Is Blood Really Thicker than Water?

It was 1998, I was sixteen, in Strasbourg, France, and a year prior I had gotten in trouble for smoking weed. I moved to France when I was seven, and by 1998, my entire life was based there.

On the last day of school we all said our goodbyes and that we'd see each other in September like we did every year. I attended an international school, so most of us went back to visit our homeland during summer breaks.

And I visited my mom in NYC every year. The night before my flight, I was quite sober and searched my entire room for some extra weed or hash, but even before I started looking, I already knew I was out.

It had been a rough couple weeks financially to begin with. Either way, during my search I found a small plastic baggie in my wallet with some stems and seeds. Remembering that there were dogs occasionally at airports, I took it out and left it in my room.

My theory in hiding it was that maybe if it were fairly in the open, it might not be detected because it was so obvious. So I just threw it in a basket which had a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff in it.

Hopped on the plane, flew across the Atlantic, got to NYC, and (mind you, this is how I remember it, after talking to my mom, it seems it wasn't quite as abrupt as I describe) almost as soon as I walked into the door, my mom said:

"Alex we have to talk."

Sheesh, I miss you too, Mom, I thought.

(sidenote: it's weird how my interpretation of this memory is quite distorted, but this is what led me to believe that although there is an absolute truth, there's also a relative one, and although this scenario didn't play out the way I remember, since that's how I remember it, that is in essence, my truth)

Apparently my grandmother had called, claiming she found a bag of weed in my room and two joints all rolled up, ready to be smoked.

I balked.

"No, she's lying, I don't have that in my room!" Blah blah blah.

"Well, Alex," my mom replied with resignation. "I just can't take your word anymore because you've lied so many times."

Fair enough.

"Okay, so you want to know the truth? The whole truth?"

"Yes."

I'm still ashamed that despite my claim to tell the whole truth, I still lied. But it was a rather small one (then why lie at all, right?). So I told her I smoked every other day, instead of every day. I also told her that I cut classes on a regular basis. I didn't mention that I sold hash because I was cut off from an allowance. Omission lies don't count right? ;]

"But, I know for a fact that they didn't find that in my room because..."

"... you would have smoked it," my mom finished for me.

I nodded.

The next time my mom spoke to my grandmother, she asked if they were sure that it was weed.

"How am I supposed to know?" my grandmother replied indignant.

"Just burn it, it'll smell differently than cigarettes."

"Oh, we already threw it away."

So now it was my word against theirs. Obviously mine wasn't worth much.

Then at the next plot development, they finally found the small baggie with the stems and seeds. And how surprising, they tested that instead, and of course it came back positive.

Bottom line? I was to stay in NYC. Torn away from nine years of my life, all of my friends, all that I know, the town that I lived in, my home.

Their reasoning (paraphrasing)? Alex and his friends in France are a bad influence on each other. Alex has a drug problem and because of that, we think we should separate him from his friends. There are alternative schools we were looking into in France, but they all fell through, as such, we think it's best he move to NYC.

Wait. Hold on. What? I have a drug problem, so the solution is to send me to New York City, of all places? Ri-fucking-diculous.

They're not stupid, so I dismissed that as being the real reason why I was sent back to NYC. I think it's a combination of my getting in trouble and being too much to handle, my grandmother's desire to move back to Cali (impossible any time soon if I were to stay in France and go to college there), and the fact that I failed sophomore year and had to stay back.

But is framing me really the adult way to approach this? Yeah sure, telling me "Go back and live with your mom, we don't wanna deal with you anymore," is going to hurt, but I'll understand to a certain degree, and I'd be able to get over it.

But my own blood lies to my mother about what they found in my room is just low. Aren't adults supposed to set an example?

I never got to say bye to my friends. From that day till today, some of my friends from France I haven't seen again, others I've seen once or twice in eleven years.

And since my "move" back to the States was unplanned, finding a school last minute over the summer was damn near impossible. Every school required teacher recommendations and a bunch of documents. It was summer break already. All the teachers in France were long gone.

We finally found a school in Ithaca, NY, about five hours away from the City. On brochure it sounded amazing. It was right next to Cornell University, it had an accelerated program, it looked like a complete paradise for dorks and geeks.

Going up there I really thought I was going to reform my ways, even quit smoking cigarettes. Boy was I wrong. And boy, was that brochure misleading.

But that's for another post. So when people invariably say that blood is thicker than water, I politely disagree.

Some things never change

Some background on this post is needed. I don't know my biological father. My parents divorced when I was young, and at the age of seven I went to live in France with my grandmother and her husband who became my guardian dad.

