So come visit me at my flickr page:
www.flickr.com/photos/herspiral
Monday, April 28, 2008
More visual than verbal lately...
So come visit me at my flickr page:
www.flickr.com/photos/herspiral
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
De Novo
"De novo mutation, a genetic mutation that neither parent possessed nor transmitted."
I am continuing to work on Orphano, which has a stronger drive (probably connected to the total fiction element) than the "family novel" did. There's a fair amount of background science involved - though I'd prefer the book to be "speculative" fiction rather than "science" fiction, the fact is that I set up a premise which relies on somewhat accurate, or at least, believable future science, in order to work out for the other factors - the characters, how they got there, what the settings are.
This I stumbled on while reading an article in the Sun, in fact, an essay by a woman who was trying to decide whether or not to "keep" a son who would likely be born with a genetic mutation in her family that is carried by the women and exhibited in the men. She mentioned that Abraham Lincoln had Marfan's Syndrome, and, as Laine and I are always curious about Lincoln (fascinating guy!) I mentioned it to him that night and we did some research. In reading about Marfan (it turns out most people think that the "parents of children with Marfan" group of the times made it out to be a case that hasn't actually been proved), I discovered this reference to "de novo mutation", as it seems that 25-30% of children with Marfan receive it not from either parent, but just out of thin air, so to speak.
Perfect. This was the puzzle piece I was missing. I know so little about mutation, and I didn't know what my chances were of making something believable come out of thin air. Turns out, without getting into specifics, that they are quite good. Bad for potential parents, worrying about the health of their upcoming kids, good for novelists in need of a deus ex machina.
I also related to this new concept in my own personal way, as is my way. De novo - of new. Fresh start. Visiting with my therapist yesterday we talked about how things have been going. I started some SSRI meds to counteract what had become quite severe PMDD, and although I have been hypersensitive to side effects, the actual desired effect has been great. We talked about how removing those two weeks of high anxiety (some months!) from my life has really cleared the air so I can deal with emotions on their own level, and actually enjoy the successes of teaching, for instance. Then, he congratulated me on being so successful so soon (I had to add another class of 7 this time around so that I could accommodate all the new students from the Isthmus article a couple of months back) and even though earlier on in the day I had written about how *I* got myself here, how much *I* am responsible for this success, I needed a moment to turn around something and credit things I think of as "negative" characteristics of my parents - my father's work-aholism and my mother's extreme sensitivity to others - as being part of the whole picture. I realized for the first time since seeing my parents more and more as "real" people with "real" faults that everything has many sides, and, as the Buddhist parable goes, enlightenment is just as much in a pile of feces as in a wheat or flower field (paraphrase).
Of course, he turned it back on me, and gave me credit, making sure I didn't pass it all to my parents. But it was good to see all three, then all the other factors of course which (or in some cases, whom) have contributed to my being here, right now, doing what I am doing and doing it well. Every day feels so new - sometimes hard new (one student wrote this week about the Eleanor Roosevelt quote - "Do something frightening once a day" and she said "sometimes getting out of bed is that one thing"), sometimes delightful new (I actually feel like the last two weeks off *were* vacation for the first time in a long time!), but always new.
This is reality's one guarantee. A life of constant mutation.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Understand What I've Become (It Wasn't My Design)
-The Cranberries/Ode to My Family
Working on the "novel" (or whatever it is!) about my family has become too hard. I thought I might reach a point like this, where trying to talk about the history of my family would go from therapeutic to harrowing, and it did. Sherryl, my godmother and mom's best friend from college, came up to visit a few weeks ago, seeing my house for the first time, and her pain and pleasure combined when she saw things of my mom's intertwined into my own. We talked a lot over a bottle of wine - never directly about the novel, but more recounting stories, which, usually, spurs me to writing even more in that story. But somehow the truth of who my family was, each individual person, I just couldn't handle the complexity anymore of fictionalizing them.
