Who Said the Best Nuts Come From California?

As I've mentioned before, my mom had a nervous breakdown about 10 years ago. It followed the deaths of my uncle (my dad's brother-in-law), my grandmother (my dad's mom) and one of their closest friends (from cancer). All three deaths occurred within six months of each other.

I can play amateur shrink and guess how each affected her -- when my uncle died, she probably equated that with my dad's own immortality. I know I did. With my grandmother, she had a relationship she wished she could have had with her own mother, but didn't. And then when Tom died, again a peer, and like my uncle, equated it with her or my my dad's immortality.

Fast forward through a hospital stay and therapy and weird Fran vibes and suddenly having a totally different person as my mom -- 10 years later, and my great-aunt died. And Fran took charge -- of the funeral, of my uncle, of the legal stuff, of the apartment, etc. She never allowed herself time to grieve. About a month after the funeral, she had some sort of anxiety attack and went to the doctor.

He told her she needed to start seeing her shrink again. Of course that made me question how often she does, in fact, get her head shrunk. She's been on some sort of anti-depressant for the past 10 years. "Maintenance meds," she calls them. Though I don't know if that's a real term or something she made up to rationalize it.

So I asked her, how often do you get your head shrunk? She said, I'm supposed to go once a year, but it's been longer than that.

But medications change, I argued with her. They lose their effectiveness, or your body gets used to them, like antibiotics. Happy pills probably work the same way -- you need to get your head shrunk more often.

She agreed, but I think really just to shut me up.

The kicker -- the kicker to all of this -- is after she had her "incident," after her anxiety attack, but before she mentioned it to me and my siblings, she was on the phone with my 30-year-old niece, telling her all about it. How upset she's been, how she needs to deal with Marion's death, how hard it's been, but -- she says -- don't tell Ellie, I don't want her to be upset.

Don't tell Ellie! Don't tell your daughter, but it's okay to tell your granddaughter.

Ellie is almost 36 years old. Ellie is not a baby. But in my family, my niece -- with her house and her husband and her baby -- is more of an adult than me. That's the message it sends -- and it's not the first time, it's not the first incident that tells me that. I come from a family where every child is married (except me), where every married child (save one) was married in their 20s. And the one who wasn't married until her 40s, was all but married, living with someone in her mid-20s for more than 10 years.

I'm not sure what it all means, other than my family needs a reality check.

Or I need to stop taking it all so personally.

Or both.