Heartbeat in my eyes
The first one up this morning, I sit on the porch, wiggling toes, swishing a macchiato, eyeing my heartbeat ticktocking in the vines cloaking the windows.
I’ve done it again. I told an in-law what I thought. She didn’t take it well. I’m angry about her taking our brother-in-law to another city to die, so there he died. We gave end-of-life respite so she could leave him for little day trips, weekends away, five-day trips, while we haven’t flown anywhere in ten years (yes, that’s me being a pouty-puss). We comforted them best we could, driving 400 miles five or six times, bathing and hoisting his wet, six-foot-three, 275 pound frame, wiping his bottom, pulling up a diaper here, a comforter there, dabbing his chin.
When the news of convoying back to Nowhere, America broke yesterday, I was a little steamed. I didn’t listen a month ago. I fought it. My wife’s and my red flagged rope never stopped twitching in the middle of the tug-o-war. No truce.
So here we were, just settling at the barbecue when my in-law suddenly turns and tells me at 110 decibels that she’s riding 400 miles home, bringing a stained glass window, a vase, and herself in our car. There’s a group sitting around on lawn chairs, and a close-by babbling fountain of water, and she’s shouting in my face for all the deaf people to hear.
I love my in-law, I do, but I got caught off-guard, stood up, made a face at my wife, and walked away. That’s “literal violence” in our extended family.
And I don’t like our car. Somewhere I wrote a bit about our shiny new 3,000 pound Diet Coke of a Christine car that embodies the Singularity (I guess not here), but I’d like to video that car at 100 miles an hour flying off a cliff from eight angles, crunching and steaming in a ravine for hours. It tells me my driver attention level is low. Now, the person in the backseat will be talking about her latest pop-up show of Lularoe.
So I told her I am pissed off that we complied, we moved them out of his network of doctors and caregivers, we lifted their entire lives onto trucks, he helpless, we helped set up the new house in its treeless neighborhood, hang a clock, move furniture, and tuckpoint our schedule around the slim caregiver network. We don’t live there. None of them are coming back here to move us when we get sick (oops, another pouty-puss comment).
These are the rust years. We had our young and gleaming years. These are for corroding and reaping. Why not level up in words, and even all debts of mincing and dissembling?
So I did! and our 30 year bond is steaming in the ravine. Well, Teddy-ma-boy, you bollixed it up, and slashed another relationship. It’s not like you’re building many new ones. And this one is family. Go fix it. Now. Or ask yourself next time you’re bathing in red wine and self-pity why you’re not invited, and your circles have shrunken.
This has been another So-I-says-to-myself-I-says chat.