I got my Wii.

What now haters?

That Wii Alerts bell rang, and I dropped everything. No, really. Everything. I’m proud to tell you that i purchased my Wii in under one minute.

I win.

I got my Wii from amazon.com, which means that I paid no tax and no shipping. I pride myself in my fine liberal arts education, from which I learned the tactics of resourcefulness, problem solving skills, and how to ask mom to pay for it. So much for making good money.

After running around for five minutes squealing “Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” to all zero other people in the house, I sat down to sit with–if you will– the day’s accomplishments. Also, I wanted to read the Chronicle. It took about three more minutes for me to realize that once my Wii arrived in the mail to my house in NorCal, I didn’t have an address to send it to in San Diego (summer sublet), nor a tv to hook it up to.* Well shit. Nice move, hot shot. As I pondered ways to get my shiny new toy to myself in San Diego, I looked over towards the kitchen landing…

On top of the piles of mail, my little brother’s lost homework, and a used cup is a fake Coach handbag. It’s mine, but I don’t touch it, or move it, or even want it.

My biological dad gave it to me as a gift. Well, technically, he gave it to my mom and asked her to give it to me. No occasion, no accompanying sentiments. That bag came with accessories of jack sh*t, but chock full of broken promises and confusion.

I don’t talk about my biological dad a lot. Mostly because there’s nothing to say. I don’t know anything about him, I don’t know what he looks like, I don’t know where he is or what he does everyday. At this point, I don’t care. It took me a really long time to be happy with my family sitaution, my parents–but I finally got there.  And in my carefully construed family schema, I don’t need him.  He doesn’t get involved in my brother’s and my life, and we make no effort to be part of his.

My mom actually got the bag from him a few months ago, but didn’t have the heart to give it to me. Divorce is never a cute affair, and while she is the model of “how to turn divorce into a 1.5 million dollar business” (true fact), she still has some random fits of not knowing exactly how to mitigate the relationship between us and him. So she gave it to me a couple of days ago when I asked, “whose bag is that?”. Don’t shoot the messenger, I guess…

The obvious problems with the gift don’t bother me. It’s not that I’ve never gotten a single birthday card or christmas present from him. (true) Nor is it the fact that he owes my mother thousands of dollars in child support (also true). It’s not even that he has missed every meaningful event in my life (true, with the exception of my birth**). It’s that this stupid, fake bag was given with no clear intent, for no specific reason, with no evidence of any care specific to me. So as far as I’m concerned, this bag is from a complete stranger who was feeling generous towards a passer-by. My mom asked me what I thought about the bag. I said “It was a nice gesture. A bit, um, wierd.”  What I think I meant was “F*ck you, you stupid asshole! You can’t just give someone a fake purse and expect them to feel all bloody warm and fuzzy inside. You don’t even know that I graduated from college! Or that I’m hella frickin smart! Or that I’m doing great things with my life and you are not helping at all! ? Way to suck at life, dad.” I’m paraphrasing, but i think that was about the sentiment.

Funny thing is, I’m not really that mad. I’m sitting here typing away, no tears in my eyes or pain in my heart. Just thoughts, and a small teeny tiny wish that he would make a slightly better effort if he was going to make one at all.

So I got up from the kitchen table, picked up the Coach bag, walked upstairs and dropped the purse in the box marked Goodwill/garage sale. At this moment, “Goodwill” suddenly takes on a delightfully ironic meaning for me. And I’m done with the Coach handbag.

I look around the living room now, every degree of my vision filled with my possessions. Very cluttered, and on the verge of overwhelming. And somehow, in the next week, I have to sort through all of my bags and boxes to figure out what I’m gonna keep with me, what I’m gonna leave at home, and stuff that…

it’s time to give away.

~~~~

*to ekh: up what did you hook it?

**And strangely enough, the doctor came out and told my god father (an awesome white man who was there for my birth) that he had a new beautiful new daughter. “Congrats!” I guess doc missed that the brown baby couldn’t have possibly belonged to two white parents. Maybe the doctor was “colorblind.”

More about my birth in a future post.