Luckily, there’s wine.

This was not news to me since I am the lightest of my clan. My father is black. My mother is white. My family is difficult.

Raised in California, I spent summers and holidays with my father’s side of the tribe in northeast Portland, Oregon. It was a multi-generational community built on soul food shacks, beauty sheds and gospel choirs. But when my grandmother moved in circa 1945, the welcome wagon included bricks through the window and charred crosses on the lawn.

Now the predominantly black neighborhood of my youth is filled with friendly white transplants. Cadillacs and jerry curls have been replaced by Subarus and micro-brewing lesbians with rescue dogs.

I embrace the change in demographics. My family does not.

I was immediately suspicious. I asked about the morning’s timetable.

My medical hostess outlined the brief details of my slice-n-dice itinerary as she consulted with the anesthesiologist, a defensive resident who looked like she needed 24 hours of sleep and a facial.

“Do you need me to hold your hand?” Ms. Philippines asked, smiling like a gentle dragon.

“What for?” I snapped.

My miniature guide leaned in closer as if to share her deepest medical secret. She smelled like baby wipes and peppermint schnapps.

“Some people get the nervousness but I’m here to help, okay?”

She patted my shoulder. I recoiled.

“I don’t need help unless I’m doing the surgery myself.”

She giggled like Elmo and checked my chart.

“Okay, we’re getting really close. We just need the pregnancy.”

“What?” I shrieked. “What pregnancy?”

The horizontal men in the room raised their braces to see who was squawking about babies. I wasn’t with child, not even close, unless watching hours of Real Housewives and drinking Shiraz out of a box qualified as the next Immaculate Conception.

Ms. Islander soothingly said, “No, sweetie, it’s routine.”

I grimaced.

“Can’t put you under if you got baby!”

I knew I wasn’t harboring a fetus so I tried to relax when my pain management representative angrily approached the bed. She snapped open the pages of my medical dossier and began her interrogation.

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“Never?” she asked, incredulously.

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed. I didn’t realize with no makeup and water for breakfast, I looked like I needed an intervention.

“Alcohol?” Uh oh.

“Yes.”

“How many drinks a week?”

I thought for a moment. “Fourteen,” I shrugged.

It was as if I had said I drank the livers of small children.

“Four….teen?” Ms. Medical asked, slamming the binder on the steel railing.

“That’s like two glasses of wine at dinner,” I said defensively.

“Every night?”

“It’s New York.”

She scribbled a long note in my chart.

“Maybe you should try it,” I murmured.

I was baiting the woman who would determine whether or not I woke up after the doctor sliced opened my knee like sashimi.

I closed my eyes.

He liked to pour over the New Testament at meals, pointing out the sudden death of harlots in between bites but he never, ever went door-to-door.

According to Jehovah’s by-laws, all good Witnesses are required to share the news of everlasting life. My father, however, blatantly refused to peddle The Watchtower, our new religion’s weekly magazine on eternal damnation.

When approached by the church elders and reminded of his religious duty, he said he didn’t like people but I, on the other hand, was constantly encouraged to spread the divine word in our community.

I recoiled repeatedly, highlighting the fact that if my father wasn’t concerned with strangers melting down at the gates of Paradise, neither was I.

Publicly, I felt for the souls of the damned but secretly I was consumed with thoughts of the hottest boy at my junior high, Josh, opening the door after my fevered buzzing, shirtless and sweaty from soccer practice.

I, of course, would be standing on the wicker welcome mat in my spit-shined shoes and pigtails, talking in tongues about the end of the world. My goal of a date for the ninth-grade dance would slowly evaporate in the sunset as the Teen Beat poster boy guzzled Sunny Delight in his gym shorts.

No, I refused to stalk the sidewalks for God while Josh showered and slept in my neighborhood. My father reluctantly agreed.

On my grandmother’s mantel it blended in with the other twenty photos of when I lost my first tooth or got a sleeping bag for Christmas but blown-up and placed in a glass cabinet next to the girls bathed in hairspray and soft lighting, it looked like I had been forced to pose in a white lace tablecloth after peeing on myself.

The tight smile, big 80’s hair, and a necklace of cheap, chunky pearls were highlighted by a description near the photo detailing my hobbies. I liked to travel, crochet, and sketch small animals. My royal competition liked to volunteer at church and cheerlead in between helping the elderly.

The Rose Festival theme that year was, “From the Marquee,” a nod to Broadway, and it encompassed the glitz and glamour that was the Great White Way. Past themes included “For You a Rose in Portland Grows” and “Set Sail For Fun!”

In 1986, I knew nothing about the Great White Way; I knew nothing about Broadway. I was a sixteen-year old whose closest friends were happy meals, calculus and Janet Jackson on tape. At 5’4”, I weighed 165 pounds and happily consumed five meals a day plus snacks. I excelled at quadratic equations and pizza.

And I was the new girl.

No one expected me to win and reminded me everyday in AP English that the majority of my problems could be solved with a curling iron and lip gloss.

My stepfather, a man who hated anyone with an opinion other than his own, was wearing a camouflage tracksuit, lace-up combat boots and a Nascar hat turned backwards.

He crouched angrily in the gravel with tiny pigeons caught in the cross hairs.