So two projects have become of the novel. One is a novel that came to mind late one night, a few steps away, but where I can direct a lot of my pain and energies about the role of family and being an orphan - "Orphano" (working title), a book that, now that I've read Parable of the Sower (thanks Steph!) reminds me a great deal of the gist of Butler's masterpiece. A book told from the perspective of only orphans. Without getting into all the details, as it's too early to recount them without putting the novel in the way of other's interpretations, the only folks alive are not only parentless but also incapable of reproducing, from the same cause. Struggling with what family means, what parents mean and being children - not just young, but coming from someone - has come SO MUCH "EASIER" (read: emotionally) writing in total fiction. The emotions don't feel fictional, but the story, which edges on science fiction, certainly is. I think I needed to write half the "family novel" in order to get to this. And who says the "family novel" won't come back? It likely will, some day when I can get far enough away from it. Right now it's just too close, and the wrong kind of close, a claustrophobic kind of close.
The second project is a memoir. Natalie Goldberg finally put out her memoir book, a fitting "follow up" to Writing Down the Bones , called An Old Friend From Far Away. In an interview in the Shambhala Sun, she points out that younger and younger folk have been coming to her workshops on memoir over the last few years, and that she has gone from believing that only those in their fifties or older can write memoir to believing that, if done right, even a teenager can have enough material for a memoir. If there's one thing I've got, it's material. Jesus.I realized after reading the article how hard it was to keep myself out of the "family novel", and it was killing me a bit to do that. So I've begun a non-fictional memoir, the exact opposite of the "family novel" project. It feels really, really good, very clean and clear, and sure. I am excited about writing again, instead of feeling like it's my "job" to write out my family's history.
This has also lead to me making a mix (it's been years since I've made a mix!) to entertain me and help me ponder how music has contributed to my relationships to my dead parents over the years (this year it will be 18 YEARS since my dad died - I have lived "an adult" amount of years without him). Suggestions are welcome!
Here's the rough draft: (copies available of final draft for those who ask!)
ORPHANO MIX
Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World - Johnny Clegg and Savuka
Mommy Says No! - Asylum Street Spankers
Mothers Talk - Tears for Fears
Roses - Kanye West
Kyles Mom's a B**ch - Eric Cartman
Deadbeat Daddy - Alix Olson
Mother Stands for Comfort - Kate Bush
Oh Father - Madonna
(Every Woman I Go Out With Becomes My) Mother (In the End)- The Police
Look Mama - Howard Jones
Digging in the Dirt - Peter Gabriel
My Father as a Guitar - Martin Espada
Ode to My Family - the Cranberries
Angry Any More - Ani DiFranco
I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) - The Cox Family
Tell Your Mama Come - The Black Eyed Peas
Mama, I'm Coming Home - Ozzy Ozbourne
I Will Never Forget - Kimya Dawson
Other potentials - that great Mama song by Phil Collins/Genesis - I need to track down a copy, but ever since the This American Life episode where Starlee Kine interviews Phil Collins, I've been thinking about that song...
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=339
Finally, this might sound kind of funny, but for so many years I hesitated to use or think of the word "orphan". There's a lot of history around this, but for the most part I assumed that "true orphans" had two characteristics: both parents died before 18, and that they are only children. The first part got debunked in a study I was a part of a few years ago, which in theory was going to turn into a book, though I have yet to hear of any results. The study's thesis was that if a child loses both parents before THE AGE OF 30 (my age) the results are as deleterious as losing both parents before 18. I was a part of many discussion groups about this, and the results the participating "orphans" decided on were that, yes, in fact, 18 means little in terms of actual adult life, and that 30 is a better gauge of when one becomes a "real adult", so losing one's parents before this age causes just as much confusion as losing them before 18, though, in most cases, fewer "complications".
Second part of the "inner definition" I had made me feel "guilty" about using the word, because I have two brothers, both older, and so I've never really been going it alone. But one of my characters in the Orphano novel is very curious about what it means to *be* an orphan, so she looks up the definition and, lo and behold, so did I, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE.
