Fam jams in Toba-town
My family's twice-yearly trips to Winnipeg are so very odd. The days are divided into two terribly different parts: lazy mornings where my mother makes tea and reads a novel, my father sips espresso and buys the Globe, and I nibble on cookies the hotel left in our suite as a "welcome present" and translate Latin or read about the Aztecs. And then we'll go out for brunch at Stella's -- their smoothies are the nommiest thing in the, um, province -- and then drive out to the suburbs to visit Grandmother Dearest. Now I know she isn't well and hasn't really been well for thirty-five bloody years, but oh to the em to the gee, is it exhausting to spend an afternoon with her. A manic depressive who was prescribed lithium for a failing marriage back in the seventies, she's been on pharmaceutical drugs for emotional problems for decades and now she's finally coming off them and it's sort of like she's a junkie who quit heroin cold turkey. She's über twitchy and self-absorbed, and the fact that she has dementia does not help. But bloody hell woman, is it really too much to ask me about McGill instead of telling your family you want to die?
But once we leave the nursing home, it's still a very different life than the one we lead back in Toronto. There isn't any housework for Mater to fuss over, Pater picks up juice and bread and that's all we have in the suite, and it's sort of like we're important in this town... I don't know. I mean, I was talking to an elderly man at my grandmother's nursing home a few years ago and when I told him my name he asked if I was related to my great-uncle because they were poker buddies. And the apparently my father's a VIP guest at the hotel... A distant relative used to own it, but apparently the family stating stayed even after it was sold... In addition to the cookies mentioned above, the hotel manager left a Christmas card in our suite when we checked in. And we eat out twice a day... We flew in on Christmas Day and nothing was open except for the most expensive hotel in the city. And so we dined there. It was the kind of place with a live pianist, a suited waiter and a no-hat policy (the latter of which did not pleased my father, who wears a black tuque all winter long). And I guess we're just together a lot more... There's nothing else to do, other than visit Grandmother and other relatives or the Parentals' Winnipeg biffles (who really are our only family friends), and we do everything together. And I mean, I'd probably get sick of all this after a little while, but it's kind of refreshing, being able to just sit in the same room as the fam and not have to converse, after four months of living socially in rez.
Okay. Am off to the bookstore with, yes, the parentals.
Hugs from the Assiniboine River!
TVG xxx
But once we leave the nursing home, it's still a very different life than the one we lead back in Toronto. There isn't any housework for Mater to fuss over, Pater picks up juice and bread and that's all we have in the suite, and it's sort of like we're important in this town... I don't know. I mean, I was talking to an elderly man at my grandmother's nursing home a few years ago and when I told him my name he asked if I was related to my great-uncle because they were poker buddies. And the apparently my father's a VIP guest at the hotel... A distant relative used to own it, but apparently the family stating stayed even after it was sold... In addition to the cookies mentioned above, the hotel manager left a Christmas card in our suite when we checked in. And we eat out twice a day... We flew in on Christmas Day and nothing was open except for the most expensive hotel in the city. And so we dined there. It was the kind of place with a live pianist, a suited waiter and a no-hat policy (the latter of which did not pleased my father, who wears a black tuque all winter long). And I guess we're just together a lot more... There's nothing else to do, other than visit Grandmother and other relatives or the Parentals' Winnipeg biffles (who really are our only family friends), and we do everything together. And I mean, I'd probably get sick of all this after a little while, but it's kind of refreshing, being able to just sit in the same room as the fam and not have to converse, after four months of living socially in rez.
Okay. Am off to the bookstore with, yes, the parentals.
Hugs from the Assiniboine River!
TVG xxx