About a month and a half ago, my very wise Grandma Judy said to me, "when God closes one door, he opens another."
Or something to that effect. I would quote directly, but my school has banned evil Facebook from usage.
At the time I was feeling like a pile of not-quite-human shit, reeling at the completely unfair hand that life had dealt me. Well, now time has passed, and prespectives have changed, and as that door behind me slid into its jamb and finally settled into its place, not only did another door open, but the best person that's ever happened to me came walking through.
Grandmas are so wise.
Through countless amounts of lachrymal secretions blown into the nearest item of soiled laundry; through hand cramps and spent pens and about thirty trees worth of journal paper; through the exhaustion of any unsuspecting eardrum within my vicinity; through the answer of why this happened and where this is going finally seeming to come into focus; and through meeting Forrest, I am well on my way to being myself again...
Regardless of the fact that my life for the past few months reads like an outline for any given episode of Jerry Springer, I am happy.
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3 comments:
This made me smile. I'm glad to hear you are happy.
:)
Good a place as any to leave a comment, this being my 56th birthday, and this being one of the times when I wax nostalgic and yearn for an actual, real family.
" saw all of the long kept resentment, grudges and blame between my Grandma and her first born son, Scott. I saw them not over come those feelings, ever. They never spoke before she died. Now they never can. I saw the life long sibling animosity my Dad holds for my Aunt remain solid and in tact, even as my family came together at my Grandparents house to mourn just hours after Grandma’s death. She tried to hug him, to let him know that despite all their differences over the years, he was still her brother, and she still loves him, and as she did, he just stood there, unresponsive.
I saw these things and realized the pettiness of it. The reasons are unimportant. To shut your family out of your life and to let your anger fester inside of you. There is not a good reason for that. I saw I had to understand and to forgive and to rise above. I will not one day be my Uncle Scott. That bud is holding on by one browning, fibrous string."
You may very well be me, some day. You talk about shutting family out of your life. I put a lot of effort into reaching out to Trudy and Evelyn and my cousin Susan, to the extent of driving over 1000 miles one way, more than once, to try and connect. I went out of my way to try and help them around the farm. I cooked for them. I was there for them. And what was the response? Trudy needed to spend all her time lecturing crime-chicks at Albion about Jehooovey shit. Susan needed to play computer games. I had driven over 1000 miles, and here I was, treated like a stepchild again.
Wonder where the genes for that come from, eh, Candace? Not from me, that's for goddamn sure. My door has always been open, and you know it, having availed yourself of my hospitality in the past.
Charlie has had my phone number and email address for over 20 years. I can tell how important it is for all the Wahl side of the family to keep in touch with me.
How would you feel, being treated like the black sheep of the family, because, through no fault of your own, certain family menbers used you as a pawn in their hate games?
June, my mother, and your grandmother, never felt the slightest bit of remorse at leaving when I was Two. Perhaps you don't want to hear it, but, when she was in her 20s, she really enjoyed the company of men, particularly men who weren't named Siegfried Langer. She flat-out admitted to me, a year or so before she died, that she was a prostitute. How do you think she met Charlie down in Florida?
No surprise if you "moderate" this comment into oblivion. I can face my past, now, and my anger at the incredible hypocrisy has largely dissapated.
There's more to say, but it really doesn't matter, does it? Everyone is safe and secure in their cocoon of family mythology.
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