Hello, blogosphere. Or I should say, hello family members. I can't identify you by your last name, but you know who you are! :)
We are back from vacation. Here are some interesting things I learned on vacation.
Number One: My family's philosophy of life can be summed up in one word: "Adapt." Keith's personal philosophy, on the other hand, can be summed up in "Conquer."
Adapt and conquer do not mix. More than that, it is nearly impossible for the conqueror to notice the strengths of adaptation; such as warmth, creativity, spontaneity, flexibility, hospitality, casualness, calm, improvisation, philosophical curiosity, etc. People who conquer life, such as my husband, are driven, masterful, bossy, clear, black and white, demanding, reliable, trustworthy and effective.
I spent most of the vacation time being acutely aware, for the first time in my life, of my conflicting roles of wife and daughter. Frequently I had to give up my daughter role so I could uphold my wife role. And once I came out swinging in my long held role of Big Sister. All this was no one's fault, just to be clear. It's just a part of growing up, a part of life.
Also, it was made abundantly clear that I cannot control the way my husband forms relationships within my family.
You might think that goes without saying, but really, all along I was assuming that my husband could not only read my mind, but had in some way absorbed every bit of my own, personal family history and would then base his actions on that knowledge.
Heh. I know it sounds crazy when I write it out like that, but don't we all hold on to some down right crazy notions when we really examine them? I certainly do.
Anyway, it turns out that Keith is his own man, a blank slate and a free moving agent who crashed and collided and connected in various and unpredictable ways, with my family members. Who knew?
In the midst of all this glorious, interpersonal chaos, there was a lot of good food. I put on even more weight. I hugged my mom as often as I wanted, which was often. I had loud, interesting, fast moving conversations with my father in the car on the way into Boston, where we saw a bicyclist casually pedalling through four lanes of on coming traffic.
Boston fed my soul. I love Boston. I love the north east. It was such a relief to be there. I would see a place, or a style or the light and I would know, in that moment, where a piece of myself came from, a part of myself brilliantly explained.
In the elevator at the Taft hospital we were already all squashed together with various people who also had parked on the very top level of the parking garage, out under the grey, soft sky. The elevator opened on the next floor to reveal an Asian woman with bags who hesitated but a moment and then, to our collective, north eastern horror, jumped into the tiny, mostly imaginary space left.
On the next floor it opened again, to reveal a thin Asian man, who regarded our predicament impersonally, and then hopped in. We were now like sardines. Our intimacy was immediate and unwanted.
"My god in heaven," snapped a woman in a heavy Boston accent, squashed in the back. "This is unbelievable. Who can stand this? Why did you get in the elevatah?"
Finally, we reached out floor and the Asians got out with us.
"That woman was rude," I remarked cheerfully.
"I know!" exclaimed the woman, putting her bags down. "I thought she was going to throw me out of the elevator."
"She should see the trains in Japan," I remarked, when the Asian man, who was walking with us, turned suddenly, his face lighting up.
"I am from Japan!" he exclaimed, managing not to point his finger at his nose and hitting the collar bone region instead.
"I thought so," I said. "when I saw you slip inside there."
"That is normal in Japan," he said, eager to explain to someone, anyone.
The rest of Boston was just as much fun. It rained, we had coffee and bagels off a small public square in the shadows of towering office buildings, somewhere in the Financial district. We walked to the harbor and stared into the menacing, opaque waters of the Atlantic, lapping at the stones and pilings. We had a beer and "Big Dig Fries" at an Irish pub, where Keith was aghast at the prices and asked for a Bud Light somewhat defensively.
Dad pointed out all the places where he had installed something, which is everywhere. In fact, if all the buildings where my dad had installed a window treatment were lit up, the whole city could be seen from the moon. We passed by the Wang theater, where I have seen "The Nut Cracker" and "Dracula."
We passed by the Boston Commons, where we stopped to look at the prices and pictures of featured properties pasted in the windows of realtor offices. There was one pent house listed at eight million dollars. But I only wanted the one and a half million water front loft, very modest, just one bedroom. Nothing too pretentious.
Anyway, now we are back in Kentucky. How blissful the calm and serenity of our home! Nothing makes one appreciate one's own life like a prolonged break from it. It is fall and even if, during the day, it reaches the mid nineties, in the mornings the air is cool and crisp. I almost need a fleece.
Ah, the fleeces of New England! How ubiquitous they are, how varied. And the L.L. Bean wind jackets and rubber mocs. In the mid west, the woman dye their hair blond and even when it isn't done, it looks done. In the north east, it's dyed blacker and the women wear flannel. Maybe that's just New Hampshire.
I want a house with a mud room, a sunny mudroom with a stiff, bristly mat at the door where people kick off their boots and a large bench with cubbies underneath and the children's name listed there. Inside is full of mismatched, wool mittens and rainbow hats with tassels. The room is paved with flag stones and off of it is the laundry with a large, farm house sink and a bathroom and long, narrow windows that look out over the wide yard to the wooded hills beyond, which are just then turning color.
I don't want to be blogging for hours, so I must try to stay on point.
Anyway, lastly, I am doing better. I am still angry and I swear a lot, but not out loud, because I think even I would find that tiresome after a while.
I realized something important recently, which is that we never fully figure anything out. Life isn't like a series of mountains we climb and then plant our flag on, victoriously.
It's more like being in a boat in a high sea, the mountain we thought we conquered is really just a wave and even now it's sinking back into the ocean and another one is coming up. It's not that fighting or learning or growing is pointless, it's just that it's never ending.
Thinking like this helps me be more merciful to myself when I realize I haven't learned something as well as I thought I had, like patience or compassion. I guess it's the general direction that we're sailing toward that matters. And that fact that we keep on keeping on.