My father had been trying to find both my mom and me for 20+ years. My mom never thought it was the right time for me to reconnect with my father until 2007, so for 20 or so years, everytime my father found her number, she recognized his voice and said it was the wrong number.

So when I finally spoke to my father for the first time that I remember, things went smoothly, and we gathered that he was doing rather well for himself in China. As time went on though, he made false promises, was very disrepectful towards my mom, and found it very hard to believe that we were actually leading happy lives despite his absence.

In the end, there were multiple silences which lasted months, I sent an email saying some things never change, to which he replied that he was in an accident. He offered to send pictures of his injuries as proof, but instead he sent a black and white webcam pic, very low resolution, meanwhile his vacation pictures he sent in the same batch were all taken from a real digital camera and were clear.

He spoke to my mom one last time and indicated that he didn't understand my previous email when I politely told him to fuck off.

Here's the second and last email.

* * * * * * * *

"first, i would like to express my condolences for the deaths in your family. i do hope ur doing well

so i heard u had a few questions about the whole situation and regarding my last letter, so instead of leaving u to hear it from a third party, i rather have closure with people directly as to avoid misunderstandings

so lets start with the last email sent. i was doing my best to remain neutral and cordial, and above all to be respectful, but since it wasnt understood (although i thought it was painfully clear), i'll repeat myself in laymans terms

yes, i did say for u to find another son, because i have found a father who has raised me with respectable and good values, to whom i owe a defining portion of who i am today. he also taught me about the honor of being a man, abiding by my word. sure, we've all told lies before, i'm not claiming otherwise, but when a person is even thinking about lying and making empty promises to his son he hasn't seen in 20ish years, i think i can safely say thats in a league of its own

and ur reaction to mom when she asked for the money back? deplorable. if u cant even own up to a commitment of $3,000 (which, in ur own words, isnt $3,000,000!!), how can i expect u to commit to me as ur son? if i recall correctly, it was your idea, to pay my ex off for her furniture, it was your screen name that was asking for a loan from mom. and now u wont pay it back? i didnt need to buy the furniture to begin with. as much as i hate doing it, i can still break up my own relationships without paying the girl off. and that was ur solution? next thing i know, ur trying to pay me off too...

... or were u, with false promises of cars and six star resorts, inheritance and a lavish lifestyle...

on that same note, u couldnt even manage to visit? lol, what good is all that money u claim to have if u dont put it to use? i apologize, i should have realized! a quick weekend flight (especially if finances arent a concern) to visit ur long lost son is impossibly unbearable. i rest my case.

next. u mentioned that u want to talk about the past, because without the past, what else do u have to talk to me about? look, i thought i was doing u a favor by not holding u to the past, but hey, if u insist, sure i'll talk about it

for starters, why'd u kick me in the chest? or push me with ur foot, whatever u want to call it. in the end all it did was leave me with the memory that it was a kick, and ultimately from my perspective since i've lived all these years with that memory, doesnt that make it the truth to me? funny how the truth can be relative sometimes

and, where are my puzzles from the xmas when i was, 6, i think? or my nintendo that i left in taiwan? see, do u really want to talk about the past with me? thats my past of u. i was willing to give u a clean slate, but i guess ur an emotional masochist

(by the way, i dont actually expect answers to the above questions, i'd rather skip the bs)

ok, now what? since u got me started, i might as well finish. oh yeah. ur condescending tone to mom? the fact that u cant believe that we're happy with the lives we have? c'mon. what did u think, that we couldnt have possibly survived without u? that u would swoop down to rescue us and be our knight in shining armor? lol. no comment

also, just out of curiosity, of all the pictures u sent, why is the pic of ur scar the only one taken from a webcam? and in black & white? meanwhile every other one was a high resolution color pic? ur gonna say they were from a friends digital camera or something along those lines... with a mercedes amg 55 u dont own a real camera? lol

and give us some goddamn respect. dont talk to us or try to play mind games with us like we're fucking idiots. u do NOT know me, dont assume u do. and if ur going to lie to me, at least come up with something new, put some thought into it so its not so obvious. i just wanted to give u the benefit of the doubt

bottom line is, u screwed up. i gave u a year (ok, ok, 11 months) to back up ur words. ur failure to do so, well, thats on u. but, mom was right in saying i would see u if u showed up in nyc. its rather childish not to. but dont come here expecting a 7 year old boy. it'll just be annoying

so does this sum things up? most of this email is rhetorical, i dont need an answer. ur words, tone, attitude and lack of action so far have spoken enough for themselves."