Family Portrait

Because we don't have enough college applications to fill out for maddy or juried art shows to enter to revive nancy's career, jonah decided he needed to jump in and apply to private school. now. this minute. this week. the thought of one more application to anything made nancy want to kill herself. and of course the tony, arty, industry school he thinks will answer his prayers needed a Family Picture.
so last night when adam came over to help fill out the application and basically save the children from what they referred to as "mom's instability"....aka mom wanted to go out to dinner last night with a male friend and ditch the whole thing, mom wanted to do anything but apply to a school of any kind, mom wanted to do anything but compete for money and status last night, mom wanted to do anything but measure, quantify and assess one more time her own or her kids' worthiness. if mom was into heroin, this is when she'd be shooting up. she even confessed to her older male friend that sometimes she truly wishes she could give her kids a drug to make it all go away. the chaos. the confusion. just give everyone a half a xanax to settle down.

but in lieu of sedating her kids, she wanted, simply, to go eat fried bananas at Versailles with someone older than her and talk about anything but AP classes and Megadeth....just for an hour. but no such luck--she hadn't procured a permission slip. her cell mates were blocking her furlough. But there was some progress made.
last night, mom actually went to sleep BEFORE her kids for the first time in months (since co-warden aka Dad swooped in and took a break from writing his Memoir to make a housecall). and while mom settled into bed, the remaining family did homework, filled out jonah's application and voted to take the Family Pic in the a.m. before school.
but in the harsh light of morning with two tests today in AP Government, AP Stats and a quiz in AP Psych...maddy bailed on the photoshoot because she didn't have time to put on her make up and do her hair. i remember feeling that way. wanting to look good. now i'm lucky if i'm dressed in the morning. and note: i'm not dressed in the picture. but it's a new white robe from Cosco bought a year ago by Bubbie and Zaida and given to me just two weeks ago at news years as some kind of weird party favor (they brought 10 of them...and about 97 pieces of shrimp that Zaida feared would be eaten up by jonah's friends..he feared it so much he asked nancy to disinvite jonah and his friends. to which nancy said: Jonah lives here. nancy's friend Kieran visiting from NY backed her up, said he felt she had a "compelling argument". But Zaida wasn't buying it so we had to deputize guests at the party to "police the shrimp" as my father put it..but that's another story)

bottom line is: here's our happy family photo which ends up telling volumes about our family. adam and jonah and nancy. holding a portrait of maddy since the she-wolf wouldn't get out of bed to join us without her black eyeliner. and ironically we think this is a really impressive photo for jonah to send to the snobby school: it shows his mom's a painter, his parents are divorced but still friends (or as Melissa says, dad just drives to his bedroom)...and Jonah poses, as usual, with his best What Me Worry? smile.

as one learns in art school, happy accidents (spilled paint, divorced parents, last minute school applications and vicious overworked daughters) can net out interesting and positive results. and even if he doesn't get accepted to Crossroads, we now have a cute life affirming pic for the family album.