady, so she was always trying to create this "group family" vibe with their family (fadila & rico and especially their kids, miriam and reda) and ours. i dunno, it just never sat right with me. i guess i'm a bit of a loner, i always have been... i always feel more comfortable by myself.
now, don't get me wrong, fadila was a very warm and sweet woman and i don't know if i have a single bad thing i could say about her (unlike rico, i could probably write an essay on HIM). i just couldn't jive with the family. it felt superflous. so, i dropped off the radar. i didn't see my mom when she was with them, so i spent less time around her and my brother and more time haunting my house by myself. i was about 14 at the time (i had discovered nine inch nails and marilyn manson the year before, so i was REALLY good at sitting alone and stewing in anger).
christmas came and the news was broken that my grandfather would be going in for a "life or death" surgery. the night of the surgery, kyle and i stayed with fadila. that morning, my mom came in and sat us down at the dinner table with fadila and miriam and told us that our grandfather was dead.
i was really hurt that they were there. i know it's maybe selfish to say, but he was MY grandfather, not theirs. it was a moment that should've been shared between myself, my mom and my brother. it just felt like a dishonesty that cheapened the pain. pain is important. you gotta feel pain, that's just how it is, but you can choose to accept the pain and let it develop your character or you can watch as the pain gets warped and twisted by tv emotions from people who didn't earn it.
then the accident happened that following summer. rico turned into a complete lunatic. he hired a "maid/caretaker" from algeria and had her flown to pennsylvania. he mistreated her and did horrible things, of which i know very little. my mom brought her to our house. so now, we have a full-time waitress and a full-time student who is trying to save an algerian journalist (apparently that is what she was in algeria) from a demented widower. with two teenage kids (myself and my brother) stuck in the middle.
that was when my mom had her second nervous breakdown.
y'ever see a person WHO DOES NOT KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE speak only in sign language for a full day?
i watched her through two nervous breakdowns, once when i was 8 and this time when i was 15.
my family (my mom's family) came in and took her to the hospital and sent the algerian lady off to god-knows-where.
that was pretty much the end of it. from what i understand, miriam and reda had a very tough time living with rico. my mom was in no condition to do anything. recovering physical from the accident and mentally from the breakdown AND STILL FUCKING GOING TO SCHOOL AND WORKING FULL TIME!!!
my mom saw herself as some kind of mother figure to the kids, my mom wants to be everybodies mom normally, but i think she felt an obligation to the children of her dead best friend. obviously, at 14 none of this made me feel right. specifically, when my mom took the two of them to a christening or family gathering or something and not my brother and i (i think we opted to spend a weekend with our father or something, beats the shit out of me why it played out like that, but i almost certainly instigated it).
my mom has said that she feels guilty she couldn't raise them after fadila died. i don't know what to say to that. on one hand, i admire the shit out of it, but on the other, i had to remind her that she didn't actually raise me. not that i blame her, the woman is not my hero because she tried to june-cleaver-it-up for me and my brother, she's my hero because she worked a full-time job and was a full-time student for almost six years and now she is a full-time dietitian making awesome money and writing her thesis in pursuit of her masters degree.
i'm not gonna bitch about how "my mom wasn't there for me" all through highschool, because the boy and girl whose mom is dead had a hell of a rougher time than i did.
yeah, my teen years sucked, but you can't ever lose perspective...
in time, rico took miriam and reda back to new york. i know my mom and miriam tried to send letters back and forth for a while, but they drifted apart.
that was probably 8 years ago. maybe more. i don't even think about that period of my life. self-loathing and fear of living are feelings best left in high school, nobody needs to carry around that kind of baggage in the real world. never forget that the past can't hurt you.
my mom called tonight. miriam found her phone number and gave her a call.
she lives in queens, she is 22 years old and has a 4 year old daughter. her family disowned her when she got pregnant (algerian, remember?). rico died a few years ago from colon cancer. reda's uncle (who was driving the car in the accident -- although, i will add, that it was not his fault) is well-off as a businessman and is helping reda pursue a degree in criminal justice, but he will not speak to miriam.
rico left each of his kids 50,000 dollars. miriam bought a car and furniture and put money in the bank to raise her daughter. she speaks with reda every day.
no matter what my mom thinks, they are not my family. but, they are people, they are people who went through a living hell and came out stronger than they were when they went in and i guess, i have such a low opinion of people, that to hear that neither of them is a lush or a drug addict or a deadbeat or on welfare or dead, to know that they survived and came out ok, makes me smile.
this one is for the survivors...