Parentless. That's all it means. Of course, dictionaries aren't common usage, and are often an inaccurate representation, but somehow reading this validated my feelings of loneliness (maybe a false ground - we all feel lonely a lot, with or without parents!) for a small moment. Not like I'll start using the word more often, but it's good to know some kind of external, "unbiased" authority validates that even though I lost my mom at 19, I can still feel lonely about it, with brothers or not.
Funny how hopeful all of this feels. I described to Dylan that dealing with my parents as real people, especially my father, coming to terms with what it is I actually lost, is hard, not easy, and yet, when one is ready (and I feel more ready all the time to get at the nuances, with time) it feels a bit more like a styrofoam wall than a plastic bag - something I can work with and through, rather than fight against with little success.
Working on the "novel" (or whatever it is!) about my family has become too hard. I thought I might reach a point like this, where trying to talk about the history of my family would go from therapeutic to harrowing, and it did. Sherryl, my godmother and mom's best friend from college, came up to visit a few weeks ago, seeing my house for the first time, and her pain and pleasure combined when she saw things of my mom's intertwined into my own. We talked a lot over a bottle of wine - never directly about the novel, but more recounting stories, which, usually, spurs me to writing even more in that story. But somehow the truth of who my family was, each individual person, I just couldn't handle the complexity anymore of fictionalizing them.
So two projects have become of the novel. One is a novel that came to mind late one night, a few steps away, but where I can direct a lot of my pain and energies about the role of family and being an orphan - "Orphano" (working title), a book that, now that I've read Parable of the Sower (thanks Steph!) reminds me a great deal of the gist of Butler's masterpiece. A book told from the perspective of only orphans. Without getting into all the details, as it's too early to recount them without putting the novel in the way of other's interpretations, the only folks alive are not only parentless but also incapable of reproducing, from the same cause. Struggling with what family means, what parents mean and being children - not just young, but coming from someone - has come SO MUCH "EASIER" (read: emotionally) writing in total fiction. The emotions don't feel fictional, but the story, which edges on science fiction, certainly is. I think I needed to write half the "family novel" in order to get to this. And who says the "family novel" won't come back? It likely will, some day when I can get far enough away from it. Right now it's just too close, and the wrong kind of close, a claustrophobic kind of close.
The second project is a memoir. Natalie Goldberg finally put out her memoir book, a fitting "follow up" to Writing Down the Bones , called An Old Friend From Far Away. In an interview in the Shambhala Sun, she points out that younger and younger folk have been coming to her workshops on memoir over the last few years, and that she has gone from believing that only those in their fifties or older can write memoir to believing that, if done right, even a teenager can have enough material for a memoir. If there's one thing I've got, it's material. Jesus.I realized after reading the article how hard it was to keep myself out of the "family novel", and it was killing me a bit to do that. So I've begun a non-fictional memoir, the exact opposite of the "family novel" project. It feels really, really good, very clean and clear, and sure. I am excited about writing again, instead of feeling like it's my "job" to write out my family's history.
This has also lead to me making a mix (it's been years since I've made a mix!) to entertain me and help me ponder how music has contributed to my relationships to my dead parents over the years (this year it will be 18 YEARS since my dad died - I have lived "an adult" amount of years without him). Suggestions are welcome!
Here's the rough draft: (copies available of final draft for those who ask!)
ORPHANO MIX
Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World - Johnny Clegg and Savuka
Mommy Says No! - Asylum Street Spankers
Mothers Talk - Tears for Fears
Roses - Kanye West
Kyles Mom's a B**ch - Eric Cartman
Deadbeat Daddy - Alix Olson
Mother Stands for Comfort - Kate Bush
Oh Father - Madonna
(Every Woman I Go Out With Becomes My) Mother (In the End)- The Police
Look Mama - Howard Jones
Digging in the Dirt - Peter Gabriel
My Father as a Guitar - Martin Espada
Ode to My Family - the Cranberries
Angry Any More - Ani DiFranco
I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) - The Cox Family
Tell Your Mama Come - The Black Eyed Peas
Mama, I'm Coming Home - Ozzy Ozbourne
I Will Never Forget - Kimya Dawson
Other potentials - that great Mama song by Phil Collins/Genesis - I need to track down a copy, but ever since the This American Life episode where Starlee Kine interviews Phil Collins, I've been thinking about that song...
