Ain't Family Great?

Carol and I went to Gammage last night to see "August - Osage County". Strange title but a fabulous play. It was about a family gathering in August in Osage County Oklahoma because the patriarch, a drunken ex-award winning poet has gone missing. Mom - played to a T by Estelle Parsons - was strung out on prescription drugs and the the three dysfunctional daughters and trailing husbands, fiancees, et al, converge at the moment of crisis. What followed was three hours that went by like fifteen minutes. At moments outrageous and shocking and at the same moment made you laugh so hard the seltzer came out your nose. There were two intermissions and each one shocked me when it occurred, I was so caught up in the play.

I came from a broken home so growing up I had misconceptions that there were really tight loving families out there. Just not mine. Of course, in the reality of several decades I find that there are really great families out there but almost always they are the nuclear. Carol and Amanda -and now Lance- and I have great relationships. Go outside of this and wow! But it's not just me. It's everyone I know. I guess this gives me some kind of relief. I'm at an age where while she was alive it came to me to take care of my mother. Role reversal. Most of my friends are embroiled in the same sad mess. I grew up sharing a bedroom and sometimes a bed with a brother I never see or hear from. I have another brother who is very close to me and my heart but has a wife that is threaten by any relationship he has that she can't control. So I never hear from him and when I contact him he pays dearly.

I guess my point is that family is almost always messy. You can pick your friends, and you can pick parts of your body but you can't pick your family. God did that. It makes me wonder if I'd been bad in a previous life.

Go see August, Osage County. The only difference between the family on stage and your own is that the one on stage makes you laugh.