- j.g. 2005
about 10 years ago, i was on vacation with my dads family. we got the "hotel phone call" at 2am. my mother was in an accident. they told me she was gonna be ok, so i didn't think much of it.
four days later, i got home and saw my mom. she looked like she had been thrown out of the back window of a Ford Bronco at 60 miles per hour and rolled down the highway for fifty or so feet. she looked like that, because that is what happened. what we didn't learn about on the hotel phone call, was that fadila, my mothers best friend of the last couple of years, had a heart attack during the collision. she was dead.
fadila was algerian. she was a little younger than my mom. they met through fadila's husband, a man named rico who was a host at the restaurant where my mom worked. mom and rico kept in touch after he moved back to queens from pennsylvania and at some point, she met fadila and it was love at first sight, only with a platonic friendship instead of a romantic relationship.
they were inseparable for three years or so.
i didn't like this,
at all.
i saw my mom very little at the time, because she worked full-time as a waitress to support my brother and i while she went to school full-time. she's a warm lady, so she was always trying to create this "group family" vibe with their family (fadila & rico and especially their kids, miriam and reda) and ours. i dunno, it just never sat right with me. i guess i'm a bit of a loner, i always have been... i always feel more comfortable by myself.
now, don't get me wrong, fadila was a very warm and sweet woman and i don't know if i have a single bad thing i could say about her (unlike rico, i could probably write an essay on HIM). i just couldn't jive with the family. it felt superflous. so, i dropped off the radar. i didn't see my mom when she was with them, so i spent less time around her and my brother and more time haunting my house by myself. i was about 14 at the time (i had discovered nine inch nails and marilyn manson the year before, so i was REALLY good at sitting alone and stewing in anger).
christmas came and the news was broken that my grandfather would be going in for a "life or death" surgery. the night of the surgery, kyle and i stayed with fadila. that morning, my mom came in and sat us down at the dinner table with fadila and miriam and told us that our grandfather was dead.
i was really hurt that they were there. i know it's maybe selfish to say, but he was MY grandfather, not theirs. it was a moment that should've been shared between myself, my mom and my brother. it just felt like a dishonesty that cheapened the pain. pain is important. you gotta feel pain, that's just how it is, but you can choose to accept the pain and let it develop your character or you can watch as the pain gets warped and twisted by tv emotions from people who didn't earn it.
then the accident happened that following summer. rico turned into a complete lunatic. he hired a "maid/caretaker" from algeria and had her flown to pennsylvania. he mistreated her and did horrible things, of which i know very little. my mom brought her to our house. so now, we have a full-time waitress and a full-time student who is trying to save an algerian journalist (apparently that is what she was in algeria) from a demented widower. with two teenage kids (myself and my brother) stuck in the middle.
that was when my mom had her second nervous breakdown.
y'ever see a person WHO DOES NOT KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE speak only in sign language for a full day?
i watched her through two nervous breakdowns, once when i was 8 and this time when i was 15.
my family (my mom's family) came in and took her to the hospital and sent the algerian lady off to god-knows-where.
that was pretty much the end of it. from what i understand, miriam and reda had a very tough time living with rico. my mom was in no condition to do anything. recovering physical from the accident and mentally from the breakdown AND STILL FUCKING GOING TO SCHOOL AND WORKING FULL TIME!!!
my mom saw herself as some kind of mother figure to the kids, my mom wants to be everybodies mom normally, but i think she felt an obligation to the children of her dead best friend. obviously, at 14 none of this made me feel right. specifically, when my mom took the two of them to a christening or family gathering or something and not my brother and i (i think we opted to spend a weekend with our father or something, beats the shit out of me why it played out like that, but i almost certainly instigated it).
my mom has said that she feels guilty she couldn't raise them after fadila died. i don't know what to say to that. on one hand, i admire the shit out of it, but on the other, i had to remind her that she didn't actually raise me. not that i blame her, the woman is not my hero because she tried to june-cleaver-it-up for me and my brother, she's my hero because she worked a full-time job and was a full-time student for almost six years and now she is a full-time dietitian making awesome money and writing her thesis in pursuit of her masters degree.
i'm not gonna bitch about how "my mom wasn't there for me" all through highschool, because the boy and girl whose mom is dead had a hell of a rougher time than i did.
yeah, my teen years sucked, but you can't ever lose perspective...
in time, rico took miriam and reda back to new york. i know my mom and miriam tried to send letters back and forth for a while, but they drifted apart.
that was probably 8 years ago. maybe more. i don't even think about that period of my life. self-loathing and fear of living are feelings best left in high school, nobody needs to carry around that kind of baggage in the real world. never forget that the past can't hurt you.
my mom called tonight. miriam found her phone number and gave her a call.
she lives in queens, she is 22 years old and has a 4 year old daughter. her family disowned her when she got pregnant (algerian, remember?). rico died a few years ago from colon cancer. reda's uncle (who was driving the car in the accident -- although, i will add, that it was not his fault) is well-off as a businessman and is helping reda pursue a degree in criminal justice, but he will not speak to miriam.
rico left each of his kids 50,000 dollars. miriam bought a car and furniture and put money in the bank to raise her daughter. she speaks with reda every day.
no matter what my mom thinks, they are not my family. but, they are people, they are people who went through a living hell and came out stronger than they were when they went in and i guess, i have such a low opinion of people, that to hear that neither of them is a lush or a drug addict or a deadbeat or on welfare or dead, to know that they survived and came out ok, makes me smile.
this one is for the survivors...
- j.g. 2005
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
[Edited on May 05, 2005 11:02PM]
Yes, drawing would be rad! I am definitely still up for that, it just kinda slipped my mind and then the last trip was so insane anyway. I probably won't be back around til the summer, but I'm sure we'll be in touch. After all, you know where to find me a minimum of 1/12 of the day...