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=339
Finally, this might sound kind of funny, but for so many years I hesitated to use or think of the word "orphan". There's a lot of history around this, but for the most part I assumed that "true orphans" had two characteristics: both parents died before 18, and that they are only children. The first part got debunked in a study I was a part of a few years ago, which in theory was going to turn into a book, though I have yet to hear of any results. The study's thesis was that if a child loses both parents before THE AGE OF 30 (my age) the results are as deleterious as losing both parents before 18. I was a part of many discussion groups about this, and the results the participating "orphans" decided on were that, yes, in fact, 18 means little in terms of actual adult life, and that 30 is a better gauge of when one becomes a "real adult", so losing one's parents before this age causes just as much confusion as losing them before 18, though, in most cases, fewer "complications".
Second part of the "inner definition" I had made me feel "guilty" about using the word, because I have two brothers, both older, and so I've never really been going it alone. But one of my characters in the Orphano novel is very curious about what it means to *be* an orphan, so she looks up the definition and, lo and behold, so did I, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE.
Parentless. That's all it means. Of course, dictionaries aren't common usage, and are often an inaccurate representation, but somehow reading this validated my feelings of loneliness (maybe a false ground - we all feel lonely a lot, with or without parents!) for a small moment. Not like I'll start using the word more often, but it's good to know some kind of external, "unbiased" authority validates that even though I lost my mom at 19, I can still feel lonely about it, with brothers or not.
Funny how hopeful all of this feels. I described to Dylan that dealing with my parents as real people, especially my father, coming to terms with what it is I actually lost, is hard, not easy, and yet, when one is ready (and I feel more ready all the time to get at the nuances, with time) it feels a bit more like a styrofoam wall than a plastic bag - something I can work with and through, rather than fight against with little success.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Record breaking
Yesterday we got the two inches that push us over the record for snow for the season.
When I was a kid, Josh (my neighbor friend and super long-time childhood crush) and I would build these forts out of the snow in the front yard - that's right, not out of the curb snow, but the actual yard snow - into which we could sequester ourselves, though not at whole body height, in comfortable crouch positions. As I have told folks that we did this for years on end, and how Wisconsin winters have changed, anyone not from here or younger than I am has said "Well, you were so little, so of course the snow seemed deeper." You kidding me? Look at the stuff we've gotten in the last few years! *Mice* couldn't make a decent crouching fort out of it!
But not this winter. Finally, not only did we outdo my own personal records, but also the State record for our recorded history so far. Wow. And now I am ready for it to be done. Not "run off to Tahiti cuz I hate the stuff" done (or even a wedding in Aruba, wink wink) but just worn out. I was reading back over a few entries and I saw that in August I was fading under 90-something degree heat. Now it's February and under zero again, with windchills well below. Hmmm. Well, I guess I can't love all the seasons all the time.
It's been since the holidays that I have posted. I quickly finished up my WCATY class for the term, after the holidays, then immediately began commuting to Milwaukee once a week to teach the inaugural class of Miksang at Marquette University. This in itself, though a big chance to schedule, life and energy, wouldn't have been such a time suck, but I also was working a lot of hours at the Overture, my part time job, as this is our busiest bus show season. And then, there's the weather, Milwaukee regardless of the weather, a snowstorm every Thursday for weeks on end. In there, my godmother visited my house for the first time and we finally saw Dan and Sus again, but otherwise my weeks mostly consisted of a January of shuffling from one job to the other, one of the main reasons I left my other fields of work.
