Love in the Time of Climate Change (25 page)

“Don't exaggerate,” he interrupted.

“A 3- to 10-degree rise in temperature by the end of the century is no exaggeration.”

“I'm not disagreeing with you about the severity of the situation. Show them the science, with facts not slogans, that's all I'm saying.”

“Look, you teach about lungs and the respiratory system, right?”

“Your point?” he asked.

“What's the worst thing you can do to your lungs? Smoke, right?”

“Smoking is correlated with a significantly higher incidence of cancer, yes.”

“Have you seen my shirt with two tyrannosauruses, or is it tyrannosauri, with butts in their mouth? The caption reads, ‘The real reason the dinosaurs became extinct.' Would you wear that to school?”

“No,” Doug said.

“No? Why not?”

“Because it's juvenile, that's why.”

“It's funny as hell!” I said.

“It's unprofessional.”

“Unprofessional? Smoking kills what, 300-plus thousand people a year in this county?”

“Something like that.”

“The number-one cause of preventable death.”

“Where are you going with this, Casey?”

“Where am I going with this? Jesus Christ, Doug, I'll tell you where I'm going! Not very long ago we invaded two countries. Right? We spent over a trillion dollars and we're still spending billions more. We killed God only knows how many people.”

“I've got class in five. Get to the point.”

“Here's the point: why did we go to war? Because of 9/11. How many people died? Nearly 3,000. That's less than four days of smoking deaths. Four days! And you won't wear a goddamn T-shirt shouting that out because it's ‘juvenile'? Unprofessional? Indoctrination?”

“That's not what I said.”

“Then what the fuck did you say?”

I was so mad I could spit. The world was going down in flames and I get slammed for wearing a shirt stating the obvious?

Just then our beautiful botany colleague strolled in to check her mailbox.

“My my,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Better wipe your mouths, children. The testosterone is practically oozing out. Why don't you two head right down to the little boys' room and see whose is bigger.”

“And here's another thing,” Douglas continued, ignoring her. He was as pissed as I was. “I don't like the way you monopolize the copy machine every Tuesday morning when you know I have a 9:30 class. Every Tuesday morning it's the same thing. And frankly, I'm tired of it!”

“Don't change the subject,” I said.

Anyway, I digress. Back to Thanksgiving.

I was off to see my family. Sarah was going to meet Jesse's parents for the first time.

“How do I look?” she had asked, twirling around in an adorable, low-cut, crimson dress.

“Beautiful!” I smiled. “As always. They're going to love you!”

“Jeez!” she scowled. “What's with you two? Are you in cahoots or something? Can't I get a straight answer out of anyone?”

“What are you talking about? What did Jesse say?”

“‘Beautiful. As always.'” She stormed back into the bathroom to redo her hair for the fourteenth time.

Jesse shrugged. “Women,” he said.

“I wouldn't know,” I replied.

Thursday morning, I drove the Pike an hour and a half east to Route 128 and then north to the small town of Hamilton, where my parents lived. It was one of those wealthy North Shore enclaves with more horses than people. Romney lawn signs still littered the landscape,
the poor wealthy white folk still reeling from one of their own getting knocked down in the general election.

I parked the car, steadied my nerves, spent a moment in mindfulness meditation (breathe in the positive, let go the negative) and prepared for the holiday onslaught.

It wasn't that I didn't get along with my family. I did. I loved them all, dearly, and they loved me unconditionally right back.

They were just … so different from me. I had fled the country-club, silver-spooned, upper-crust, snooty scene a decade and a half earlier, and never once looked back. I was proud that I had survived that debutante culture reasonably scar-free and morally intact.

The usual suspects would be there: Nathan, my younger banker brother, flanked by whoever his latest hottie was, most likely fingering her the whole time under the table the way he did the year before, winking at me all the while. My older sister Cheryl, anxious and stressed as always, doing her best to keep her Winnebago-dealing husband Winnie and their four, count 'em, four kids in line.

And, of course, my parents.

