guh.
oh, january. you have not been my friend.
my son is crawling, and by crawling, i mean finding every electrical cord, tumbleweed of dog hair, shoe, art book, recycling box, etc that he can get his hands on, only to try to put them in his mouth. i, as you can imagine, am not a huge fan of this behavior, especially when it happens at 5:30 in the morning in my what-i-thought-was-baby-proofed living room.
my uncle bob died. my dad's uncle, really, and i hadn't seen him or my aunt phyllis in far, far too long, and that's, i guess, why it feels so horrible. arlo, my mom and i went to his funeral last wednesday, and sat with family on a very very windy day. my cousins (my uncle's 3 granddaughters) were there...all grown up and pretty and in their twenties. the last time i saw them, i think they were wee little girls, chasing one another at my grandfather's funeral. it made me sad that my family has become so fractured, but truth be told, much of the blame belongs to me for moving away for so long.
worst yet, my grandma has breast cancer. a couple of weeks ago we found out that what we thought was a calcification in her breast was actually a cancer, and last wednesday she had a mastectomy. they removed two growths (one stage 1 and one stage 2) and the lymph nodes under her arm. four days later, she seems to be doing well, obviously a little uncomfortable, but she's yelling back at the tv news and throwing slightly insulting comments around, so that means she at least feels like herself. we find out sometime this week if the cancer has moved to her lymphatic system. i am doing a not so very good job of trying not to think about that.
i wish this dilemma also somehow featured family that i don't see enough of, but instead its complicated by family that i see far too much of. i keep trying to think of words, trying to think of a way to write about this, trying to explain 20 years of resentment, of anger, of, really, disgust at the people who leech off of my grandmother, but i'm having a really hard time. i spent my mid-teens to my late twenties worried that i would grow up to be like my cousin, that people would think of me the way they think of her, that i would somehow manage to fail just as incredibly...it was a strained conversation with my dad several years ago that finally cured me of it, when he told me that there was just no way that would ever happen. that my cousin is the way she is because she has always been that way. that it was obvious when she was a child. and that i am who i am, and the two could not be more different. i could go magnificently crazy, and still not be her. i could fail incredibly, and still not be her. no matter what happens, i will still not be her.
but still. its like facing a mortal fear every time i go to visit my grandma, which is so stupid and selfish and likely far too personal to post on a blog, for god's sake, but there it is.
come on february, hurry up.
my son is crawling, and by crawling, i mean finding every electrical cord, tumbleweed of dog hair, shoe, art book, recycling box, etc that he can get his hands on, only to try to put them in his mouth. i, as you can imagine, am not a huge fan of this behavior, especially when it happens at 5:30 in the morning in my what-i-thought-was-baby-proofed living room.
my uncle bob died. my dad's uncle, really, and i hadn't seen him or my aunt phyllis in far, far too long, and that's, i guess, why it feels so horrible. arlo, my mom and i went to his funeral last wednesday, and sat with family on a very very windy day. my cousins (my uncle's 3 granddaughters) were there...all grown up and pretty and in their twenties. the last time i saw them, i think they were wee little girls, chasing one another at my grandfather's funeral. it made me sad that my family has become so fractured, but truth be told, much of the blame belongs to me for moving away for so long.
worst yet, my grandma has breast cancer. a couple of weeks ago we found out that what we thought was a calcification in her breast was actually a cancer, and last wednesday she had a mastectomy. they removed two growths (one stage 1 and one stage 2) and the lymph nodes under her arm. four days later, she seems to be doing well, obviously a little uncomfortable, but she's yelling back at the tv news and throwing slightly insulting comments around, so that means she at least feels like herself. we find out sometime this week if the cancer has moved to her lymphatic system. i am doing a not so very good job of trying not to think about that.
i wish this dilemma also somehow featured family that i don't see enough of, but instead its complicated by family that i see far too much of. i keep trying to think of words, trying to think of a way to write about this, trying to explain 20 years of resentment, of anger, of, really, disgust at the people who leech off of my grandmother, but i'm having a really hard time. i spent my mid-teens to my late twenties worried that i would grow up to be like my cousin, that people would think of me the way they think of her, that i would somehow manage to fail just as incredibly...it was a strained conversation with my dad several years ago that finally cured me of it, when he told me that there was just no way that would ever happen. that my cousin is the way she is because she has always been that way. that it was obvious when she was a child. and that i am who i am, and the two could not be more different. i could go magnificently crazy, and still not be her. i could fail incredibly, and still not be her. no matter what happens, i will still not be her.
but still. its like facing a mortal fear every time i go to visit my grandma, which is so stupid and selfish and likely far too personal to post on a blog, for god's sake, but there it is.
come on february, hurry up.
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