Happy Tax Day

Tomorrow is tax day. I sent my cousin Sara a DVD of Milo and Otis.

Sara is a year younger than me. She's apparently having a nervous breakdown. My Aunt Esther, who lives in Seal Beach, in a house on beach tells my dad that this is worse than when she (Esther) had cancer and didn't know whether she would live or die. She says that Sara stands in the middle of the living room and sobs, for hours.

Esther is really an amazing person. After getting kicked out of Stephens College for inappropriate behavior, my nana, never one to admit defeat, pronounced her educated and sent her on a world tour. While circumnavigating, she met Stuart, a marine. They got married. Stuart was really good looking but a complete hick--from the Tennessee backwoods. Grew up without electricity and running water. My family, being the sniping pretentious pretenders they are predictably treated him like crap.

Stuart got even.

The only job he could get was as a gas station attendant. He worked and worked and worked. He bought the gas station. Then he worked and worked and worked. And bought another gas station. And another and another. He became a tycoon. He wore loose net shirts with big gold medallions nestled in his curly black chest hairs. He was a complete embarrassment and he could buy and sell every one of us. He and Esther had a good time, but unfortunately, Stuart was also having a good time at his office at the top of some LA High Rise. He hired pretty girls just to walk around naked and have sex with him--while he was at work! Then he fired his accountant--big mistake, because she drove right over to the house and told Esther all about it. Esther, distraught, took off to Kansas City to stay with me for a few days (I was 21). She took me out on the town--unfortunately, when it came time to pay the tab, we discovered Stuart had canceled all her credit cards and I had to pay our ginormous bill with the traveler's checks my mother had sewn into the waistband of my 501's.

They got divorced. Esther got 14 million dollars, which is ok. She married Ted, a sober decidedly unglamorous mechanical engineer who used to fly missions in Viet Nam. She finished her mental health degree and takes in disadvantaged children to foster. She also ran the guardian ad litem program. She became a mennonite. She is the most tanned, surgically altered, millionaire California girl mennonite ever. But she's so sincere and good.

So Sara. Her daughter. My cousin.

Sara was a physical therapist. She made great money. She was good at it. She has the best sense of humor--sly and dark. When I got divorced, she came down to Florida to keep me company. Worked as a traveler. Went to kickboxing with me when I was in love with my teacher and he'd rejected me and I was too proud to stop going (what an idiot. I should have stopped going. I didn't want him to think I had feelings for him.) Drove all the way from Fort Lauderdale every Saturday afternoon to do this! Then we had a fight over something silly. I can't remember what it was, and we stopped speaking. Xavier. She wasn't very nice to Xavier. Some other stuff,too, I think. I guess if I can't remember, it must not have been that important.

She went back to LA. Had a bad relationship. Quit physical therapy and became a teacher in an inner city junior high. She won best teacher her first year there. She was a great teacher, but she wanted to get married. She joined an online dating service, met a geologist and married and had three kids with him. They live in a house by the redwoods. Except something went wrong, and she packed up and left him and the kids and is now standing in my aunt's living room, sobbing. She says she doesn't know how to be a mother.

When we had our fight, after not speaking for a few months, I sent her a happy tax day card and we started getting along again. So, for the next 10 years or so, instead of a Christmas card, we would send each other Happy Tax Day cards. Then our lives got crazy--well, then she got married. She bought the kids a VHS of Milo and Otis, so, there it was at Gerbes--that's my 1/2 hour.