father's day

father's day

The Godfather Part II was on television yesterday, and I watched the last hour with my dad, which is so odd because an incident occurred on Father's Day that reminded me of the movie. This led to a chain of memories, traversing through last Christmas, our family photograph adventure, my brother, and this picture of my dad and Al Pacino. The connections, both natural and self-created, have occupied my thoughts for the past week. My brothers and I got this poster for my youngest brother for Christmas because he mistakenly believes that Scarface is the best gangster movie (and the second best Pacino movie; he wasn't ashamed to admit that Scent of a Woman was his number one). I like this picture because of the parallel between Tony Montana and my dad. My dad's nothing like him, and our family is not affiliated with the mafia. But it's like playing six degrees of separation with the characters Pacino has played. Tony Montana reminds me of Michael Corleone, which then reminds me of the conversation my family had likening ourselves to the Corleone family. I took this picture during Christmas, which is also when we went to take our first family photograph in which every member was present. It was amidst the attempts to coordinate seven (at least somewhat genuine) smiles that we had this discussion. Obviously, my dad had to be Vito, the original head of the family, my mom was...the mother, and being the only girl I was relegated to the least interesting character of the sister, Connie. No one wanted to be dim-witted (but lovable, I feel) Fredo; everyone wanted to be cool-headed Michael even though I insisted that they were all different versions of hot-tempered Sonny. I love the memory of this argument because it is one of the few we've had in pure jest and fun, and because besides Christmas presents and the Lakers, the Godfather is the only interest my family shares.

But one of the things I love about the films are how honestly and accurately they show that a strong familial structure can actually contribute to barriers between the individuals in the family. When the family as a unit protects itself from everything else, it seems that all that's left to fight is itself. Not that my family is immune to whatever "everything else" may be, but sometimes our dynamic is so reminiscent of the way the movie depicts family--stronger in concept than in practice. As for how this relates to what happened on Father's Day, I was ready to write this after the incident, when I was still angry about it. It is harder, but probably better, to write now because I'm less angry and more hurt. So, my parents, my brother and I drove to San Francisco for dinner. The fight between my brother and me began over air conditioning. As usual, this exploded into larger issues, issues that I've never been naive enough to think were resolved but I did think they were at the very least forgiven. I was sitting in the back seat, he was driving. He was wearing a coat and blasting the air conditioner, so I asked him to turn it down. He told me to put on my jacket. I told him to take off his jacket, which he understandably felt was an unreasonable request since he was driving. But it was just so typical of him to wear a winter coat during a California summer and then to expect me to accommodate his thoughtlessness. Somehow this made him so angry that he turned a fight about air conditioning into a tirade on how I always get what I want (all the while it was still freezing). The least profane but most hurtful thing he called me was a selfish, spoiled brat. I've been called spoiled all my life, mostly as a joke when people discover that I'm the youngest and only girl in a family of five kids and often as a real accusation during arguments like this one. It bothers me because I see two interpretations of the word and most people only see one. There's a difference between being given a lot and expecting to be given a lot without reciprocation, without cause, or without awareness of what's being given. In some ways the former is true about me. The support, friendship and company that my other brothers have given me are not things everyone is lucky enough to have. But I hope that I've grown to deserve all of that and that I provide the same things rather than just blindly accepting them. And to be fair to my family, they have always known the importance of being well-grounded even during the rare opportunities to betray that virtue. So I can honestly say that the double faults involved in being spoiled--the one on the part of the people who perpetuate the act and the other on the part of the person being spoiled--are, for the most part, lacking. Still--deep down, I can understand why he resents that he didn't receive the same, and I can't claim to know exactly how it would feel if I hadn't been raised this way and how I would then act towards a sibling who had been.

As far as hurtful adjectives go, spoiled is only second to selfish. For awhile I was just in shock that he could so easily call me that. Not because I'm selfless; I'm as far from that as anyone. But he's the one who made me so afraid of being a selfish person in the first place. All this time I've been thinking that I was a horrible sister because I couldn't forgive him enough to build a strong relationship with him. But really, he doesn't think he needs my forgiveness or that there's anything to forgive; he thinks it's the other way around, that there's something I should apologize for. Even if he's right to some degree (not about his lack of fault but about the presence of mine), I still feel that so much of his anger is unfairly misplaced upon me. Though, as I'm writing this, I realize--people naturally want to associate emotions with concrete people, incidents or situations, if only to make them a bit easier to understand, a bit easier to cope with, a bit easier to express. I can empathize with that, and this was never intended to be a complaint or an accusation though it might resemble one or the other.

Yesterday I told Audrey I'd gotten into a big fight with my brother; she asked me what it was about. When I replied, "Air conditioning," we both cracked up. Somehow just talking about it in passing put it in better pespective, and I'm past it now. I also think that when arguments arise past resentments will always resurface, and maybe I shouldn't take that as a sign that they still persist. After all, I do feel that we've come to appreciate each other more as siblings; it will just be a long way before we can understand each other as different people.