Archive for the ‘reunions’ tag
Reunions, Sunbeams and Disconnection
Flashback to September 2008, a selection taken from emails I wrote at the time.
But it’s made me so freaking beyond lonely sometimes, I can’t even tell you. I mean it’s just like they say, about how much lonelier you can feel in a crowd. That’s totally what I’m experiencing – when I was at my reclusive best I was happy with my own company. But now that I’m on the fringes of this other community, watching them interact and seeing their easy intimacy with one another – it’s not so much that I covet it necessarily. It’s not exactly a “seeing what I’m missing” situation, either. It’s more that it makes me feel intensely aware of my own otherness. My not-quite-fittedness. My disconnection.
Plus I’m freaking out about my decision to take care of my mother once a week. That decision in itself, while carefully considered and made from a place of strength, has served to make me feel outrageously vulnerable just now. I am not naturally disposed to maternal roles beyond the norm – even learning how to mother my own kids can be a stretch sometimes – I was never the eldest or the one likely to take charge. I was baby of the family through and through, and while I learned to fake a certain level of maturity so well that I even had myself convinced, caretaking will never come naturally to me. (Let me clarify – I think that the urge most definitely does, but the wisdom and tools and general wherewithal does not. At all.) So it’s not that I think parenting a parent is an easy role reversal for anyone, I just feel even less equipped than most. I barely know how to take care of myself.
“They don’t have to love me.” “I don’t have to be scared of talking to my brother.” “I will not become my mother’s permanent full time caretaker.” “God is not dead.” My head is filled with too many mantras this month.
Sunday. You don’t want to hear from me on Sunday. It seems like no matter what I do – everything from sleeping through it to creating new traditions to ignoring it to writing poetry about it – I still end up draining the septic tank of my life on Sunday. Not even Jesus would want me for a sunbeam today.
I just had a small family reunion – and believe me, we’re not a close family, either. But it’s sort of a tradition now that every summer my brother comes up from New Mexico, and my extremely neurotic, possibly insane mother says “Oh, I could die any minute of some exotic and strange disease that the doctors refuse to admit I have, this might be my last chance to have all my children together” (on the one hand, you have to understand, she never recovered from my Dad dying and that’s very sad. On the other hand, she’s always been a manipulative control freak psycho in her heart of hearts) and so we get together and eat potato chips and pretend to have something in common. It’s awkward and strained with moments of hope interlaced and I always cry on the way home because it just reminds me that I’m never going to have a close family but I’m always going to wish we were. So there’s that. My Dad was kind of the class and the sanity in the family, and when he died everyone sort of splintered and now we all seem (to me) about half a step away from a Jerry Springer episode.
And besides, don’t let my radical turn fool you, I’m still the same girl at heart that chooses her education, religion, alcohol and men (okay, well maybe not men) on the same principle – take what works for you at the moment, and leave the rest for someone else. Probably someone haughty and judge-y and who’s going to pick on you later for letting your kids watch television or for lying to them about Santa Claus or because they won’t get enough socialization. But fuck ‘em. Everyone has an opinion.
And I’m a big believer in the idea that we do what we’re capable of once we’re capable of it, and every little misstep and procrastination and failure and freak out in a person’s past was necessary to get them to the place where they can accomplish what they think they should have been able to accomplish ten years ago. I have regrets, I even have some shame about my behavior or my lack of ability to step up or whatever in the past. But when all is said and done I believe that I’m honestly always doing the very best that I can. Sometimes my best is crap, see, but that’s life. I think this same thing is true about most of us.
Reconvening with the Kith and Kin
My brother is currently in town, and you know what that means. Time for another “I don’t mean to alarm you, but this-might-be-the-last-chance-I-have-for-all-of-my-kids-to-be-together-again-under-my-roof before I DIE!!!” reunion at Mom’s house. It happens annually, and we show up like the gullible schmucks that we are, toting bags of chips and a few cases of pop for the weenie roast portion of the festivities, even knowing as we do that she’s pulled the same gag for six years running and she will more than likely out live us all.
Ode to my Beloved Mother, the Soul-Sucking Octopus ©2006 Kelly Buchholz
Now I’m probably not the first person to feel as though she’s using the term “family” loosely when she talks about a family reunion. But I also feel hesitation at using the label “reunion” for them, as well. Last year when we showed up at the agreed upon time, my sister-in-law was napping. My sister sat and chatted for five minutes before absconding with our teen-aged niece to go clothes shopping. My husband was dispatched along with my mother’s husband to get the KFC, and after sitting and watching TV with my mother – the only one left awake besides my kids, who had given up and pulled out their handhelds by then – and feeling curiously like it was any other visit, I finally sat and texted on my cell phone to a sympathetic friend because there was nothing else to do.
My sister-in-law eventually got up from her nap – and vacuumed. The chicken arrived and we ate it, awkwardly and spread across three separate rooms. My brother broke tradition slightly and spent some time playing with my kids, and then my sister and niece returned as we were leaving.
Not being much of a veteran of family reunions I can’t say for sure, but I was operating under the impression that most of them are spent – um – together?
I could be wrong.
A few months later my mother related the tale of that day – she has a habit of re-translating most events into her own perspective of what happened, sometimes a different version for everyone just to keep things fresh. A delightful consequence of her aging memory is that I often get all the various interpretations retold to me eventually, as she’ll forget which story was meant for me. Occasionally it happens in the same phone conversation, if it’s a long one. So it wasn’t altogether strange to have her telling me about a day that I’d actually taken part in, but it eventually became clear that she didn’t remember that we had even been there.
There is nothing worse than playing happy family with a group of relative strangers for the benefit of a mother who has been dying of nothing much more than a tragic but natural side effect of aging for the last 6 years, only to discover later that you don’t even get the attendance points for it. I swore I would never do another one.
It’s a beautiful day.
And here I go.
