These shirts and stickers are gross. Just gross. She found it a year ago: “Wooden Spoon Survivor,” and thought it was soooo funny. At the time, I might have laughed out of discomfort, but it wasn’t terribly triggering. Thank goodness for years of therapy, because today she hands me a decal, not a sticker but a window sticker that’s backwards, (I…don’t even have a valid license let alone a car…) and laughed as she did so.

I know by the laugh that accompanied it that she genuinely thought I would laugh. It’s one of shared mirth that I recognize well. I glanced down and saw it and said “I honestly don’t find this funny.” She was kinda taken aback and said “why??!” I said “because someone once broke one over the small of my back?” And she said “well fine give it here then,” I did, and that was that.

I texted my younger brother, the unwilling golden child who is one of my best friends in the world, and I asked if he had ever gotten the spoon, or if it was just the whiffle ball bat for him. He confirmed, after they broke the one, they phased it out in favor of a thin plastic child’s bat, as well as a wooden sword purchased at the renaissance fair. I was the only one who ever got the spoon.

Thank god; I took every bit of it so he didn’t have to and he’s so stable and happy today. Worth every bit of my own personal hell and dysfunction, because I have a sister now who I love with all my heart, and they have a son who is literally the light of my life. The reason I keep waking up.

I honestly don’t know what I feel right now. I understand that the generation before me looks back on childhood punishment as a gift, a teaching moment, but that wasn’t what it meant to get spanked with something that left welts for days. Similar to a switch. Literally leaves lashes on your child and you think you’re doing right by them? I told my brother that I’m so proud of them for breaking that cycle and raising my nephew without beating him and finding it hilarious. His wife’s mom tells a story of how his wife was being especially nasty to her one day as a teen, and how she yanked her up by her arm and dragged her to her room, beating her ass the whole way, and she either almost did, or did dislocate his wife’s shoulder. She tells this story at family gatherings. Everyone laughs. I get why it’s something she laughed at.

It just feels so gross to me.