I also have had lots of insights about pretty important things in the post-holiday season: that in fearing becoming my mother, I often embody the less savory aspects of my father; that I tend to isolate a lot when I have time on my hands and get lost without structure; that I pretty much hate driving; that up until now I have still had a hard time valuing my own work (so I gave myself a raise and promised myself two days off a week, which has helped a lot!); and that I need more visual art in my life - making it, seeing it, even just looking at books of it. So it's been a strong time of growth and nurturing, which I am now implementing, as Overture has slowed down...
So the latter part of this isn't as record-breaking in the traditional sense, but here's one record I'd like to think I am breaking - the karmic record of my family, with its self-and other abuse, bit by bit, postcard by phone call by quiet moments with the cat and a book of Andy Goldsworthy's work. Nothing huge, but very significant.
When I was a kid, Josh (my neighbor friend and super long-time childhood crush) and I would build these forts out of the snow in the front yard - that's right, not out of the curb snow, but the actual yard snow - into which we could sequester ourselves, though not at whole body height, in comfortable crouch positions. As I have told folks that we did this for years on end, and how Wisconsin winters have changed, anyone not from here or younger than I am has said "Well, you were so little, so of course the snow seemed deeper." You kidding me? Look at the stuff we've gotten in the last few years! *Mice* couldn't make a decent crouching fort out of it!
But not this winter. Finally, not only did we outdo my own personal records, but also the State record for our recorded history so far. Wow. And now I am ready for it to be done. Not "run off to Tahiti cuz I hate the stuff" done (or even a wedding in Aruba, wink wink) but just worn out. I was reading back over a few entries and I saw that in August I was fading under 90-something degree heat. Now it's February and under zero again, with windchills well below. Hmmm. Well, I guess I can't love all the seasons all the time.
It's been since the holidays that I have posted. I quickly finished up my WCATY class for the term, after the holidays, then immediately began commuting to Milwaukee once a week to teach the inaugural class of Miksang at Marquette University. This in itself, though a big chance to schedule, life and energy, wouldn't have been such a time suck, but I also was working a lot of hours at the Overture, my part time job, as this is our busiest bus show season. And then, there's the weather, Milwaukee regardless of the weather, a snowstorm every Thursday for weeks on end. In there, my godmother visited my house for the first time and we finally saw Dan and Sus again, but otherwise my weeks mostly consisted of a January of shuffling from one job to the other, one of the main reasons I left my other fields of work.
I also have had lots of insights about pretty important things in the post-holiday season: that in fearing becoming my mother, I often embody the less savory aspects of my father; that I tend to isolate a lot when I have time on my hands and get lost without structure; that I pretty much hate driving; that up until now I have still had a hard time valuing my own work (so I gave myself a raise and promised myself two days off a week, which has helped a lot!); and that I need more visual art in my life - making it, seeing it, even just looking at books of it. So it's been a strong time of growth and nurturing, which I am now implementing, as Overture has slowed down...
So the latter part of this isn't as record-breaking in the traditional sense, but here's one record I'd like to think I am breaking - the karmic record of my family, with its self-and other abuse, bit by bit, postcard by phone call by quiet moments with the cat and a book of Andy Goldsworthy's work. Nothing huge, but very significant.
Monday, December 24, 2007
"You leave just an echo, like trains forever leaving"
-from a Matthew Herbert remix of Nils Petter Molevar's "Marciful"
I woke this morning in silence. The low hum of the humidifier that's been on now for over a month, keeping our lungs damp in a blown-heat house, was all that could be heard. The streets dead because of Christmas Eve (we're in the kind of neighborhood folks mostly leave to go home from, not the vice-versa, when it comes to holidays), the visiting cats in momentary peace with Aviva (Kiki and Gracie are lovely but have fought most of the last week with our kitten), and the furnace off, the house held in some limbo suspended state. Last week, in writing classes, one woman called the present moment "limbo" and I have been savoring the inherent ambiguity and truth of that possibility - that in order to be in a time that never really exists, because by the time we know it is happening it has gone, we are in a moment that, in fact, is between moments, somehow. That's what the moment felt like - a moment between moments, between separate feelings and separate experiences. Then I realized I was holding my breath, and when I began breathing again, everything began moving again.
