When House Crazy Sarah thinks of all the bad choices she has made in her life and all the unfortunate relationships she has laid waste to, she finds some comfort in her family history. You see dear reader, she comes from a long line of dysfunctional men and women.
Poor scrappy bastards who have toiled in obscurity and poverty; alcoholics, histrionics, manic depressives, criminals, eccentrics; and folks with a general disdain for birth control (as evidenced in her mother’s mother who birthed eleven babies, and her father’s mother who birthed thirteen).
That’s what happens when you come from Irish and French Canadian ancestry. They’re crazy and they like to have babies. Many, many, babies.
(Not House Crazy Sarah’s family, but it could be)
Yes, she firmly believes that the glutton-for-punishment characteristic is largely an inherited one. She could write a book about her dysfunctional family (both sides) but then a lot of people wouldn’t talk to her.
House Crazy Sarah’s mother says she shouldn’t blame her genetics for everything that goes wrong her life. Mom says House Crazy Sarah needs to take some personal responsibility for making bad choices and not blame her poor parents for everything.
But House Crazy Sarah doesn’t see it that way at all. When she talks about her big, crazy extended family, it’s meant in tribute, not castigation.
No, she deeply respects her ancestors and their haphazard lives. She finds it comforting to know she is not the first fuck-up to come along. She feels the force of her forebears patting her on the back when she fails, and hears them whispering, “come now, buck it up, we can’t all be rich and winners.”
Empowerment. That’s what it is! Whenever House Crazy Sarah is feeling deflated and dull, all she has to do is think of some poor delinquent in her genealogy who was kicked out of Ireland two hundred years ago for stealing potatoes and she instantly feels better because she knows she’s not alone. The land of outcasts can be a lonely place, but when you summon the ghosts of all who have lived there before you, it’s a big old family reunion.
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