“You should get married,” my mother offered.

I squinted at the dull red flag on the mailbox at the curb. Was it up, pointing at the cloudless sky, a few minutes ago? Or was it stuck like that, mail or no mail?

“You can always get divorced,” my mother announced.

I grunted towards the mailbox as my stepfather’s elbow scrapped the rocks.

The birds froze.

“I don’t think so,” I said evenly.

“It’s just a little paperwork,” my mother replied.

This was not the first time my mother had reduced the joining or separation of two lives to a signature. Perhaps it was because she had been married and divorced so many times that she equated it with a quick autograph and a visit to her local notary.

I stared through the homemade curtains and seethed at the horizontal related-by-marriage lump as my mother sipped instant coffee from her ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is‘ mug.

In the silence, the smell of meatloaf hung on us like beefy sweaters.

Dear Mr. Claus, if you bring me Rainbow Lite Brite then leave behind My Little Pony. If Cabbage Patch Kids are coming then definitely add the Mega Bloks Slumber Party Set but, for the love of the manger, no more Rubik’s Cubes.

And in the holiday season, our house was a winter wonderland. My mother had trimmed the tree with a fevered amount of tinsel and lighting and even included edible treats, in case one needed a holiday snack while walking by the tower of pine. The stockings were hung on our fake fireplace and I had baked Santa extra Christmas cookies, decorated with restraint that year instead of my usual urge to create sugared snowmen with two heads or reindeers with no legs.

I held out hope that Santa would bring me the mother load, the gift every girl dreamed of, the Malibu Barbie penthouse.

I had received Malibu Barbie, a blond California bombshell, for my birthday a few months before and we had become close friends, shunning the Smurfs and the Care Bears like social pariahs.

Instead of sugar plums and fairies, I fantasized about Barbie and Ken entertaining their fabulous friends on the rooftop of their pink plastic kingdom, overlooking the roaring waves from our bathroom sink. Their nonadjustable legs splayed out on striped plastic flotation devices as the mystery guests pulled up in their convertible corvettes.

My penthouse would have a coat check and Ricardo Montalban greeting guests at the door with Mai Tais and fantasies. I worshiped the lifestyles of the rich and plastic and I needed the real estate to seal the deal.

There was one box for me under the tree big enough to hold Barbie’s cocktail-infused dreamscape and I had spent Christmas Eve circling the tinsel, occasionally tipping the brightly wrapped gift in hopes that it would surrender a hint of its contents.

Finally, the moment came with my father opening his 50-piece tool set and my hippie mother unwrapping her Zippo lighter. I tore at the box like a feral animal, squealing at the possibility of spending the evening with Malibu Barbie and her entourage. After all, she was dressed in her holiday finest, sequined shorts and a new haircut that resembled the Flock of Seagulls, sunglasses still sewn to her head while her face registered the perpetual dim expression that said, “I like the sun.”

I peeled back the cardboard flaps and peered inside. My smile faded. There in the darkness of the box was not Malibu anything, nothing Barbie-related. There was something puffy and navy blue. I looked at my parents as if I had clearly opened the wrong gift.

This marshmallow thing seemed industrial, something geared for safety and destined for my father’s work bench or an article of clothing he could wear out on the tarmac while servicing an airplane. This nylon madness couldn’t possibly have been for me.

Yet my father excitedly reached into the box and spooled out the gift. It was a sleeping bag. A plain navy blue sleeping bag and it was mine. My bottom lip began to quiver. Not even a Barbie Sunshine or Hello Kitty sleeping bag in exchange for being on my best behavior.

Sensing my impending hysteria, my mother enthusiastically offered to sew a butterfly appliqué on the puffy mound to make it feel more girly. My mother was, and still is, a big fan of the glue gun and she was always adding garnishes of fabric where nature had left off. But the sleeping bag was beyond even her reach.

Santa had failed me.

My father, however, was oblivious to my pain and said, “Climb in, try it on.” I looked to my mother to rescue me and she tightly smiled as my father continued, “You’ll need it the next time we go camping. This sleeping bag zips up to fit your body exactly. No arm movement, no leg room. It’s called The Mummy.”

I turned Malibu Barbie’s head away from the Christmas carnage.

“No room for snakes to get in,” my father continued, pitching his hand-picked gift to our doubting duo. “Except, of course, if they crawl across your face but at least with this,” he proudly stated, “You’ll have a fighting chance.”

The Son of God was taking a smoke break, waiting for the elevator.

At Radio City, everyone gets his or her ten minutes, especially if you can turn water into wine. It was dress rehearsal, the day before the opening of the Christmas Spectacular and the landmark was filled with livestock and little people dressed like candy. I had already seen Santa yelling at his agent in the Grand Foyer when I went to count tablecloths in the presidential suite.

I am a temp.

For forty hours a week, I fold invitations, wrap gifts for sponsors and answer phones when strangers call to ask if the Rockettes are real. I thought I would support myself as an actress when I moved to New York. Now, at thirty, I spend the day ordering cases of sparkling water and checking to see if the camel crapped near the lockers.

“Jesus, this elevator is slow as shit.”

Huh.

I looked at the savior of mankind clutching a Marlboro and thought, Loser, you don’t even have any lines.