My first thoughts went to my brother, the elder of the two, with whom I haven't spoken now in over three years. My last contact with him was over Christmas of the first year I cut contact with him - I emailed him, sad to be apart, but also needing the space, and tried to express this ambiguity to him. Justifiably, he emailed me back and said that I had to set a really clear boundary. Either we were not in contact or we were. I chose to maintain, and it's been silence, since. I have no idea of how his life is, though I certainly have my guesses. My therapist told me awhile back the most sage piece of advice I've received in years, though I cried to hear it: "Do not contact him again until you feel ready to accept him even if he hasn't changed at all". I'm not. And I don't know what I am doing with this limbo, but I do know, that like in meditation, it's not intended as punishment - for either of us - or denial. Just to be space, to be the room between then and now, so I can digest, stop for a moment and let it all sit a bit. I sincerely believe that my relationship with Dylan, and all its wonderful concumbent parts, wouldn't be here if I hadn't taken this space. That isn't blame, just noticing the beneficial effects that "nothing" has on me.
When my grandfather died, many things hit the fan, and they hit fast. It was 1999, and my mother had only died a couple of years before. My eldest brother had gotten married to a woman with whom I had a lot of conflict, and her with me. I was in Portland when he actually passed, and my brothers had to file through many address books to find me - I, ironically, was normally very astute at giving my itineraries to interested parties, but not this time. Instead of flying back, I chose to drive back - a modified version of my original plan, with one of my best friends at the time. I needed the space, though I wasn't able to articulate it at the time. And now, when I look back, I am glad I took it, though it hurt my brothers' feelings (both of them) and confused everyone, including me. The estate sale, arguments over boundaries and rights, confusion over money, not to mention the actual death, funeral, mourning, whole nine, were very, very tough on me and the whole family, creating conflicts that haunt me to this day, and setting into motion, for me, the issues that fostered the final isolation I have chosen from that brother and his wife and son. At first I worried I was just doing what my mom would do - not speak to her best friend for eight years out of anger (or that's how I perceived it, anyway) but now I realize more clearly that there is no substitute for space, just as there is no substitute for being present.
Dylan and I spent yesterday with his parents, having Christmas curry (as his mother says "a new tradition!") and exchanging gifts. I went to Milwaukee the day before to spend time with Alex and Tyler, and we went sledding down sloshy hills just to get out and be active, our best way to spend time together. It's been a very mellow Christmas, moreso than ever, and I have actually liked this time, though there is a perennial undertone of sadness. I feel relief not to be trying to make traditions happen that I may not have liked in the first place, or trying to play a role in someone else's family. We took a family portrait of Dylan and me, with his parents and Aviva in the background (accidental but oh-so-cute!) and although I missed his siblings, it did feel like some sort of family to me, which is both incredibly hard and a huge relief to say. It's been a long time - I was always glomming onto my eldest brother's new family, and Alex and I have had a hard time making holidays perky with just us and his son.
Aviva is asleep next to me, Dylan nursing a Christmas cold and in a little bit, Becky will come over and we'll live out one of her Christmas dreams - to chose who she spends (at least part of) it with, baking cookies and watching movies. I have cried a couple of times, simple acknowledgment that although the "required" festivities are over and these are now just a couple of days I have extra-off when the Y and my favorite coffeehouse are closed, there is still an undercurrent there that tugs me, and likely the whole family I was born of, now alive or dead, like an echo, like trains forever leaving...
