(no subject)
The good news is a couple hours after the last desperate post I made, I spoke to my great-grandmother and she calmed me down. "Please, honey, forgive your mother, she's extremely nervous and is just trying to take care of me and hold the home together; and really, she had to go work at the church, you know how God comes before all; and I know very well you would take me in, everyone offered to take me in, but other people have stairs and it's much easier at Monica's place; and I love and appreciate everything you do and just don't pay your mother any mind, she's very nervous and not herself." Her voice alternately crooned in comfort and broke with tears as she narrated the trials and tribulations of my mother. She is not wrong. It's been horrendously difficult this time around, what with her being so weak and unable to help with anything at all.
It's rare that I really go to my great-grandmother for advice or consolation. Most situations in my life are ones that would blow her ancient, God-fearing mind, so I forget how calming and sweet she can be when I feel down and just want someone to say "I love and appreciate you more than words could describe."
My great-grandmother plays favorites, gets irrationally cranky at the littlest children, and openly judges people she doesn't understand... but she loves me unconditionally and completely. I believe there are few in the world who can claim that blessing, and I am grateful. I think even if she did find out about how deviant I really am... she'd still be okay.
Not that I'm actually going to test that.
The bad news is I went to my parent's house on Sunday to just visit, and their new place is depressingly shabby, with everything in shambles, a broken screen on the door, an impossible and illogical floor plan (no closets!), and stuff strewn around the front yard in sheer dirty chaos. My sisters found themselves conveniently out of town and avoiding the disaster that is my (my parent's) house. I went to buy them some baskets to hold their fruit, and tried to help them organize for the brief couple of hours that I was present. I dressed my matriarch like a baby, delicately pulling up her stockings and adjusting the snaps on her brassiere. She was shyly embarrassed. She prefers that my mother dresses her; she trusts her the most. I told her it was okay--she spent many years looking at my coochie when I was young, too.
I looked back at my last entry and for a moment thought it was an exaggeration born of despondency and guilt. I was going to sign back on and declare that it was just a momentary lapse in familial faith. I was going to reassure everyone that in reality, this was not a modern reenactment of Achebe's "Things Fall Apart," but only another convulsion in my family's monotonous cycles of near collapse and impressive rebound.
I wanted to make that assertion so badly. But I realize every time my parents move, their new home gets uglier and uglier, smaller and smaller, depressing and more depressing. It almost feels like the degradation of our (their) home matches the deterioration of my great-grandmother's aging, shriveling bones. I am aware, logically, that this is coincidence, but I can't help but wonder, instinctively, which is causing which.
Truly, this is probably the worst it's ever been.
It's rare that I really go to my great-grandmother for advice or consolation. Most situations in my life are ones that would blow her ancient, God-fearing mind, so I forget how calming and sweet she can be when I feel down and just want someone to say "I love and appreciate you more than words could describe."
My great-grandmother plays favorites, gets irrationally cranky at the littlest children, and openly judges people she doesn't understand... but she loves me unconditionally and completely. I believe there are few in the world who can claim that blessing, and I am grateful. I think even if she did find out about how deviant I really am... she'd still be okay.
Not that I'm actually going to test that.
The bad news is I went to my parent's house on Sunday to just visit, and their new place is depressingly shabby, with everything in shambles, a broken screen on the door, an impossible and illogical floor plan (no closets!), and stuff strewn around the front yard in sheer dirty chaos. My sisters found themselves conveniently out of town and avoiding the disaster that is my (my parent's) house. I went to buy them some baskets to hold their fruit, and tried to help them organize for the brief couple of hours that I was present. I dressed my matriarch like a baby, delicately pulling up her stockings and adjusting the snaps on her brassiere. She was shyly embarrassed. She prefers that my mother dresses her; she trusts her the most. I told her it was okay--she spent many years looking at my coochie when I was young, too.
I looked back at my last entry and for a moment thought it was an exaggeration born of despondency and guilt. I was going to sign back on and declare that it was just a momentary lapse in familial faith. I was going to reassure everyone that in reality, this was not a modern reenactment of Achebe's "Things Fall Apart," but only another convulsion in my family's monotonous cycles of near collapse and impressive rebound.
I wanted to make that assertion so badly. But I realize every time my parents move, their new home gets uglier and uglier, smaller and smaller, depressing and more depressing. It almost feels like the degradation of our (their) home matches the deterioration of my great-grandmother's aging, shriveling bones. I am aware, logically, that this is coincidence, but I can't help but wonder, instinctively, which is causing which.
Truly, this is probably the worst it's ever been.