My family invented the hard launch

I thought I’d kick off this newsletter with a kind of easy-breezy-beautiful, soft launch of a first edition. A dipping of the toe into the newsletter pool, if you will.

But my expectations being met? A hilarious lifetime 99% fail rate.

First, a teenty tinty introduction

Hi, I’m Nikki. I’m a writer and comedian, navigating my biggest fear—sharing any of my thoughts or feelings.

Second, a teenty tinty explanation of what this is and, also, is not

According to the internet, someone once said “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” Well, this is the before-time part of the equation. The present raw materials on their way to becoming future jokes. My intention here is to always be honest. And I can honestly promise that this won’t always be funny. Not yet, at least.

Ok, enough stalling. Who am I, my parents?

Last summer before I moved to LA, I had to sit my grown-ass adult-ass avoidant-ass folks down in their living room in NJ to deliver a talk I co-wrote with my therapist we were calling a “Declaration of Communication.”

Some background: I have been to so many more funerals than weddings in my life. So, I guess you’d call me a mourning person. (One of the first jokes I ever wrote.)

My family has a proclivity for planning funerals like surprise parties, which I can’t imagine was good for my little al dente brain. (It still doesn’t feel great even now.) My parents have taken an interesting don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach to illness and death. Enter, my therapist.

ME: Hey Tom, my folks already don’t tell me shit about what’s happening and I only live across the river. I can’t even begin to imagine how much they’ll “forget” to tell me with a whole country between us.
TOM: Let’s practice what you can say to them.
ME: Can you, just, do it?

So Tom helped me come up with a cue card, mad libs style— What’s something you can say you understand about them? How do you feel? What do you want? Why?

It was so annoying because I learned from the friggin’ best how to ignore all of those things.

All in all, it went pretty well. I only cried once and that’s only because if I feel any emotion even for a second, my voice cracks, my chin becomes a Clair Danes peach pit, and suddenly I’m crying. It’s why I would’ve made a very wet lawyer.

My mom smiled her classic “Sure, dear” and my dad said something gorgeous like “Well, we’ll try our best, but we’re not going to be 100% better about it overnight.” Which a) would have been a crazy expectation for me to have and b) really gave me a good look inside his haunted house.

And it’s been going, well, definitely not 100% better, so that’s something. Since our chat, I’ve found out in unreal time…

• My 95-year-old Nonna went to the hospital over the summer and has been in hospice since September.

• My 75-year-old aunt (and godmother) is on her third round of chemo to battle her newest crop of cancer.

• My 68-year-old father started radiation last week. I knew it was happening sometime in the ballpark of spring but only found out it had already begun when I texted him about a tax question. (“Do I have to pay them?”) And then followed up with “Wait, when are you starting treatment?” to which he responded “First session was today.”

• Okay and actually, the only reason I found out he had cancer in the first place was because he took a call from his doctor on speaker phone in the middle of the living room. And then he shouted the whole time, which is the perfect combination of “one-part deaf” and “one-part the walls are made of toilet paper.”

So it turns out my declaration was more of a loose suggestion. A real “no worries, if not.”

And, well… eventually, this will be funny. I don’t know when or why or how, but it just will be. It’s the only way I know how to process shock, confusion, sadness, isolation, loss, and the rest of that side of the emotional color wheel. Now you know the not-so-secret recipe of my homemade “Ohhhh, that’s why Nikki’s like that” salad.

The same way it was eventually funny that, when I was in high school, my mom didn’t really tell my sister and I she had breast cancer until she had already started chemo and her hair started flying out the window of the car while she was driving us home from a volleyball game.

The same way it was eventually funny that, when my Nonno died—baby’s first funeral—Nonna climbed into the casket while it was open for his wake and it took MANY men to get her back out.

The same way it was eventually funny that, on the actual night I graduated from college, my dad had a heart attack in the middle of the night and instead of telling my sister and I, my mom drove him to the hospital and then texted us from the ER the next morning. At least we were packed for the vacation to Florida we didn’t get to take. (Probably for the best.)

I love my family, I really do. But if they hard launch one more piece of bad news, I’m going to kill them myself.

Instant funny: Today is my parents’ 37th wedding anniversary. With any luck, they’ll die in their sleep, in each others’ arms. Not NOW! I give ‘em another 20 years, somehow.