This family photo was taken on the beach in Mexico during a trip to celebrate my parents fiftieth wedding anniversary. My father wanted to take us on a holiday, a week long trip somewhere sunny. Just the immediate family; myself, my parents, my brother, his two kids, and his girlfriend and her two kids. I was invited to bring a guest but I didn’t because around my family, I fly solo. Avoid the complicated weather patterns.

We spent a week at a luxury resort in Nuevo Vallarta on the Bandaras Bay of Mexico’s Pacific coast. An all you can eat, all you can drink, all you can sit in pretty much one seat, vacation. I was happy to be ‘taken care of’, I was less happy about the ‘all you can drink’. Because I couldn’t and I can’t. I had recently celebrated my one year of sobriety and according to AA, was vulnerable to relapse. I had been working the twelve step program for months and was taught that in the first couple years I was to avoid people places and things that might trigger me. All you can drink is risky business but I had yet to be near the biggest trigger,

my family.

I’ve heard the AA horror stories: The thought crossed her mind, I’ll just have a glass of wine with dinner, one light Cerveza in a foreign land doesn’t count…Six days later she wakes up somewhere strange with no wallet, no shoes, and a beard. I didn’t want that to be me.

The first day, mid morning, I met my parents and brother, poolside. When the waiter came to take my order my father told me to ‘order two at a time, that’s what Kyle is doing’…..’O.K. two cokes please’. It seemed odd to me until I noticed Kyle’s half drunk beer in a plastic glass next to another full beer in a plastic glass. Then it dawned on me. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and it had been a few years, but I remember being that kind of drinker. Two beers out of the gate.

My two cokes arrived. By the time I drank the first one the ice cubes in the second had melted. The watery coke with a sad quarter of a lime seemed unappetizing but I drank it anyways. A swift downing of my first world gluttony guilt. The suggestion to me of a two drink order was dad downing his guilt regarding the problem drinkers in his house. By doing the same as my brother we fit nicely into his denial. An appendage of the Conservative belief system where the most salient behaviour in an ethical society is that everyone acts the same.

Poolside culture felt like a hot pot of pandering, I was spiritually suffocating. Lying around in my bathing suit melting into the chaise lounge, stoic waiters in sweaty tuxedos, bringing drinks in plastic cups. The luxury ceiling of this family resort stretched only so high; tuxedo yes, real drinking glass, no. And the luxury walls of the family resort only stretched so far. In a few days I would leave the pool and the waiters and plastic cokes to be united with my one-bedroom-survival-lifestyle-budget in the Artist End quartier of Montreal.

Which, is totally fine, familiar and real. Holiday borders are brief, a belief I couldn’t afford to suspend. In order to relax, the holiday would have to end.

At the centre of the hotel, in a curated jungle, was a large cage that housed a monkey named Pedro. He would run up to greet me, push his back up to the bars and point to where he wanted a scratch. I had, at the time, long manicured nails and made a really good dig in his simian hair. I felt a special bond with Pedro. Perhaps it was a shared appreciation for being in a beautiful oceanside resort, while not having the freedom to leave.

While my family spent the day by the pool, I literally spent hours scratching that monkey.

On our fifth night in Mexico, my brother and his girlfriend surprised us with a lavish sunset wedding anniversary dinner. Three waiters served us a six course meal. A violinist standing randomly to the side played soft classical hits but I wished they had given him a chair. Then we converged on the beach for a family photoshoot to commemorate the grand occasion.

The hotel supplied us with a photographer who directed us into many different poses; mom and dad with grandkids kissing their cheeks, son and son’s girlfriend with kids and step-kids hugging, all kids in a row jumping up like Gap Kids commercial, brother with sister on piggy back (my brother and I are in our forties). In other words, wildly uncomfortable snapshots of oddly cliched scenarios.

The photos were made into a large hard-cover coffee table book, to forever remember that photoshoot. Every page a different picture of the same people. As if someone had removed all the sample photographs from the picture-frame store and arranged them in a book. The story of a lovely, non threatening white but slightly browned from affluence, family. Happy, healthy, smiling, loving, jumping …..whatever! we were the photograph to beat. The family holding a place in the frame for another family who looked something the same.

We were nearing the end of the week and I was neither happy nor sad to be leaving. It was a fairly lovely trip with only a couple of deeply painful rejections of intimacy. I spent most of my time with Pedro or in my hotel room taking baths in the giant Jacuzzi. But the day before I was to fly home, I was in my hotel room slipping into my running shoes and found deep in the toe of my right shoe, a handful of large nails! picture hanging, wall perforating NAILS.

I pulled them out and looked at them. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7…seven nails. My heart dropped to my stomach and my arms begin to throb. My heart was racing, shifting my thoughts into another gear. Another sphere. I stared at the seven nails. Immediately my mind went to the One American Dollar I left on the pillow for the cleaning lady the day before. It was not enough of a tip for Louise, our friendly little Mexican maid. Especially because I left a tiny period on the fitted sheet which likely meant more work for somebody. I should have left more money. Now she’s getting back at me, by leaving nails in my shoe! I don’t even blame her…but I do feel scared...

