(no subject)
Dear Diary,
for this New Year I gave my daughter the Game of Life. Looking back (or, rather, from the height of two rounds played), it was a rather dumb idea. Life, according to this game, is all about people and omnipotent external entities giving money for things like baking cakes and strutting in fashion shows, with low points of sometimes having to give money to strangers for adopting pet goats or deciding to get married. Oh, yeah, in this Life you can accidentally marry someone -- should you decide to do so. Then, if you're lucky, children fall from the sky into your car -- the one you're born into, along with two hundred dollars cash, just as the stork deposits you on the front steps of the college of your choice. The game ends in a stupefying limbo of retirement either in a millionaire's mansion, or on a ranch. Your choice!
On New Year's day my ex-husband's grandfather died. He was in his nineties, and despite being incredibly tenacious, he's been fading away for a while now. A patriarch who always kept his cards close to his chest, he fought in WWII as a teenager, became a surgeon, raised a son, and lived to see his great-granddaughter know who he is. A good life, I think, and yet I am sad, and a bit listless. I learned of the news squirreled away in a house in the middle of nowhere-upstate-New York, while my in-laws deal with all the peculiarities and necessities and weirdness of death back home, on the West Coast. I feel odd being away from them.
With chagrin, I guess, I found that my ex has about negative need of any sort of condolences coming from my side (though his remembering to say "happy new year" to every member of my family apart from me might have been a clue), and perhaps that's for the better. If only it were a game, one of us would've collected a few tens of thousands of dollars, either for spectacular insight, extraordinary composure, or lack of either.
But then the life we lead is not the sort where you get fired from being a teacher for sleeping on the job, only to become a rocket scientist the next morning -- and with exact same salary.
Happy New Year!
for this New Year I gave my daughter the Game of Life. Looking back (or, rather, from the height of two rounds played), it was a rather dumb idea. Life, according to this game, is all about people and omnipotent external entities giving money for things like baking cakes and strutting in fashion shows, with low points of sometimes having to give money to strangers for adopting pet goats or deciding to get married. Oh, yeah, in this Life you can accidentally marry someone -- should you decide to do so. Then, if you're lucky, children fall from the sky into your car -- the one you're born into, along with two hundred dollars cash, just as the stork deposits you on the front steps of the college of your choice. The game ends in a stupefying limbo of retirement either in a millionaire's mansion, or on a ranch. Your choice!
On New Year's day my ex-husband's grandfather died. He was in his nineties, and despite being incredibly tenacious, he's been fading away for a while now. A patriarch who always kept his cards close to his chest, he fought in WWII as a teenager, became a surgeon, raised a son, and lived to see his great-granddaughter know who he is. A good life, I think, and yet I am sad, and a bit listless. I learned of the news squirreled away in a house in the middle of nowhere-upstate-New York, while my in-laws deal with all the peculiarities and necessities and weirdness of death back home, on the West Coast. I feel odd being away from them.
With chagrin, I guess, I found that my ex has about negative need of any sort of condolences coming from my side (though his remembering to say "happy new year" to every member of my family apart from me might have been a clue), and perhaps that's for the better. If only it were a game, one of us would've collected a few tens of thousands of dollars, either for spectacular insight, extraordinary composure, or lack of either.
But then the life we lead is not the sort where you get fired from being a teacher for sleeping on the job, only to become a rocket scientist the next morning -- and with exact same salary.
Happy New Year!