Papa was a Rollin' (Republican) Stone

This post may be a little old. Super Tuesday WAS nearly a week ago. But anyway, here it is.

I know this won't come as a shock, but my family has been republican for many many years. However, it may surprise you that this is due mostly to my MOTHER'S side of the family. I have no idea what my father's family believes politically. I do know that my father loves Rush and Sean Hannity-Two of the people I most despise in this world. It's not so much WHAT they say that pisses me off, but how they say it with total arrogance. They speak as if they have done all the investigation and have come to the conclusion of what RIGHT is and then they mock and belittle those that don't agree with them. I hate that. I can't listen to them without total rage boiling up in my veins.

But this post is about my mom's family's political feelings. My mom was born and raised in California, a state that many people consider to be STAUNCHLY Democrat. Add to that the fact that she has many hippie siblings who when we get together at our family reunions do nothing but drink coffee, smoke pot and talk about what the word "jihad" really means when those radicals declare it on us.

But it all started with my grandma. She's a R-E-P-U-B-L-I C-A-N till the day she dies. Oh wait, she already died, and on that day, she was holding her little ceramic elephant and talking about President Bush. I kid. She was doing neither. But she was still a devoted Republican and let me tell you why: Her husband ran for U.S. Senate in the state of California as a Republican.

That's right, my grandfather vied for a seat in Congress. He didn't win. If he did, I probably wouldn't be here today. But I need to get a copy of a greeting card the family sent out the year that he was running and scan it into the computer for y'all to see. It has a picture of him and his family sitting around the tree and my mom has to be 8 years old. They are the perfect model of family unity and what everyone should aspire to become. Of course, it was all a lie.

It would only be 7 years later when my grandfather would take my grandmother on a FABULOUS trip to the Virgin Islands and tell her that he no longer wanted to be with her. He would say that he didn't actually want to divorce her, but he did want to move to a million dollar home overlooking the golf course with his secretary/mistress while she stayed in her crappy home down in town. He said that he would be living with and having sex with someone else, but he would still stay married to her on paper. Makes sense right?

As a side note, it was always REALLY awkward when we had to go visit him and his lady. Her name was Lydia, and we called her just that. Not grandma, not grammie, not anything endearing. Just Lydia. It was weird and very confusing for a child of 5 or 6 to comprehend. I like to think that he didn't win because Providence knew 7 years before hand that he would be a bastard towards his family really soon.

Anyway, I think that my mother's older brother and her youngest sister rebelled against their father, the Republican, and hence became the BIGGEST hippies you'll ever see. But that didn't stop my grandma from continuing her strong support of the Republican party. And she would go to all the rallies and donate to the Republican Party. She was WAY in, like the mafia. I'm pretty sure G-ma had the elephant tattooed on her lower back. A conservative tramp stamp, so to speak. I just always thought it was funny that in a very blue state, my grandma is royally screwed by my red grandpa, and yet still defends his political party to the very end.

And truth be told, I just found out that my mother is more like her hippie siblings than she lets on. (Did I mention my mom is in town? She'll be here for 3 weeks. Yikes. A horror story follows at the end of this post) So I'm watching "A Baby Story" on TLC, and we happen to be watching this one episode where a woman decides to go the natural route. All other episodes of A Baby Story, when the women do it naturally, they are all really calm and it looks no different than the other births with an epidural. But this lady was TWEAKING. She was convulsing and moaning and just all together HIGH DRAMA.

I mentioned to my mother that most women weren't like that on this show, and she said, "Did you know I delivered all of you naturally? All except my first" WHAT THE WHHAAAAAT?? I just stared at her open mouthed. I said, "You are such a hippie!!!" She continued. "With my first one, I was knocked out completely. After 36 hours of labor, they had to put me out. That's what converted me. After that I swore to myself that I would never do that again."

You have to remember that my mom delivered her first baby 9 days after her 18th birthday. This was way back in 1968 when they still didn't know what was going on with drugs and better birthing methods. I don't know HOW they knocked her out, but I could see it being ether or some other primitive substance. In later years she would say the same about birth control, always calling it "NASTY birth control". She took it for 5 or 6 years and then couldn't get pregnant. Again, I'm sure that this was due to the fact that back then hormone levels were jacked to the sky.

But back to the point: my mother is a hippie. She used to make fun of my aunt's La Leche League practices (like those of nursing your kid till they are old enough to go to kindergarten) and her crazy hippie practices of not shaving her legs, arms or anything else. But she is one of those herself. I mean, who else besides hippies have 5 kids naturally? Let me tell you that the last baby was born in 1989. I'm sure medicine had improved enough in those years to make it safe for you to get an epidural. But nope, she did that one naturally too.

Here's the craziest one: She held off having my sister Julie for nearly an hour while she waited for my brother Jeff to arrive. He was her birthing coach, and was there for all the classes from the start. They couldn't find Jeff (this is in 1985, before cell phones) and he was missing. And so while they tried to track him down, she stopped pushing and stopped everything. She said that was the worst, but she made it. She also said that was the one birth where they didn't give her an episiotomy. She tore a shape of what she called "Lord Voldemort." I think she meant a zig zag like on Harry's forheard, because that's the line she drew with her finger when she told me. Anyway, it was a bad tear, and she had to go back 2 days later to get re-stitched because she ripped her stitches out. Ripped out. Just say those words a few times. I think that is the most pleasant thought I've heard all day.

Anyway, I still don't know what I'm going to do about my birth. Do I want to do it naturally? Not really. Do i want an epidural? Not really. Isn't there a good medium? I guess my current plan is to see how bad the pain gets and go from there. Maybe that's foolish of me. It probably is. I've never had a baby before.

Here is my post summed up: My mother is a hippie, My grandfather was a cheating bastard, and I don't want to tear like Lord Voldemort.

P.S. Sometimes I feel guilty that I'm not inviting my mom into the delivery room with me. But then she makes a comment and I don't feel so badly about it anymore. Like last night, we were going grocery shopping and I was talking about how I love to use these little 4 inch plates for my breakfast. I usually have 2 eggs on top of 2 pieces of toast. And I put each one on an individual plate and it's fantastic because I don't have to wash a single thing. And as I'm telling her about how the plates aren't big enough for both my pieces of toast, she says, "Well, have you thought about only having 1 egg and 1 piece of toast?"

While I know that I may not look it, please do try to remember that I am 6 months pregnant. And I don't think that 1 egg and 1 piece of toast will hold me over from 7:30 am to 12:30 pm when I can come home and eat again. I started to say this and my mom is like "oh yeah, one egg wouldn't fill you up". Like it's MY fault I can't be satisfied by one egg and 1 toast for 5 hours! And did I detect a hint of the suggestion that I should somehow TRAIN my 6 month pregnant body to be satisfied with that amount of food? It pissed me off, and I'm still pissed about it. I changed the subject because I didn't want to go off on her in the middle of Macey's. Sometimes my mom just doesn't get it.