Saturday, November 30, 2013

Family



The last week of five am mornings have found me lying flat on my back in Henry's bed (he, relegated to the couch, my parents in mine), the sun hours away from rising, my thoughts more a mull than a muse, my life displayed in front of my mind's eye without death to make it precious, more terror than melancholy. I have no idea whether it's the season, the fact of having my aging (however terrifically) parents in my bed while I lay low to the ground in my boys' baseball player-postered room, my age, or just the damn facts, but I was hard put to remain composed. All the gratitude was schmatitude in the darkest hour before dawn. Texts to a friend on the east coast buoyed me, her reminder that it was the darkest hour before dawn lulled me back to sleep where I dreamed technicolor snippets, walked through parties in houses with rooms and old lovers behind doors. I woke sheepish in light, drove my parents to the airport, embraced them in gratitude for spinning the web, however sticky, where I'm stuck, ran my hand over Oliver's head and wiped away his tears with my thumb. Why do they have to live so far away? he sighed as we pulled away. We waved as they fussed with their bags, smiled, blew kisses.

There's a black reindeer head sitting on my dining room table, waiting for me to bring it back to the store where my mother accidentally dropped her cane and broke off one of its antlers. She paid for half of it and brought it home so that my amazingly handy father could glue it back like new! In the above photo, just to the right of the black plastic-covered foam sheets for Sophie's room -- the path to hell is laid with the best intentions, I believe Blake said --  is the gift they left: a life-sized Santa who dances and sings a number of Christmas tunes -- in our native tongue and Spanish.

That's my family recap. What's yours, dear Readers?

6 comments:

  1. That Santa is almost as scary as mine.
    I've actually had a good walk today, hung clothes on the line and am working on a quilt-blanket thing for Owen which I started before Gibson was born. Gibson is twenty months old. It will have his name on it. I made one for all my kids and they still have them. They are not tidy nor neat but they are soft.
    I am hoping that being back in your own bed will allow you to sleep past five a.m. Although those dreams sound a bit alright.
    And you know I love that Oliver loves his grandparents that much. It gives me hope for my boys loving me for a long time.

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  2. I just posted my re-cap.
    I had a mini singing santa that I left with Mr. Ex.
    Wishing you sweet wakings in your own bed.
    My goal is to somehow live closer to my children as the settle into their adult lives.

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  3. My only question is will the store refund the half payment of your money now that the reindeer has been fixed?
    Other than that , sounds pretty normal to me...

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  4. This is the real true story of families, the tears and the relief, the missing and the sighing, the complicated sticky love. You capture it all.

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  5. I just came back from a weekend in Colorado with my entire family, parents and sisters and niece and nephew and both brothers-in-law (even the one from California, a rare occurrence indeed). We are a loud game-playing family that doesn't usually have extended conversation. My sisters and their husbands are heavy / alcoholic drinkers, and my partner and parents are not. I remembered too late why I usually stay with my daughters and partner in a hotel. But Colorado's legalization of marijuana did add a different dimension to the evenings. My 66 year old mother surprised us all by taking a puff. If my kids weren't with me I might have been tempted as well. But I kept thinking of Sophie throughout the visit, hoping she is staying relatively seizure free, wishing the medical field would catch on/catch up on expanding the CBD research, wishing the government would lift the barriers to receiving the benefits of the research.

    Epilepsy, MS, Cancer, depression, and a mysterious nervous system condition are affecting various adults in my family - I wonder which, if any, of the conditions will be touched by marijuana in the next few years.

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  6. i loved the video you posted on instagram!

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