Last Flight Out. Jennifer Psy.D. Vaughn

hair. We almost laughed it off, but then the national media picked it up and played me off as Senator Mel Sheridan’s brutal beast of a daughter who obviously needed anger management intervention before someone else got hurt. My mother never addressed the picture directly, but her office did release a statement saying something to the effect of… “Our family respects the rules of all organized sports, and would expect the coaches to dole out the proper punishments for anyone caught breaking them.”

      My mother was fiercely protective of her children, but she did make me well aware that the ponytail smack down was not acceptable behavior and she hoped I had learned a valuable life lesson that this type of crisis resolution did not work on the soccer field or in the real world.

      Being Mel and Brett Sheridan’s daughter meant lots of little life lessons and discussions about better ways to handle those unexpected moments.

      Inasmuch as I say we are a dysfunctional family, follow me here. Imagine what it feels like to live up to someone else’s expectations every stinking day of your life. Let me tell you, it can be daunting, frustrating, and just about impossible. It makes me weak, but I crawl back every time. Where else am I supposed to go?

      Certainly, dysfunction is not always so subtle. It can come in the abusive taunts you hear hollered from the sidelines of a football game full of ten-year-olds. It can be the absentee mother, the only parent not to show up for the third grade Halloween party. It can be all of those obvious things, or it can be more refined and keen, cutting swaths of pain through your psyche deeper than a serrated edge can slither through skin.

      I should know. It’s been happening to me my entire life.

      I grew up denying my emotions, cutting off their air until they were insignificant enough to ignore. I may not be the same person I am today if I had been allowed to cry, or scream, or feel sorry for myself…just once. When you develop your personality based on other people’s expectations, you can’t help but wonder where you might have wound up.

      Or with whom.

      I have chased many a good man away with my inability to share, or indulge the give and take of a normal relationship. I have been told I’m far too independent, way too self-reliant, and much too eager to take on the role of the provider.

      That’s pretty much more than enough to scare off almost anyone, and who could blame them anyway?

      I’m a total drag. Now I have cancer.

      Can I have a table for one? For the rest of my life.

      Time has come for me to tell someone. Cancer is a tough thing to sit on for too long, and there is so much information to wade through I need a second set of eyes to understand it all. I’ve ruled out telling any of my family members first. I think that needs to wait until I can get them all in one room so I don’t have to keep repeating the shitty details of what’s to come.

      Of course, getting the vice president to lock in on a place and time is a bit like walking through a corn maze with a blindfold wrapped around your head.

      Whenever I need to speak to my mother, I usually start with my dad. At least he is easier to keep track of these days, and I don’t have to start with the chain of command to get him live on the phone. He keeps himself busy with several business ventures and a ton of charity work. My favorite is the non-profit he runs for inner city athletes who show real promise but are saddled with crack whores for mothers and fathers who beat them up.

      He is always available to us, just a phone call away, albeit on a highly safeguarded phone. As the second-husband and all, he is constantly under the protection of Secret Service, but he insisted on maintaining a personal Blackberry for business purposes and for family necessity. It’s not your typical Blackberry, of course. This one has encoded GPS, and an emergency line that connects him immediately to the Situation Room at the White House. All incoming calls are cleared from a list of known or suspected terrorist extensions, and the line is untraceable.

      That’s about as private as it’s going to get when your wife is the vice president.

      All of us live with certain measures in place to ensure our safety. We also have secure cells, and our addresses are kept off the public information rolls. I get a monthly update from the national security investigators on any attempted breaches, as do my sister, brother and grandparents. This was a point of contention early on in the president’s administration. Apparently, it was a novel idea to share security information with civilians, but my mother insisted her family receive notification if they were in imminent danger. She also demanded each of her children receive a version of my father’s tricked out Blackberry, and even made a few attempts to extend Secret Service protection to us, even though technically we didn’t qualify for it because we were all adults. What Mama wants, Mama gets because eventually the White House relented on the phone, but not on the A-Team. Personally, I prefer the whole ignorance is bliss theory, but my mother is the antithesis of ignorance and bliss, so the phone goes everywhere I go. Same drill for my brother and sister. At least we don’t have the men in black trailing us around.

      Kelby, most of all, will hate that I am about to become a talking point, she is quite used to claiming that all for herself thank you very much. She loves that she is the spitting image of my mother with striking yet classic features, a wide genuine smile, and a cascade of honey blonde hair. She is tall enough to cast a noticeable shadow when she enters a room, yet beguiling enough to make her your best friend. Instead of envying Kelby, you just want to bask in her light. Until she burns your skin off, that is. Kelby is by no means evil, but she is opportunistic, self-serving, and completely obsessed with one thing.

      Herself.

      All those life lessons our parents forced down our throats have been kicked back up in Kelby’s case. I deal with her a couple of ways. I never expect too much, and I keep a safe distance. She’s wrapping up her last few semesters of grad school, then lord help the poor soul who gets her next.

      Then there is Kass, my little brother and my hero. He is also a mirror image of our mother, but that works for him. Tall and strong, Kass is like the guys on the Abercrombie & Fitch murals at the mall. Ripped muscles, broad shoulders, long legs, Kass is the total package. Throw in a couple of perfectly placed dimples that look like God gave his cheeks a quick pinch before sending him down here to earth, and Kass is just about perfect. He also happens to be the best man I know.

      When we were little Kass was always the one who wanted to linger at the soup kitchen, who stood up for the nerdy kid who couldn’t catch a baseball with an eight-foot net, and really took to heart the pious message our parents preached from the time we were old enough to hold our own sippy cups.

      If there were one family member I would consider dropping this news on first, it would be Kass. He would rush to my side, hold my hand, and spew forth well-intentioned happy lines that I know he would honestly believe. That I would be fine, that this would make me stronger, that my chemo-ravaged hair would grow back better than ever. I know he would be there for me, but I don’t want him to have to be. I want him to continue on his journey of good will, to stay shiny, happy, and untouched by the shower of shit that is about to pour down on me.

      Kass may look like my mother, but everything else was transferred directly from my father’s DNA. Good genes have delivered to him a bomb of a right arm, so it took no time at all for Kass to blow right by kids his own age in every sport he ever tried. By high school, the buzz on him exploded. Recruiters would line the metal fences of the baseball field, or the upper bleachers at the Friday night football games, scratching down notes or whispering into their cell phones. Not that there is not hard work involved, although I think that if there is any percentage of a successful outcome that depends on the hand of fate scooping up your ass at just the right time, the fingers are permanently cupped for Kass. Not too long after being drafted into the NFL, he shut down the critics who said he was nothing more than an entitled kid with overinflated expectations. This boy can play!

      Sometimes Kass will bring his government issued cell into the postgame press conferences, dial up the White House and put the phone on speaker so the Sunday afternoon VIP crowd gathered at the other end can hear the whole thing.

      He’s a regular