With my current unemployment and things getting tight, I've hesitantly had to ask my older brothers for help with making the mortgage and paying bills. I've heard too that I've become the topic of some conversation in the family and realized that OMG I've become the very stereotype of the troubled bohemian younger brother that's the fodder of so many family dramedies.
(above) A publicity still from the dramedy "Home for the Holidays", where I'm played by both Holly Hunter (unemployed with problems of her own) and Robert Downey Jr. (free-spirited gay brother foil to conservative older silbling.)
You know probably exactly the holiday movies I'm talking about. They're usually set around big event like Thanksgiving or Christmas. There's always unresolved issues and tension. The younger brother usually just shows up unannounced out-of-the-blue. The younger brother that's always been a dreamer/writer/actor/artist. The one that has the history of bad decisions maybe drug use, maybe is gay and/or brings an interracial date. He's the one that makes all his older brothers look like uptight aholes, while the nieces and nephews all think he's cool.
Now I'm amazed just how quickly this happened. For if anything because of our family's rather storied history and past, I've been if anything, fiercely independent. If anything I've been the one that always tried to make an effort for family events, get togethers, and generally found my efforts for naught. It would get back to me years later through other relatives that I was actively omitted from family holidays, with invitations that somehow forgot to be mailed or my brothers conveniently forgetting just who's job it was to invite me and give me the who/what/when details. I even made a concerted effort to make all the family events for ten years straight despite these obstacles, then finally just gave up.
But recently some other things have changed. Both of my older brothers have now retired and it seems that this has mellowed them out greatly. They're no longer these stereotypical type A corporate VPs that are all about the big houses and that latest promotion. I think that finally too there is the acknowledgement that we grew up in two very different households. My older brothers grew up very much in a Leave it to Beaver family with a successful businessman/farmer dad, bright pretty mom. Where when I came along almost some 20 years later than my older brother, I got to experience our 70s family, the one where my father had passed away, my mother went through harrowing bouts of cancer, and remarried, giving us an abusive, alcoholic and mentally unstable stepfather. Where my older brothers grew up with Father Knows Best, my family resembled something much more from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
The family drama was such too, that whenever we did meet for the occasional wedding or funeral. We always had the exact same conversation rehashing all the indignities and dramas of those tumultuous years. It was always sort of a bonding experience, but I would realize at some point though, that I've never actually had a serious real substantive conversation with any of my older brothers. We really don't even know each other.
So there's one of two ways these family dramedies always end. (A) The baby brother decides to accept help getting his life together, settling down, maybe going into the family business. He's usually given a check to pay off some debt from some wildly risky business deal, or to take care of bookies or drug dealers. Then the next morning when everyone gets up to open Christmas presents, he's sneaked away in the middle of the night. The family is crushed, knowing he's gone right back to his old ways, but comforted somewhat by the realization they did what they could. Or... (B) the family does a big reconciliation, there's heartwarming scenes of forgiveness and acceptance, and a renewed promise to be a "real" family.
I'm not sure at this point where this is all headed. I'm hoping for (B) but realize it's probably going to be something in between, hopefully as close to (B) as possible. There genuinely is a part of me that would like to think if I'm on the verge of being homeless my family would step in - I'm really not sure that that would really happen, it's not a premise I'd want to test. I think we all would like to think that if we fail in life from time to time our family is there - mine doesn't have much history with that. I do know that I have probably talked to my older brothers heard from them more in the past couple of months, than I have for years - I'm hopeful. There's the talk of a family reunion, but that's been floating around for years.
So I'm still waiting to see how this movie that is my life right now pans out. Just what sort of ending this chapter will have - Hollywood Happy Ending or Gritty French Realism?