I woke this morning in silence. The low hum of the humidifier that's been on now for over a month, keeping our lungs damp in a blown-heat house, was all that could be heard. The streets dead because of Christmas Eve (we're in the kind of neighborhood folks mostly leave to go home from, not the vice-versa, when it comes to holidays), the visiting cats in momentary peace with Aviva (Kiki and Gracie are lovely but have fought most of the last week with our kitten), and the furnace off, the house held in some limbo suspended state. Last week, in writing classes, one woman called the present moment "limbo" and I have been savoring the inherent ambiguity and truth of that possibility - that in order to be in a time that never really exists, because by the time we know it is happening it has gone, we are in a moment that, in fact, is between moments, somehow. That's what the moment felt like - a moment between moments, between separate feelings and separate experiences. Then I realized I was holding my breath, and when I began breathing again, everything began moving again.
My first thoughts went to my brother, the elder of the two, with whom I haven't spoken now in over three years. My last contact with him was over Christmas of the first year I cut contact with him - I emailed him, sad to be apart, but also needing the space, and tried to express this ambiguity to him. Justifiably, he emailed me back and said that I had to set a really clear boundary. Either we were not in contact or we were. I chose to maintain, and it's been silence, since. I have no idea of how his life is, though I certainly have my guesses. My therapist told me awhile back the most sage piece of advice I've received in years, though I cried to hear it: "Do not contact him again until you feel ready to accept him even if he hasn't changed at all". I'm not. And I don't know what I am doing with this limbo, but I do know, that like in meditation, it's not intended as punishment - for either of us - or denial. Just to be space, to be the room between then and now, so I can digest, stop for a moment and let it all sit a bit. I sincerely believe that my relationship with Dylan, and all its wonderful concumbent parts, wouldn't be here if I hadn't taken this space. That isn't blame, just noticing the beneficial effects that "nothing" has on me.
When my grandfather died, many things hit the fan, and they hit fast. It was 1999, and my mother had only died a couple of years before. My eldest brother had gotten married to a woman with whom I had a lot of conflict, and her with me. I was in Portland when he actually passed, and my brothers had to file through many address books to find me - I, ironically, was normally very astute at giving my itineraries to interested parties, but not this time. Instead of flying back, I chose to drive back - a modified version of my original plan, with one of my best friends at the time. I needed the space, though I wasn't able to articulate it at the time. And now, when I look back, I am glad I took it, though it hurt my brothers' feelings (both of them) and confused everyone, including me. The estate sale, arguments over boundaries and rights, confusion over money, not to mention the actual death, funeral, mourning, whole nine, were very, very tough on me and the whole family, creating conflicts that haunt me to this day, and setting into motion, for me, the issues that fostered the final isolation I have chosen from that brother and his wife and son. At first I worried I was just doing what my mom would do - not speak to her best friend for eight years out of anger (or that's how I perceived it, anyway) but now I realize more clearly that there is no substitute for space, just as there is no substitute for being present.
Dylan and I spent yesterday with his parents, having Christmas curry (as his mother says "a new tradition!") and exchanging gifts. I went to Milwaukee the day before to spend time with Alex and Tyler, and we went sledding down sloshy hills just to get out and be active, our best way to spend time together. It's been a very mellow Christmas, moreso than ever, and I have actually liked this time, though there is a perennial undertone of sadness. I feel relief not to be trying to make traditions happen that I may not have liked in the first place, or trying to play a role in someone else's family. We took a family portrait of Dylan and me, with his parents and Aviva in the background (accidental but oh-so-cute!) and although I missed his siblings, it did feel like some sort of family to me, which is both incredibly hard and a huge relief to say. It's been a long time - I was always glomming onto my eldest brother's new family, and Alex and I have had a hard time making holidays perky with just us and his son.
Aviva is asleep next to me, Dylan nursing a Christmas cold and in a little bit, Becky will come over and we'll live out one of her Christmas dreams - to chose who she spends (at least part of) it with, baking cookies and watching movies. I have cried a couple of times, simple acknowledgment that although the "required" festivities are over and these are now just a couple of days I have extra-off when the Y and my favorite coffeehouse are closed, there is still an undercurrent there that tugs me, and likely the whole family I was born of, now alive or dead, like an echo, like trains forever leaving...
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