Verklempt

February and the days are stretching out of their slumber.  A year ago, I took a few strands of my son's hair from a memory box and wrapped them in tissue paper. I traveled out towards the sun and the Pacific Ocean and spent my first morning in Vallarta watching the sun come up for the water. And I sat with the jumble of the last ten years and made peace.

Of course, I left Mexico just as the world began to close in on itself. Having made peace with the last decade, now I have to fully contend with the present.

I occasionally catch a glimpse of the scarred stretched skin on my stomach and shudder. There is still a devestated shame in the landscape of my body.  I don't long for the 19 inch waist, I'm not waxing nostalgic for the old days of espresso and cigarettes. I'm just conscious that my body is literally a visual and physical archive of my life.  The swells, and curves, the blue veins, the scars that mark time...I cannot shed these, any more than I can bring back the people who've crossed on.

On Sunday, my father and I had another row.  This seems to be the state of our relationship now: that we argue about what needs to be done and who should do it.  For years, I worked without a net and outside healthy a healthy scope of the parent-child dynamic and was often in a position where I WAS the parent. 

I took my first plane trip alone when I was 8. My parents were well-intentioned but not very good about putting their wants/desire on hold for the NEEDS of others.  I'm not talking about 'R wants a pony so we're giving up X,' kind of scenarios. I'm talking about 'R has fallen and has had to have 24 stitches and perhaps we should cancel the BBQ because she also has had a reaction to the pethidine and she's 4.' Instead, my folks opted to drag me to the BBQ. I think I threw up on someone's sofa.  

Add to the the mix all of the moves, the shuffles and relocations, and you get a kind of world wearied resignation and boundary concerns that just make the world a little tougher to navigate.

Our arguments now are centered over what I should be doing for him and my refusal to clean up the messes he has made.  One is his mother's sinking into Dementia and the management of her finances. Mississippi changed their elder care laws and he has left it so long...I just don't even know where to begin to clean up the mess. And I don't really feel I should have to clean this one up, anymore than I feel a 43rd move should be to Ohio. Not this time. 

I guess where I struggle now is with the 'so fascinating,' like I'm a complete oddity. Nothing any more or less odd about me or my life than anyone else. Okay, maybe there are more packing crates, maybe a few more odd experiences, but I get up every day just like everyone else. I get dressed, clean my teeth, put which ever masks I am supposed to be wearing in my bag, and go about my life. It's all I can do. It's all I want to do: to be myself and go about my life. 

I think about my grandmother, living in 1949 at her best point in time and wonder if I'll ever see her alive again. I wonder that I need to and I worry that it would be cruel to foist my kids and myself upon her when she won't know who we are.  At the same time, I long to sit by the water, sipping an Arnold Palmer with my cousin Laura, just catching up and breathing in the gulf coastal heat. 

What I do know, now and with a deep certainty, is that I am not the sum of my father's mistakes nor am I responsible for righting them.  I really do have my own kind of hell to raise, my own Demons to bring in from their exile, my own ghosts to walk with and to try and carry his load, or Jay's burden, or 'fix' what was never mine repair will only cost me my sanity and I've worked too hard to get that back to trade it for glass beads.