what we talk about when we talk about family: an introduction

Long before I’d ever heard the phrase “what we talk when about when we talk about,” I was talking about what we talk about when we talk about family. I remember looking around the Thanksgiving table, my grandmother noisily sucking the bone marrow of a turkey leg, my mom silently stewing over some perceived slight, while a cousin made fun of my theatrical aspirations. There’s been a mistake , I said to myself, I can’t possibly be related to these people! Much of my life has been spent in search of a family with whom I share more than a genetic predisposition toward moles and the overshare. This begs the question: Is family our blood relations, our friends, our neighbors, our pets, the people we work with, pray with, and, dare I add, party with?

The desire to join a different family isn’t unique to me. We’re living in a time when your family of origin determines your economic future almost as certainly as it did in medieval times. No wonder so many of us suffer from a moderate to severe case of family envy.

There are folks for whom family evokes the warm embrace of unconditional love—or, at least, that’s what I hear. To me, it’s nothing short of astounding that the phrase “we’ll treat you like family” has positive associations when time spent with family so often feels like a hostage situation.

Of course that’s using the narrowest definition of family, the type that implies blood relation. One of the hallmarks of modern life across the globe is the advent of what sociologists refer to as “supplemental families.” These chosen families are loosely defined as close-knit tribes you spend a fixed part of your life with; whose members develop their own set of customs, hierarchies, and unique family dynamics. Confederacies, sisterhoods, and even cults have not only sustained me in difficult times, they remain an essential part of my life; even though there have been numerous undertakings I would characterize as looking for tribe in all the wrong places. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that no matter how hard you try to escape your crazy family, you just end up in another crazy family.

To explore the importance and insanity of family, it seemed compulsory to include an overview of my family of origin. It felt necessary to write about my parents, and then, it seemed essential to write about their parents, and then it seemed impossible, for context, not to include the circumstances by which we arrived on American shores in hopes of living the American dream. What emerged was a narrative that is not atypical of many second-generation Americans. We are certainly “colorful,” as we say about people of questionable character in the South, but I hope our exploits at the margins of polite society won’t distract from the larger truth, which is that my family is not so different from your family and every other immigrant family.

A funny thing happened after completing the book: both the world and my family underwent major upheavals. Since the book was published, I’ve been stunned to witness, not only in America, but around the world, how the temptation toward tribalism has fueled a rise in anti-Semitism, racism, and other-ization of all kinds. How many outsiders can we absorb into our ranks and still retain our identity? Who is the us and who is the them ? Even the most conventional definition of family is being questioned. Proposed legislation by the Trump administration posits that grandparents, aunts, and uncles are not close enough relations to qualify one for citizenship. Unskilled laborers? Not welcome. Most of my family would have been disqualified on both of these accounts! In reconstructing the making of my American family, I am reminded how fraught each passage, how unfathomable the sacrifices, how insubstantial the differences among all who are displaced. Now, each time I see photographs of migrants crossing the Mediterranean or chancing the desperate trek north from Latin America, I see the faces of my ancestors.

Nor did I anticipate the changes in my immediate family. While writing this book, I was caring for my parents as their health had declined precipitously and their finances were precarious. At that time, I was smack in the middle of what I’ve since learned has been termed the “Daughter Trap.” Two thirds of the approximately forty-three million Americans caring for aging relatives are women. More often than not, in families where there are adult children, it’s the female offspring who are corralled into filling the gap between medical professions and home health workers. Okay, in my case we have no male siblings, but I certainly relate to the trap. Between my mother firing me for showing up at her hospital bed with my shirt untucked, the huge hit on my income, and the debilitating powerlessness I experienced while navigating one health-care quagmire after another, I often felt as though I was sinking in quicksand. At one point, I was so frustrated with my inability to get my mother a desperately needed appointment with a psychologist, I pretended to be a doctor so I could reach her GP on his personal number. Still, I prefer to think of that time as the “Daughter Opportunity.” After a lifetime of rocky relations, I was able to usher my parents out of this world with some modicum of dignity. Most of us are robbed of that chance through the cornucopia of indignities that the random universe provides: car accidents, bathroom mishaps, disease, wars, natural disasters. Careening off the deck of a cruise ship isn’t just a plot point in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections —every year an average of twenty people fall overboard!

