Once Upon A Family... Part 3

(Once Upon A Family... Part 1 if you want to start at the beginning.)

When I was about 11 my mom got sick. It was cancer. The beginning of an 8 year battle that she was destined to lose. Kit was 8, and Mei was about 6. When I think about it, that was the last time they had a somewhat normal life. It really wasn't fair, but then neither is life.

My dad ruled our lives with fear... don't work, you'll end up working for someone else until you die... don't go to school, you'll just end up part of a flawed system... I'll make us rich, and you won't have to do anything you don't want to. It was all a lie though. He failed and if he had a dollar for every empty promise he made he might have ended up the millionaire he said he'd be. Instead he lost money for everyone. Lost our extended families savings. Lost our friends money. Used up and wasted money of nearly everyone we knew to the degree that we wondered if he was just a rotten con man and did it all on purpose. The jury is still out on that one.

My mom's cancer came back with a vengeance when I was about 16. Kit was 13, and Mei was 12ish.

Kit went into denial. She was the fragile artist in our family and no one ever bothered to help her be stronger. Instead they sheltered her weaknesses. And that's what grew. The fragilities became strong while her natural strengths were neglected.

Mei was born mature, ageless, and wise. 13 going on 53, she was a sharp-tongued matriarch in the body of a slim-waisted little firecracker. Fearless and strong, she seemed on a mission to conquer the world from birth one mountain at a time. I think it's still within her, but... have you ever been punched in the gut? I mean hard. Or fallen flat on your back and had all the wind knocked out of you? That's kind of what happened to her. To this day she's still reeling a bit from "what happened to her" that she is slow to come out of it and remember that she's here to "happen" herself. But for all her inborn strength, she was also crippled by my dad's distorted world view and borderline cultish brainwashing. She knows it, thank god. Doing for herself can be an uphill battle sometimes and in hobbit-like fashion, rather than face the confusion and chaos that lies inside her or outside the front door, she'd often rather stay in... observing a rainy day on even the sunniest.