My father was an investment consultant for Merrill Lynch. Money said “Jump!” and all his life he had replied, “How high?” Of course, it was his financial astuteness, and generosity to boot, that had allowed me to emerge from college and grad school debt-free. It was hard to trash the hand that fed you.

My mother was a professional volunteer. There wasn't a philanthropic organization within fifteen miles that she didn't have a hand in running. The symphony, the arts council, the museum—those were her forte. All wonderful organizations to work for—safe, elitist, all good work, nothing that rocked the boat, nothing that upset the status quo.

They were terrific people. Terrific, but so wrong in so many ways.

Being home reopened my privileged past and made me anxious and put me on edge.

My cross to bear. The black sheep of the family.

I pulled up their long driveway and had barely stepped out of the car before being blind-sided by my oldest nephew, the nine-year-old hellion they called “The Hammer,” who decked me with his definition of a “playful” punch to the gut and a knee to the groin while his father—Winnie, my brother-in-law—watched in amusement.

“That means he's happy to see you, bro-law,” Winnie said, helping me up.

“Remind me to piss him off so that next time his meet-and-greet isn't quite so painful,” I said, reaching for my testicles and hoping, if they were still there, that they'd eventually descend to their rightful spot.

My brother-in-law laughed. Winnie sold Winnebagos—I kid you not. He had an “I love my Bago from Winnie's” bumper sticker prominently displayed right next to “Impeach Obama.” He was a jumbo of a man with a shocking tangle of unruly red hair and a bristly red beard to boot.

“Dog on a stump, I'm surprised you're here,” he shouted, slapping me on the back. “I would have thought you'd be whooping it up over at the Indian reservation protesting us white devils! Giving thanks the Indian way!”

He let out a war cry and danced spasmodically, chugging what was left of his Budweiser. Same goddamn awful oppressive joke Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving for as long as I could remember.

I pointed to his monstrosity parked out front. “So what you got there, Winnie my man, three miles to the gallon? Or is it gallons to the mile?”

I could tell Winnie was thinking the exact same thing: same tired joke, year after year.

Winnie grinned, turned, and embraced the vehicle,
frantically humping it. “Don't let mean Uncle Casey make fun of you, darling,” he said, thrusting and grinding his pelvis into the Winnebago's hood.

“He's just jealous because his Prius doesn't put out. Daddy loves you, baby!”

I gritted my teeth, steadied my loins, and prepared to endure another marvelous holiday.

The theme of this year's gathering centered mainly around how, for the love of Christ, this country could continue to spiral down, down, down and then go and re-elect “that black man” again. Bush had never been “that white man,” nor had Clinton. Nor anyone down the line.

References to Obama were always prefaced by his color. Usually with my family, things were so clearly black and white. With Obama they were only black.

Winnie, as always, was the first to go off.

“I just don't see it. Four years of socialistic meddling, skyrocketing unemployment, and we elect the bastard again? Has this country gone
completely nuts
?”

It was hard to say with the brother-in-law just how much of his right-wing proselytizing and relentless Obama-bashing was simply a ploy to piss me off or an actual reflection of his true feelings. Beneath all the bluff and slander, Winnie was really not such a bad guy. He was a fabulous father, he worshipped the ground my sister walked on, he was incredibly solicitous and helpful to my parents. But his politics seemed to be a discombobulated blob of libertarian gobbledygook mixed in with an unhealthy dose of the same-old, same-old nonsensical Republican mantras and hypocritical hysteria.

And this is what really got me. Just when I'd be ready to completely write him off as a card-carrying lunatic, he'd pull a 180 on me. Earlier this fall he had taken advantage of those socialistic federal tax credits he bitched so much about and went out and put 23 kilowatts of photovoltaics
on his Winnebago dealership roof. Twenty-four kilowatts! That's a hell of a lot of solar! Without renewable-energy tax incentives from the Feds he would never have dreamed of doing such a thing.

“Smartest business decision I ever made!” he boasted. “A fuckin' no-brainer!”

