Family Matters in a Full House, M.D.
/The title of this essay is made up of three 90’s sitcom titles and does well to inform you what I’ll be writing about: the domestic dynamics of a house filled with immediate family members, one of whom is a surgeon- my older brother; My only brother. All four of us, my parents, brother and I, have only recently begun living in the same house. I have been living with my parents since graduating college in 2012, gone for at most, a month in between. My brother, however, had been living on his own since graduating from high school in 2004. He went onto college in the Midwest, then to medical school in Maryland, and then began his medical residency requiring round-the-clock availability, so he lived in a dormitory a block away from the teaching hospital, affiliated with a medical school.
As of August, he became a full-fledged staff surgeon at a hospital up north, straddling the beginning of New York City’s conception of “upstate,” and a borough. The hospital is not too far away from my parent’s Long Island home and after years of living alone and his busy schedule not permitting an apartment search, he settled in to his forever bedroom here at home. His clothes will be laundered and dinner will be set for him every night, regardless of his arrival. "
It was only a couple of weeks ago that one night he had never returned home. Apparently, the patient influx, severity of cases, and surgeries, had accumulated to such a degree that my brother hobbled up the brick steps over 24-hours later still in his magenta scrubs and a dazed look on his face. He had not slept. Not even two minutes later, his cell rang. Work-life boundaries on full display, I thought, as he neglected to answer it. If there were an emergency, they would call his landline. You read correctly. In addition to the house landline, my brother had installed a separate landline solely for his room-turned-office. As if on-call- pun intended – as soon as his cell stopped ringing, his landline rang.
It seems there is a 90s regression or rather, full circle being made in fashion and beauty – curtain bangs and wide leg pants, for example. There is also a 90s throwback to living together again. Only this time, we’re not in the home where we experienced our formative years and we’re neither children nor adolescents. We’re both in our thirties and living in a large bricked home that is the lovechild of our parents’ hard-earned moving-on-up story.
This time, his sister is actively struggling with an eating disorder.
My brother has become one more person I compare myself with: His movement and meals, his steps and snacks, the hours he sleeps and the help he is not asked for like I am asked - to clean or take inventory in the household- are all comparisons. It’s not too bad; I remind myself that there is not a direct parallel since he is male and I am female, and since he is four years older, born in the 80s.
It is close quarters in here. We’re all operating on our own schedules in tandem with one another’s schedules. I prefer taking a shower in one bathroom, using the toilet in another, brushing my teeth and washing my face in yet another. That is another difference. Growing up, until age 8, we had a single bathroom and then we had two thereafter. Now we have 2 full bathrooms and one half bathroom. Then again, at least a third of the time, in the first place, an apartment owned by former President Trump in Jamaica, Queens, we were in diapers so a single bathroom wasn’t too cumbersome.
The loud arguments and profanity have decreased ever so slightly since my brother’s arrival. He has the power to mudsling with realistic results: threats to leave the house and go to his own place had materialized in the past. There were times when he walked out with suitcase in hand, never to be heard of again until someone decided he was worth calling up. His hectic schedule also makes him prey to our predatory sounds of domestic discord, causing us to bite our tongue in a silence so deafening that my brother is oblivious to.
He runs away from conflict, which makes sense considering he is a surgeon meant to solve problematic discourse. I throw myself into it, however, and some may say that I stir issues out of dormancy. I live in the past and those memories are not simply reveries of a dormant mind. It’s as though I do not want to progress farther into the distance and instead run on a track and field lane, rewinding my memories over and over again. I guess that makes me fashionable and timeless, simultaneously, and this societally accepted concept of style is what keeps me running into the storied past. It is as though my brother runs away from existing conflict on a what-constitutes-a-story parabola. On the same graph, I run back to the beginning, the part of the parabola that is prior to the climax, always making my way to just short of the resolution phase. It’s like I do not want to resolve and like I want to be in perpetual pain. Pain is beauty and beauty is pain, but not necessarily fashion. That’s where I go wrong.
We’re four living in a house and in the rare instances that we find all four of us available and willing to be in each other’s company, usually around the kitchen island, scheming for ways to short-circuit small talk and instead conjure craft projects, we came up with one – celebrating holidays. Much like my brother and I used to hang ornaments on our always real tree, with October first’s arrival tomorrow, the plan is to decorate chocolate cookie Haunted Houses at some point during the month. Attempts to add holiday cheer are conjured with décor. Upon shopping for some, one of the hanging indoor wall signs said something along the lines of, “This way to this Haunted House,” and it read all too familiar because this house, in so many ways, is haunted. Another 90s throwback here is The Addams Family. I feel like Wendy, a grimace pasted onto a face of pale pallor. That’s not to say that things are dismal. After all, that sitcom was a comedy. It is to say that our humor is dark and dry – enter: Seinfeld.
It’s a full house here, where family matters but in the way of tolerance and compromise rather than coexistence. Think: House, M.D., who circumnavigates the issue until the last minute eureka! This is followed by a diagnosis and then treatment; a pattern, that like a period’s cycle, leaves only a short time between weeklong bleeds. We’re bleeding most of the time. We’re four adults with autonomy redefined. The matter is relearning what we know – what we are convinced we know to be true – such as our methods for operating on the day-to-day. We’re a Full House, M.D., Family Matters – we each, individually matter and the full house is the problem to be diagnosed.