Meet The Family

Your average family, struggling to make it in the world, estranged by unique problems. Meet the Family. CH1 - coming soon

Meet the Family

      Early morning.  I step into the doorway of my tiny apartment on the edge of a small town. I am only one tenant of the 52 apartments, laid out side by side. I hate apartment buildings. At least here we have our own community.  My small two bedroom apartment is just like my neighbors small two bedroom apartment and so on. We are all the same. Standing on my porch, staring at these identical apartments, the wind slightly blows my blonde curly hair.  With the morning breeze comes the smell of freshly mowed grass.  I love 5:00am.  I never have been much of a morning person, but these days, there is nothing this 32 year old body enjoys more than the morning treats. This, of course, is short lived as I am married with three children. 

      My name is Raven.  My mother had a very unhealthy obsession with Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven was her favorite poem.  I, too, developed that love for his writing and his story.  Everyone has a story, and each one can be interesting if you look deep enough.  Except mine, we will get to that though. My name is Raven, I am 32 years old, and all the kids in this community hang out at my house. I am unsure why, but this is where they all end up. Having three kids probably helps with that though.  My children are wonderful kids, mostly troublesome, but wonderful none the less. My husband and I decided at an early stage in our relationship that we would adopt children.  At 32 we have yet to make it to the adoption part. Jace Micheal, Layna Nicole and Nella Anne. Each of their first names came from the Greeks with special meaning. Jace is Greek for Healer, Layna is Greek for Truth, and Nella is Greek for Bright One.  Their middle names were all people I met during the pregnancy.  Jace well his was a joke. We were in the doctor’s office and my husband says, “Bet you won’t name our son after him.” And points out a guy across the room. I asked his name, and Jace Micheal was created. I spelled it different just to be aggravating.  Nicole and Anne were both women I met at the doctor’s office.  Jace is 9, Layna is 5 and Nella is 3.

      My children are interesting characters, and so are doctors these days. My son is 9 years old and diagnosed with ADHD.  The school began this mess when he was 6 years old. I had him tested and put in therapy.  Of course the test consisted of a survey that his teachers and I filled out.  Therapy helped, especially after I explained our somewhat rocky lifestyle up until now. He just wanted attention. Here we are 3 years later, and the doctors say I should medicate him.  The school, his therapist, and I believe he is doing fine, a little rambunctious at times, but mostly controllable. My daughter has been treated the same way. Layna is 5 and diagnosed with Bipolar.  She has outbursts and cries at weird times.  She is 5 and I refuse to do medication so I put her in therapy as well. She loves it. We are working on her outbursts still. Nella is an interesting baby. They haven’t told me anything is wrong with her yet, just that her behavior is unnatural. She is my golden child. Always behaving, and doing what she is supposed to.  She was potty trained, drinking out of a cup, and dressing herself by age two. Her only downfall is that she refuses to talk. I think she will though, when she is ready. They want to send therapists or something like that to our house in order to get her talking correctly.

      As you can see my family isn’t that interesting. Not even my husband who is 5 foot 10 inches, sports a Mohawk, and never dresses up.  His name Zander. I find it amusing. When Jace was little I got him to call him der der instead of da da. I still get fussed at for that one.  We have a great relationship. We argue some but mostly get along great. We constantly aggravate each other, we are always making jokes and attempting to irritate the other. Speaking of I need to wake him up.  He is our bread winner. Zan works 10-12 hours a day in order to pull in enough money to pay all of the bills. We have one vehicle, and I cannot work. I just finished college, but with the economy settled the way it is, we can’t afford daycare, and we can’t find anywhere we can work opposite shifts. Plus we only have one vehicle. OH the struggles of being middle class.

      As I yell at Zan to roll out of bed, the smell of sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy fill the house. I always make coffee and breakfast before I wake anyone. Lord knows they are all grouchy in the mornings. Zan gets up drinks a cup of coffee while poking fun at whatever I am wearing, and eats his breakfast. Off to work he goes. Now begins the fun.  Jace is always up when Zan leaves though he doesn’t roll out of the bed until after he is gone.  No reason just lazy I think.  By now pancakes for the kids are done as well. Regardless of the diagnosis given by the doctors or their recommendations we chose not to medicate our children. Yes they are a handful but aren’t they supposed to be.  Besides I am a stay at home mom and I have the time to work with each of them.

      Jace gets his usual mess of pancakes, pours him a glass of milk, gets his vitamin and sits his stuff on the table. He then starts making a second plate as I pour two more glasses of milk.  He takes Layna her plate as she and Nella are already at the table. Jace then fixes Nellas plate as I fix mine. We sit and eat breakfast.  We have a lot of rules at our house, but once learned, all goes smoothly.  See technology ruined the world, and I refuse to let my kids fall to it. There is no television while we eat.  We eat without talking usually for about five minutes then it begins chaos.  Everyone is awake with energy.  As soon as breakfast is over, Layna clears the table, scrapes the dishes.  Layna, Jace and I jump on the dishes so nothing is left dirty. After breakfast, and dishes are done, its fair game. I don’t allow my kids video games, and they don’t have a room full of toys, because let’s face it, kids don’t play with their toys anymore.  So the two older kids head outside to play while Nella and I work inside. We cook, we clean, we do laundry, and we play dolls.