And this from a Republican who believed that no government is good government—unless, of course, that government benefits him and his! Demonize Washington until they give you give an offer you can't refuse. Government is evil, evil, evil … until you get your chunk of the change.

It drove me absolutely bonkers. The sheer hypocrisy made me gag.

I had this desperate need to pigeonhole
all
Republicans as fascist Armageddon-welcomers. It was so much easier that way. And then my damn sister's hubby blows it by going out and solarizing his business. Absolutely infuriating.

It was totally true: the world was so much clearer in black and white. Good versus evil, right against wrong, Satan or God. It was these damn shades of gray that drove me insane!

Fortunately, we did have common ground. One of the few things we could agree on was the recent medical marijuana referendum question. My Libertarian/ Republican family, at least the younger generation, was quite clear about the need for weed.

“Christ, I could use some right now,” Winnie said. “My back has been killing me. You holding?”

We waylaid my brother, who willingly left his latest, and we snuck out back behind the house and hid away from the folks, my sister and the kids to smoke a joint.

Pot considerably enhanced my ability to hold on to my sanity (what tattered remains of it there were) while
interacting with family during the holidays. Without that altered state of reality, without that bit of a buzz, things could go south pretty damn quickly.

I used to lose it with regularity, rising to the bait each time it was offered and often when it wasn't, and then fighting my family with tooth and claw over every twisted comment.

Thanksgiving dinners of the past were like the classic game Battleship.

“Snowed today, didn't it, Casey?” Dad would say, searching out my weak link and going straight for the kill. “So much for global warming, huh?”

C-3.
BOOM!
Sunk your destroyer!

“Seventh hurricane in the last four weeks,” I'd retort. “Wow! I wonder what's up with that? Still in denial?”

E-9.
WHAM!
Say goodbye to your aircraft carrier!

On and on and on until there wasn't a ship on either side still afloat, all of us drowning in recriminations.

Right or wrong, it was much easier to be around them when I was high. It took the edge off, calmed me down, kept a lid on my OCD. I was much more prone to pick and choose my battles, much less likely to go down with the ship.

We slunk back into the house and I immediately walked into the study to find my youngest nephew, the one they called Minnie Winnie, who was still in the throes of potty training, urinating all over my work bag full of exams to grade.

“Cheryl? Winnie? Mom!” I screamed, reverting back to acting like the two-and-a-half-year-old that he was.

“Minnie Winnie is peeing all over my work. Somebody get in here! Somebody do something!”

Mom came giggling to the rescue.

“You come right over here to Grandma, you little rascal,” she cooed, folding the little guy into her arms, his thumb in his mouth, his penis still wet and dripping.

She looked up at me, grinning.

“You shouldn't leave your work lying around where little ones can pee on them, honey.”

Big Winnie stuck his head in the door.

“Smooth move, little man!” He picked his son up and gently rocked him upside down, the toddler laughing like crazy, clearly relishing all the attention.

Winnie turned to me.

“At least it wasn't number two!”

“Thank God!” I said. “I have to hand these back to my students.”

“Give them all a P. P for perfect.”

Everybody laughed. The little guy in particular.

After dinner there was the usual round of harassment about how I'm thirty-two and still single, an issue my mother, who as a non-Jew could hold her own with even the most Jewish of moms, has difficulty handling.

“Nathan has a girlfriend.” Mom smiled at my brother.

“Nathan always has a girlfriend.” I looked over to see what shenanigans the two of them were up to.

“So why don't you?”

“I'm busy, Mom. School takes a lot out of me.”

“What about that cute professor you introduced us to the last time we visited? Why not ask her out?” She was referring to my botany colleague.

“She's married, Mom. Her husband is a farmer and has biceps bigger than my waist. She has two kids. She's ten years older than me.”

“Does she have a sister?”

“Mom.”

“What about that synagogue you go to. Aren't there any cute girls there?”

“Synagogue?” I asked.

“That place you get on your knees at.”