The Gene Pool: Swim At Your Own Risk

The first thing my father did when he walked through the door after work was remove his hat, loosen his tie, and head straight to the kitchen where my mother stood stirring something on the stove. He’d kiss her cheek - a quiet, habitual gesture - and then move to the bar to mix their martinis. Vodka, on the rocks, always. He’d carry his glass to the sun porch to watch the news and let the day fade. She’d stay in the kitchen, sipping hers while finishing dinner. It was a familiar rhythm - reliable, even comforting.

There were no slammed doors, no dramatic scenes. Just a second martini, maybe a glass of wine with dinner. But by dessert, my father’s words might start to slur, or his eyelids would slip into that slow, heavy half-mast. The tension in the room wasn’t loud. It lived in the glances across the table, in the subtle ways we all learned to smooth things over.

Alcohol wasn’t questioned. It was culture. Ritual. Expected. Looking back now, I see what I couldn’t then: the soft anesthesia of it all. The way it dulled the edges, kept the hard truths at bay, and turned feeling into something optional. This was the water my brothers and I swam in - deceptively still on the surface, with a ripple effect underneath that we couldn’t explain.

Meet Brenna. She is a nod to inherited chaos, family rituals, and the blurry line between tradition and dysfunction. She is a symbol for anyone who’s ever wondered about the waters they were raised in.

I love a good cocktail - this isn’t a judgment on how my parents drank - it’s hard to describe. It’s a look at what was left unsaid, what was sidestepped night after night as the drinks settled in. They weren’t trying to avoid us or each other. They weren’t bad parents. They were doing what many of us do - numbing, without even realizing it, because feeling everything is exhausting.

With some distance and my own set of coping habits, I can see the pattern more clearly. My lineage of avoidance and our generational mantra, we don’t talk about that. It makes you think about the stories that have been passed down, not by what is said, but through silence.