      Whether you have one kid or five kids, the routine is the same. We have a very “normal” life and there really isn’t anything interesting about us.  I am 32 years old and most of my friends have ventured off and gotten married. I don’t have any friends older than the age of 14. Anyone who wants to come hang out always wants to drink and I don’t anymore, especially around my kids. Call me uptight or old fashioned but that’s what I feel is right. I am pretty much a loner by this right, it’s easier than trying to make friends and keep them when I don’t leave my house.  By this time many kids from the neighborhood have migrated to my house to play. I sit outside a lot and write while listening to the kids play. See we don’t allow the kids to pick or be mean to each other, and if they do well we have creative ways of punishing them. Everyone is treated as equals. If by chance two kids get into it, then they fight it out and shut up about it. I spank my kids or smack their mouths when they get out of line, and I wash their mouths out with soap if they are disrespectful. It works. They also write sentences. I’m very old fashioned and my kids are raised how I was.

      I feel that I am pretty normal, although I tend to find the darkest views on everything. For example, if my kids go out to play alone and no neighborhood kids are outside, I am afraid they will get kidnapped. At first I thought this was because I read the news so much. I started noticing that I do it with everything. If my husband is late from work, I think about him being with another girl. If he changes his Facebook password it’s because he is hiding something not simply because he was hacked, and so on. I deal with these thoughts on a daily basis. My husband on the other hand is very sociable. He has plenty of friends, and can get along with anyone, even though he don’t like most of them.

      That’s my family, nothing special just some hard-workers barely getting by during hard times in the world.

Author's Note

Its not very long and this is just the first draft and we will say an interlude instead of first chapter. I plan on putting all the short stories together in one book, this part explaining details about the family so I can just use the characters. This is my first go at it.

Reviews

[S. D. Forogar]

As always, my Good and my Bad!

The GOOD: Honestly, I'd like to list "the little things" here, of all aspects of this piece. Things such as the origin of Jace's middle name and "der der" were quite humorous, lightening the situation while still furthering the story.

The MIXED OPINION: The "expositional narrative" that is this piece. I was inclined to place this in the "BAD" section, but I realize that this is intentionally-designed, and that perhaps it might be set up in such a way as to incorporate well with the rest of the story. As it stands, however, I feel that Raven's "life-story-telling" way of setting up the plot should not be a recurring, replicated theme to hold to. Perhaps it would suffice to begin a story, but it is most assuredly not strong or interesting enough to hold one together above and beyond this section.

The BAD: Since there is no current plot, no goal and truly no character development thus far, I cannot point to any of these as being inherently bad, any more than I can assume a forfeit means the victors are superior to their competition. So, I will tackle the few remaining aspects of this story, two issues and a personal nit-pick if I might be so bold!

First, I was not a fan of the amateurish writing itself. The way certain words, names, phrases and the like were repeated frequently and in immediate succession of one another was annoying to read through, and a simple clutter of redundant text. I'll list a couple of examples below:

"*Layna is 5 and diagnosed with Bipolar.* She has outbursts and cries at weird times. *She is 5* and I refuse to do medication so I put her in therapy as well." Ch-1, Par. 3, Sent.'s 10-12. (asterisks outlining)

"I never have been much of a morning person, but these days, there is nothing *this 32 year old body* enjoys more than the morning treats. This, of course, is short lived as I am married with *three children.*
*My name is Raven.* My mother had a very unhealthy obsession with Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven was her favorite poem. I, too, developed that love for his writing and his story. Everyone has a story, and each one can be interesting if you look deep enough. Except mine, we will get to that though. *My name is Raven, I am 32 years old,* and all the kids in this community hang out at my house. I am unsure why, but this is where they all end up. Having *three kids* probably helps with that though. My children are wonderful kids, mostly troublesome, but wonderful none the less. My husband and I decided at an early stage in our relationship that we would adopt children. At *32* we have yet to make it to the adoption part." Ch-1, Par. 1, Sent.'s 12-13 to Ch-1, Par. 1, Sent.'s 1-12. (asterisks outlining)

I reread this story as well, and the full part of the first paragraph lists the word "apartment" six times. There are more examples of this sort of unnecessary text, but I'll present them upon request. I do feel, however, that a fair portion of this story could be removed simply by omitting these redundancies where they appear, and the level of writing could be emphasized by replacing commonly-used terminology with synonyms (such as replacing "apartment" with "residence" or "place." Even simple words as these will bolster the end result!).

My second issue stands with the opening of the piece. There's nothing contained within the first paragraph to draw any Reader into the piece, especially given the nature of it. A simple line such as "Despite everything, my family is just as normal as any other family" would entice an audience to continue, because it hints at the narrator's family holding some form of abnormality that might bear looking into. Even slight foreshadowing techniques like the above would suffice to make the Reader as questions and want answers, which is what any author should aspire to.

Finally, my nit-pick, and it pertains to the way in which numbers are written out. In any standard story, be it short or of novel-like status, numbers should always be written out in FULL. For example, rather than stating "Jace is a 9-year-old boy," the author should write it this way: "Jace is a nine-year-old boy." It looks far more professional the second way.

In conclusion, I need more content in order to make any judgments on whether or not I'd recommend this story, but I do suggest that the author take the time to read and assess all I've written, and take these notes into consideration.

[Lena Love]

I appreciate your feedback greatly. I have taken it into consideration and I see your points. I would like for you to elaborate on the unnecessary text. I was going to continue to the chapter I was working on and apply the criticism you provided however I would like to edit this one and you reread it if that would be okay. And instead of being a prelude with nothing to interest in the series of stories to follow, I will try to add something to grab attention. I love your "nit-picking" and honesty. I will work on these changes. Thank you!