My Permanent Family by Liv Canova

Whenever I'm stressing about what I'm going to do in the future, my mom always says "nothing is permanent", but what a lie. Everything we do has permanence. It may be as small as choosing coffee over tea, but who knows what could've happened if you were to pick tea instead? Our choices impact everything we do, leaving permanent marks on our entire lives.
My life started out with permanence, with a divorce that happened long before I had any memories.

Then came Ali, she herself wasn't as permanent, but the mark she left on my life is and will be. She gave me a brother, but more on him later. She gave me memories of bedtime stories and fun little vacations, making sure that she would be 'the fun one' and my mom would be the rule maker. Now as I look back, I can see that she wasn't so great, before the divorce and after. And their divorce will be even more permanent to me.  When they told me in the ShopRite parking lot, I remember feeling unfazed until reality hit my 8-year-old mind about an hour later. But yet, I still can't help wondering how different my life might be if she had stayed in it. I might spend more time with my dad, our relationship might not be the broken thing it is now. But who knows.

Around the same time that Ali came, Shawn did too, but he didn't leave as big a mark back then. I remember meeting him and his 2 sons ('stepbrothers' that I will again, talk about later) at some sort of monster truck show, I must have been only 3 or 4. But unlike Ali, he's stayed permanent so far. What has also stayed permanent in my years of knowing him is his temper. Always ready to yell at you for not turning off a light, always ready to explode at the slightest imperfection in his illusion of a perfect life. But I guess I have him to thank for everything that I have now. It was because of him that my mom and I moved to Sparta in the first place, so thanks for that.

My stepbrothers have left permanent feelings and permanent rooms and permanent memories, and yet they could be taken away from me so fast. They were both a lot older than me when we met and as I've grown up in the same house as them, I've felt the divide. It must've been hard for them to grow up with a random little girl in the house when all they wanted to do was play video games and fight each other. But I guess that's what siblings do, although whenever I hear about people's memories with their siblings, I always think about the things that I was never included in, that I was an onlooker on, an outsider in their sibling relationship. Because while they played games and shared secrets and fought, I was always just that random little girl that they wanted nothing to do with.

But I guess I didn't miss out that much on all the fighting because that was the story of my little brother and I. My only (half) blood sibling, the only truly permanent brother I'll ever have. And back when Ali and my dad were still together, we had that kind of sibling relationship that I wanted. Except not that much because he was 2 and I was 7 and the most secret sharing that I could do was tell him where I hid the juice. It went really downhill when Ali and my dad split and we fought so much in those next 3 or 4 years. And it would always be my fault because I was the older one and I should know better, and you know what? I probably should've known better. But sometimes it really sucks to try and act mature. After that, the rift somehow mended itself, but now it was too late. By the time I was in 8th grade we were fine, but now both of us were too busy to spend any time together. He's an incredible wrestler with tournaments to win and new gyms to train at, and I'm a mediocre actress who has to be at every single rehearsal because it's getting too close to the day of the show. And now, trying to remember all the moments I've spent with him, I guess I do have some pretty good bonding memories with my little brother. Mixing up disgustingly amazing concoctions in the kitchen and not cleaning anything up, playing Minecraft on the Xbox on sleepy weekends, making faces that only we know the meanings to whenever our dad brings a new girlfriend to meet us. So I guess I do have those memories that I've complained about not having, I just didn't look hard enough in my brain to find them.

Now here's the doozy ladies and gentlemen, my father. Sometimes I feel like I don't know him, that I haven't known him for a while. When Ali was around, I wouldn't see him on weekdays and on weekends he was only halfway there. Then suddenly when she was gone, it was like boom, he was jolted into raising a daughter and a son that he barely had to think about when she was there. And he did a fine job. I saw him every Tuesday and Thursday and I saw him every other weekend. But that was when my brother and I would always be fighting, so he always had to be yelling at me, so I was always angry at him. And a few months after he and Ali were finished came Genevieve, and she wasn't very important, but she started the long chain of girlfriends that have come and gone since then. And I think that's one of the reasons we've never had that close of a connection. He was searching for love and my brother and I were just afterthoughts that had to be brought along. This year was especially difficult because of his newest girlfriend. Sure she's nice, but at the same time, she isn't. He'll bring her along for any and every moment I try to spend with him so it no longer becomes father-daughter time, it becomes a date that has to be made pg 13 because there's a 16-year-old audience. As I got older, it became my job to get the house ready for when his latest girlfriend came over with her kids and ruined our night. But I got tired of that pretty quickly and by the time this specific girlfriend came around, I was finished with having to welcome these constant random women into my life, and he was tired of me not wanting to spend time with him and his newest companion. The final straw came when he took 'family photos' with her and her kids. Without my brother and I. At that point, I stopped caring at all and thus ended the good relationship we never had. Efforts are made to mend what's broken so badly, but even if it manages to heal over time, the cracks will still be evident, the pain will still be permanent.

a nice thing to read to cool down after an angry paragraph :)

Then there's my mom, the glue to my family and my life. She's the person I spend most of my time with because she has to drive me absolutely everywhere, but I enjoy every second. But our relationship wasn't always that good. During the time that my dad and Ali got divorced, I decided that I hated everyone around me and that included her. So I would scream and cry and say I hated her and I'll never forgive myself for being so mean. But as time has gone by, I realized how crazy important she is to me, how much I look up to her. Somehow she can manage to go to work and deal with weird patients, then pick me up and drive me to whatever lesson or rehearsal I have that day, go home and make dinner and take all the crap that she's given, and wake up and do it all again the next day. Her resilience and patience never fail to surprise me.

Although after reading this kind of long blog post, you may think I don't like my family. And sometimes, I don't. But mostly I do. And whether it be angry, lonely, awkward, or stupid, I will never not be thankful for every permanent moment I've spent with them.

My step-brothers and I in NYC

Mom!

My younger brother (taken inside hunan wok)

Literally the worst picture of me you'll ever see

Small Liv and Ali in Disney World

Also a pretty horrible photo of me