A Long Winter's Nap

I had contact with 3 people yesterday who I have not seen or heard from in several years. The first was my friend Helen, whom I ran into at the library. The second two were my Uncle Gary and my father Samuel. Gary and Samuel called within ten minutes of each other. My conversation with my uncle was quick and genuinely jovial. He wanted to get my address and promised to keep in touch more often. Samuel called to remind me of his ailing mother, the grandmother I haven't seen in several years, but to whom I was very close as a child. He barked at me that I owed her a hospital visit, said goodbye, and then got off of the phone. With the exception of a brief and purely business conversation about 5 months ago, I have not talked to Samuel in two years.

This morning when he called again, to apologize, of all things, for his approach yesterday, I told him that he was a bully. I told him that he wanted all of the rights and privileges of a father, though he'd not been one to me. I tried to explain that this did not make me bitter, but that it did have a consequence. That being the decision I've made that I don't have a father, except God. I told him that I am not interested in revisiting my unsuccessful relationship with him, nor will I respond the way he wants me to when he orders me around.

My mother had called me, thoroughly interrupting my sleep just two hours before, and made me feel pressured into going to see this same ailing grandmother--and I felt resentful--not at the notion that I needed to see her, but at this campaign from out of nowhere. I agreed, though the onslaught left a nasty taste in my mouth. I was agreeing to go on the principle that three people (Gary, Samuel, and my mother) mentioned how badly she was doing in the space of 14 hours, and that since I don't believe in coincidences, maybe this warning of sorts was a gift.... A clear sign that I should go if I wanted to see her again at all.

By the time Samuel called this morning, it had begun to snow. Soon after I told him that he was a bully, the conversation quickly devolved back into the same doomed monologue from last night. 'You owe her! You owe her!' he shouted. He added that he had a right to be angry with me for not going to see her before. At this point I had already mentioned that I had agreed to go there with my mother to see her today, and he was pissing me off so I said to him 'I already told you I was going to go and see her, so there's your satisfaction.' And I hung up.

Then Sarahbina and Francesca and I went out for breakfast to a cafe just a few streets over. The flakes were fatter and more insistent when Francesca dropped us off in front of our building. We waved her a wintry goodbye.

Later I made my way out into the wet slushy mess again to go and purchase my train tickets for the week. I came home and warmed up with tea, started another book, and wondered why I keep going through this sick and painful drama with a man who is a stranger to me. I wondered how crucial figuring out the mystery of who he is to be to me is to figuring out the myster of Mr. Renaissance and his place in my life.

I settled in for a warm nap within an hour of returning home from my errand, it being decided that the weather was too bad to go out to see my grandmother Lillian. And I dreamed images that are only vaguely graspable to me now. I was complaining about my horrendous work commute to a bunch of asian guys, one of whom I used to nurse a fatalistically conceived hope for. And I dreamed of my stepfather, to whom I am also not speaking, because his infractions against the family are also too great to bear.