I sat frozen on my bed. Too much adrenalin to think straight. Getting up to leave my room was impossible, due to the not being able to move. I needed to call somebody, but who? My mother would think I was high, my dad would pretend not to hear and then invite the maid to play badminton. Maybe my brother can help… He will also think I’m high and playing tricks, but I care less about his opinion. When he and his girlfriend got to my room I explained the situation and told them it was Louise, the sweet maid, who left nails in my shoe.

“I did aerobics in these, two days ago! with no nails! Who else had access to my room? Who else had motive?” I pleaded.

My brother sat beside me on the edge of the bed, staring at his feet. I could tell by his scowl that he was annoyed and was likely just waiting me out. Like If he let me talk enough I wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t said anything and then could leave when I ran out of breath because there was nothing else to say that hadn’t ‘already been said’. It wasn’t a conversation. Just crazy Kara talking in singular versation repeating the same refrain.

For the next minute nobody said a thing. Kyle was still looking at his feet, uncomfortable and ashamed, like a school boy waiting for dismissal from the principal’s office. HE didn’t do it. HE wasn’t there. HE doesn’t think that it happened!

How to handle your crazy sister, chapter one:

I was scared and looking for some guidance as to what to do next. Nails Omen. likely something very bad in Mexico, symbolic of my coffin being shut the fuck down. Tight. I’m deep in the ground. Might as well be dead so I marched all around the hotel. Walked up to the various staff held out my hand looked them square in the eye and asked, “did you leave these in my shoe? “.

“nails?” asked Louise…”you need nails?’….”how many???”.

“I see what’s going on here!” still holding out my hand, “what do you know about these nails?” (I realize now this is abstract phrasing for a non English speaker. Like ‘what does she know about how nails are made?’ or ‘what do you know about how they are used?’….or do I mean ‘do you know anything about these specific nails?’) “YES! I mean THESE SPECIFIC NAILS”.

“ok, you need nails!!, how many??…” Louise brushed past me out the door into to the open air hall. I had followed her cart into a room she was trying to clean and had unwittingly blocked the door.

Does she really not understand what I’m saying? It seems rather convenient she never learned English for times like these. To wiggle out of crimes committed against privileged white ladies who totally deserve to be nailed.

Louise asked the floor manager to give me some nails and I tried to explain to the manager, I didn’t need any and was trying to find the saboteur who left these ones in my shoe. Language still seemed to be the issue. Getting nowhere with the manager, I approached a group of handymen with tool belts and power tools and asked to see their nails. They actually showed me some. Theirs didn’t look at all like mine, another dead end. The only progress I was making in the investigation was that I was making more enemies in the wing of my hotel.

They all know what room I’m in, I’m more than fucked, I’m dead end dead.

With the help of a pill no bigger than a wink, I fell quick asleep. In the morning things looked different. Brain felt at ease. Everyone was smiling and I was smiling back. I was waving good bye and the staff was waving back. I found Louise and gave her a smile. She looked down at her cart and didn’t smile back. Maybe she’s still mad at me because of our fight from yesterday. Well….I’m still not 100% with you either Louise. I still don’t know whom was that omen.

In any case the nails situation seemed less dire to me. Soon I would be flying back to Canada, I was almost home free.

Unpacking from my trip I noticed the nails from my shoe matched the nails found in other parts of my suitcase. Did the maids put nails in my shoe AND in my winter jacket that was on the bottom of my suitcase? …..hmmm, Wasn’t this the same suitcase I used to travel back and forth between my house and Jen’s during that month when all the apartments around me were being renovated? Thats right! I would walk a few blocks to Jen’s to get a good night sleep. I had hung black-out curtains in her room to keep out the sun… The nails looked very familiar…

Right. These are my nails. They belong to me.

Oh my. Big sigh. It’s happened again.

unpack.

The last day spent in Nuevo Vallarta, two storylines funnelled through my brain. One under the direction of a shared common experience, called reality. The other under the influence of some fucked up alter ego with the voice of a schizoid detective. The Great Sleuth piecing together a story to explain a crime that was never committed. To lead me down the path of persecution using a brain map of paranoia.

Para (beside) and noia (mind). I was literally beside my mind, observing the scene, narrating the narrator, auditing both.

This may shed light on a disturbing situation but it doesn’t erase the fact I acted disturbingly. That I possibly embarrassed someone or scared someone. Did I hurt dear Louise? Realizing I have made unfounded accusations, out of identifiably true situations, is horrifying. How could I get so lost? Who noticed? And who noticed but chose not to help? It’s like that un-glorious song, I came in like a wrecking ball. But kept my clothes on. So nobody noticed.

My brother saw it. His reaction was ‘correct’ however unsympathetic.

It doesn’t take forty-six years to realize my FOO are not the people to turn to when someone plants nails in my shoe, I knew that when I was fifteen. This family photograph is but a shiny happy veneer covering all the messy shit that would make people bummed out to hear. Everyone wants a sunny fun holiday, not a six night stay at the garbage dump. We all have refuse too shameful to share for instance, my family dynamic lacks equal rights and the right kind of care.

But I am a member, I am not a fan. This is a family, familia, familiar, a chronic

monochrome

life insurance plan.

Relative words construct irrelevant stories.

The big bang shoots out gets bigger and farther, touches the stars

and burns at the alter.

Tied together tethered to nothing

I keep on busy

scratching the monkey.

Kara can be fou