Page 48 - MN

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What I do know is that one day (or night, I can't remember) Nan was on the back of a borrowed Suzuki 600 motorcycle being driven by long-haired guy who sold vacuum cleaners door to door. A Cadillac blew through a stop sign and T- boned them. Nan was badly injured with a broken pelvis. I went down to see her, along with our parents, and it was really sad but she was upbeat.
She recovered, and overcame drugs and alcohol. This alone makes her a hero in my eyes. She also had a daughter, Onami, and they got out of San Francisco and moved to Ohio. I have no idea why, but she's lived there ever since. She's worked various low-paying jobs and happily lives a hippie life. She's also come to visit us in Chiangmai, and she seems both fragile and strong. We e-mail each other about our various bouts with depression, and life in general, and I am proud to be her brother.
One more thing. Our mother. Mom and dad were very smart and graduated near the top of their classes at Wayne University in Detroit. They were also talented, both playing the piano and active in amateur theaters in Michigan. My theory is that mom should've had a career. I don't think she was cut out to be a housewife, but I normally don't have a clue about other people so you can take that with a grain of salt. Both mom and dad were very attractive and very social, with lots of friends and lots of gatherings at our house.
We three kids were a huge disappointment to mom.
I should include our younger brother, Tim. He was a surprise baby, arriving seven years after Nancy. Tim is a great guy and we've been quite close over the years. His first problem was that he was chubby as a kid. He was a good pitcher in little league, but got razzed unmercifully about his weight. He also didn't like school much, which was a big letdown to mom and dad.
In high school he developed a love of pottery and spent hours in his downstairs bedroom throwing pots on his wheel. He became quite good. All I know is one night he got in a huge argument with mom and broke all his pots. I have no idea what that was about, as I was away at college and heard about it later.
He made it out of high school and tried college but didn't like it. What he did like was skiing. Mom had forced him to go skiing. He fought it, didn't want to go, but then he fell in love with it. He told me how the kids used to make jumps under the chairlift so they could show off, and one time he jumped too close to the lift tower. You know those metal loops they use as rungs to climb the lift towers? He got about ten feet in the air and the the tip of his ski went through that loop and it ripped off the ski. All he could remember was the collective gasp of the people on the chairs above, but he landed the jump on one ski and got a huge round of applause. Of course he then had to take off the ski, climb the tower and get his other ski, which was kind of anticlimactic.