brady bunch vibes

what if it was called daddy's day

I never really know how to start these things. Greetings, I guess? Salutations? This week, I decided to complain about something other than my age for once. Father’s Day is coming up, which I am of course celebrating by seeing only my mom and not telling my dad that I now live an hour away from him. Holidays always end up making me think about my family, whether I like it or not (I don’t).

My cousin has a two-year-old daughter who likes to shout “what did you do?!” at whoever is nearest her when actually she messes something up.  The last time we visited, her shoe fell off her foot while she was running, and she looked up at her mom with tears in her eyes, and squeaked out “what did you do?” It’s so cute when she does it that I’ve decided to adopt the habit into my own life. That’s what it’s called, right? When an adult refuses to take responsibility for their own actions? It’s cute? I looked up what this child is actually called to me, and the internet has decided that she is my first cousin once removed, but it would also be socially acceptable to call her my niece. The gender-neutral word for niece or nephew is nibling, which is not a cute word and I understand why it gets used so infrequently that spell check tries to tell me it doesn’t exist.  My first real goal in life - set before I realized how becoming an aunt works - was to become a child aunt. Unfortunately, being the oldest sibling by several years makes that quite difficult. I’m just now remembering a dream I had in which my football-playing little brother came out as trans. I include the detail ‘football-playing’ here, because it is, in fact, the only thing I know about my little brother. 

There are some people for whom family is a very important aspect of life. My dad, for example, loves to talk about how much time he spends with his uncles and cousins, get a “family forever” tattoo, and then not contact me for upwards of four months. These days, most of his calls are to notify me that a more important relative is about to die. The unspoken expectation is always that I will drop everything and travel to Texas to see sickly people who don’t know my birthday or middle name and would most definitely not do the same for me, were I to find myself on my premature deathbed. The first time this happened, it was for a cousin I didn’t know existed until shortly before he didn’t anymore.

I have recently discovered another Kujawski family that lives actually closer to me than any of my own Kujawski relatives. After checking with my dad (not a very reliable source, but the only one I have), it seems that I am not related to the local variety of Kujawskis. At first, this realization made me not care about them, until I remembered I already don’t care about the Kujawski family I do know. I now often find myself daydreaming about the new family, their various members, family dynamics, and holiday traditions. By “new,” I mean new to me, though maybe not new to the earth itself, and by “family,” I mean that I know there are a few people with the same uncommon last name and I am boldly assuming that they are related to one another.

I imagine what I am describing sounds ridiculous to a Thomas or a Smith or a Lopez or a Jones, but as someone who has never met a single person outside of their own family who shares the same last name, the realization that another entire Kujawski family has been existing right under my nose has rocked my entire world. I could have gone to school with their kids, if they happened to have had kids in the ’90s and lived in the same town that I did throughout the latter half of the aughts and the early half of the teens. I like to imagine that they’re kinder and more agreeable than my own brand of Kujawski, with a better sense of humor. I prefer to think they would find me hilarious; I lose hours of my day creating mental montages of these strangers laughing at my jokes in a variety of venues - standing in line at a theme park, at a picnic lunch, even at a funeral for a distant relative we didn’t realize we shared until we all showed up. I imagine they would love me, and so I would love them, as my affection for people depends not on how funny I find them, but on how funny they find me, which is normal and healthy and the main reason I didn’t like my (now ex) stepmom.

Sometimes I think about tracking one of them down, staging a run-in, inventing a reason to whip out my ID, and pretending to be a long-lost cousin like Charlie in Gossip Girl. I wonder if they would invite me over for dinner. I wonder if they would remember my middle name and text me on my birthday. I wonder if they have family reunions, and if they would invite me to one, accepting me as one of their own. I wonder how long I could keep up the charade. I wonder if they, too, have a kind and hilarious member of the family that they have all alienated since she was a child, for no discernable reason. I wonder how she’s doing, and if she would be my friend. I wonder if we share a distant relative, or if two separate poor families from the Kujawy region of Poland had the same idea to upgrade their name to Kujawski, to sound more like Polish nobility. I wonder if their extended family drinks and swears as much as mine does. I imagine they do, but in a way that is more endearing and less agitating - more ‘fun uncle’ and less ‘alcoholic cousin who is not allowed to leave the state.’ We are Polish, after all, and if I know anything about Eastern Europe (I don’t) it’s that most of its inhabitants stereotypically enjoy consuming vodka. I wonder if the other Kujawskis acknowledge their Polish roots, or if they too call themselves German because “the family seal says so.” I wonder if they have a family seal, and if it looks anything like the family seal my relatives use to avoid identifying with Poland, and if any of their dads have it tattooed on their arm. I wonder if their seal lives in a great uncle’s smoky basement, hanging across from the home office nobody has touched since 2004. I wonder if any of them actually know how to read it. I wonder how long it would take for me to be completely assimilated with their family, and for the memories of the Kujawski family I do share blood with to fade.

People love to guilt you into caring about them simply because you happen to share the same genetic predisposition to certain diseases and disorders. Sometimes, they even like to pretend to care about you for the same reason. In my experience, this tends to happen when they need something. Something my husband likes to remind me is that sharing a biological resemblance with somebody does not obligate you to share anything else, whether that’s your time, recipes, or information regarding your current city of residence.

As always, I will leave you with a photo dump from my week, and actually a bonus poem I wrote also.  If you enjoyed this and have not already signed up to get these newsletters delivered to your inbox on a weekly basis (for free - I know my worth), there’s a button down below for just that purpose. And as mortifying as it is for me to have a newsletter, it’s even more mortifying to have a newsletter with an audience of none, so feel free to share with a friend or lover or enemy who maybe has nothing else going on in their life.

First, the poem!

post-pubescent adolescent

time moves like a rubber band

I barely move at all

nobody warned me that my twenties

would be so physically taxing

I’m always bloated and don’t know

why I carry this anxiety

in my back pocket

and a white lighter in my front

if I die, they’ll blame it on my luck

as a kid I thought the world was one way

but it turns out it’s completely different

no one tells you it’s okay

to be a multi faceted human

with more than one interest

all I care about is everything

I wish my brain was different

Turns out I lied, and I do have to complain about my age in every newsletter.

Now, the pics! I feel like for a while, people were abbreviating the word pictures as pix, but at some point, we all sort of decided that actually pics is more professional or something.

i just was really enjoying the color of the sky against the buildings

at work, i sit at a different person’s desk every day, and sometimes i sit at a desk that has this plant as part of the atmosphere

i tried to take a pic of two dalmations i saw on the street, but i am awkward instead of cool, casual, and/or confident

my cat sometimes sits like a person and watches herself in the mirror and i think she is a genius

this is a large bruise that has been developing on my leg over several days and i do not know where it came from

Chelsea Peretti released an album about coffee and i am convinced i need this shirt from her corresponding merch line

i forgot to save the original version of this photo but i recently acquired a pen pal, to whom i am going to write as soon as I am done with this because both my phone and computer are almost dead

i took this picture in equal parts because i was feeling my pretty pink drink, and because i had to document the name being wrong. i don’t blame the girl though, she’s trying her best and i love that about her

Thanks for enduring this issue of Essays No One Asked For. Here’s that button I was telling you about, plus a couple more. If you want me to talk about something other than my never-ending quarter-life crisis, feel free to reply to this email and/or leave a comment. I’m here for the people.