Perfect Family Stranger Matters

Growing up as part of the TGIF generation, I've watched my share of sitcoms. To this day, I enjoy occasionally letting myself get sucked into some cheesy half-hour dilemma, just to go back in time and savor the days when figuring out how to stay up past my bedtime was my top priority. With my birthday coming up in a few days, I've been doing lots of thinking back over my life and wondering how certain things have ended up the way they have.

When I was little, my cousin Vicki was my hero. I'm sure 14-year-old Vicki didn't think 8-year-old Heather was cool at all, but to me, she was Awesome incarnate. I loved it when she got stuck babysitting me! Sometimes, we'd walk the mile or so from our grandmother's house to Parkway, a little shop outside of town that had arcade games and penny candy. From those walks, I don't remember any profound conversations about life and love, or even any meaningless conversations about anything at all. I do remember feeling like the luckiest kid in the world, getting to hang out with this amazing being who allowed me into her presence. Sometimes, she even shared her headphones and let me have a listen to whatever was in her Walkman, instilling me with what would become a lifelong passion for hair bands.

Vicki gave me my first mix tape, containing Bon Jovi, Nelson, and Tyketto. I nearly murdered my baby brother when he broke that tape years later, so cherished was it. Bon Jovi and Nelson were easy enough to find at the flea market, but since this was before the days of Amazon.com and eBay, I had to shell out $60 to have the out-of-print Tyketto album shipped from Japan after years of searching through every rarities catalog I could get my hands on. I still remember that Bon Jovi's "Living in Sin" was cut off at the end of side 1 of that tape, and that Tyketto's "Standing Alone" was at the end of side 2. I can't tell you how many nights of loneliness and teenage angst that song got me through - no, still gets me through.



I remember watching Jon Bon Jovi's wedding on TV with Vicki, and how she clung to me like a stuffed animal as she cried her eyes out. I was so mad at Jon for picking that woman over my cousin. What could he have been thinking?

I remember when Vicki went to prom. She had this black velvet dress with a short, emerald-green skirt and black crinoline sticking out. She wore it with black mesh gloves and teased her hair so that she looked like she'd just stepped out of a music video. I thought she was so beautiful, and I vowed that I'd borrow that dress for my prom someday.

I remember when Vicki got married. She'd met her husband at a Def Leppard concert. I mean, how cool is that?

I don't remember the exact moment when Vicki became just a name signed at the bottom of a generic Christmas card addressed to my mom "and family," or at what point I realized that I wouldn't know her if I ran into her on the street today.

I'm aware that she has children now, three of them, I think. Maybe four. I'm aware that she lives somewhere in the midwest now. Minnesota, maybe. I'm aware that some stuff happened in the family that's probably none of my business, and it resulted in Vicki being even more estranged. Out of all of my cousins (and I have about 30), I wonder about her the most. I wonder if she's happy, if she still listens to hair bands, if she ever wonders how I turned out. I wonder if we have things in common as adults - how does she feel about the environment, gay rights, the death penalty? Has she traveled? Does she want to? Is she a book reader? If so, what does she read? Would she like the things that I write? I wonder, if we met now, if we would be friends, or if we'd end up staying strangers who just happen to have the same grandmother.

When I was recently in California, Michael made me aware of The Bird And The Bee, prompting me to pick up their new album at Amoeba while I had some time to kill in San Francisco. There's a song on the album that makes me think of Vicki and a long ago afternoon in Pennsylvania, watching MTV as she so loved to do, when Vicki told me all about David Lee Roth, and how it just wasn't Van Halen without him.

I may never work up the courage to ask around the family and see if anyone has Vicki's address, but somehow, I have this hope that one way or another, she'll come across this post and see that I'm thinking of her, that I remember all this weird, random stuff that no one else would find consequential.

Dear Vicki, This one's for you

Love, Heather