I was working on the final pass of edits for this book when my father had a stroke and died a few weeks later. My mother followed him swiftly. The Daughter Opportunity offered me a chance to practice a selflessness I didn’t know I was capable of. During her last days, my mother informed the hospice staff that she was immensely proud of the work I was doing in the community. It was only months later that I realized that during that entire week at her bedside, she’d mistaken me for my philanthropic sister. In what could be seen as an expression of love—although I suspect it was her way of ensuring she wasn’t overshadowed in death as she’d been in life—she made her exit on the morning of my dad’s memorial service. I gave the tribute to the mother who I only came to appreciate in the final chapter of her life.

I’d made a pact with my mom years earlier: I wouldn’t publish stories I suspected would upset her until after she’d passed. She was uncomfortable with me sharing the extent of our financial ups and downs, whereas my father was untroubled by any such concerns. I never had the heart to tell her that the details of the many lawsuits and bankruptcies were easily accessible with a simple Google search. When she was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer in 2011, I began a timeline for writing, but my mother was like the Energizer Bunny: she kept going and going, to the point where we joked that she was determined to outlive me to keep me from revealing family secrets. Ultimately, I didn’t invite either of my parents to read drafts of this manuscript, and it seems strange and impossible that neither lived long enough to see this book in which they play a central role. My beloved uncle Jack (also pictured on the cover of this book), as well as several cousins, passed just prior to the book’s release. My remaining relatives are now anxiously checking moles that have changed shape.

I believe my mother would be heartened to know that I’ve embraced the admonition often repeated by my paternal grandmother Rebecca, to “stay close to your family.” I was able to visit with Jack just prior to his death and heal the longstanding rift between him and my mother.

“Hi, this is your mother, Shirley Gurwitch,” was my mom’s preferred phone greeting, and I think she’d delight in how it drives my son just as crazy as it drove me now that I’ve adopted her salutation.

My dad would have gotten a kick out of hearing that the audience for the book launch in Miami was mainly comprised of attorneys, both those who’d represented him and others who’d sued him. The consensus was that he cut a memorable swath and that “he sure knew how to party.” I also received condolences from my father’s poker buddies at the Gulfstream Park racetrack and casino. That my dad “sure knew how to party” were also among the last words spoken by both my mother and uncle. In this book, you’ll read about many of my dad’s exploits in the swinging seventies, but I’m thankful that there are a myriad of tawdry adventures that I will never know about. Other family members have told me they enjoyed this book, at least those that are still speaking to me.

I returned to Alabama after receiving a generous invitation to present this book in an event cosponsored by the two Jewish congregations in Mobile: Springhill Avenue Temple and Ahavas Chesed Synagogue. I was truly looking forward to this, especially because back in my grandparents’ time and even my parents’ day, despite their isolation deep in the Bible Belt, these two congregations operated entirely independent of each other. As we circled Mobile in a tiny propeller plane, the captain made an announcement: “We don’t have a lot of gas.” We don’t have a lot of gas? “We’re trying to outrun the lightning storm.” What lightning storm? “We might head to Jackson.” Oh, my, god. I’m going to die. You can’t ever go home again. Everybody knows that! Especially Southerners! I’ve tempted fate. Why did I come back to Mobile? I’m being sucked back in by my ancestors who are angry that I left, and I’m going to be buried in the family plot.

We landed safely, but I’d missed the event. I did make it to a reading at Page and Palette—the bookstore on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay—where they made a margarita in my honor, the terribly named but delicious Gurwitcharita. And members of my chosen family in Mobile, a collection of artists, writers, and foodies, treated me to dinner at Sunset Pointe restaurant, where Chef Panini Pete “treats you like family.”

Come to think of it, maybe the time has come to retire that phrase. I propose that should we want to express love, affection, and solidarity with our fellow humans, we say, “we’ll treat you like cherished friends who we rarely get to see.” My fondest wish is that after reading these stories about my family, which you might relate to, you’ll be inspired to expand your notion of cherished friends to include even those you have yet to meet.