(no subject)

[amalthya]

I got to Epworth today; We flew in through Detroit -- I met Dad & Ruth at Detroit and flew into Muskegon. Dad was determined to sit by the window in the exit row -- they wanted to relocate him because of his hand but I convinced them to let him stay if I came and sat in the row with him.

I actually found that I was able to contain most of my excitement until we got into the driveway of Pooh. My dad and mom always talk about "Epie Fever" ... but this year, I was so consumed with other stuff before I went that I really didn't have the time. I fell asleep in the car from Muskegon, and awoke when we already had gotten onto Old US 31. The sights were mostly familiar -- Fort Daul was still there, and most of the sleazy motels and the infinite Bed & Breakfasts ... We came into Epie and I suddenly got excited. The concept of seeing Martha again, and seeing Marcos -- who I hadn't seen in probably 10 years.

We pulled into the driveway -- my dad was trying to act like he knew everything about where we were going and what was around, but I don't think that he is aware -- that Epie is alive in his heart like it is in mine. I almost pitied him -- besides being annoyed by his chattering ignorance.

We got to the house, and before Ruth had even parked, I was out of the car, suitcases be damned, running into the house to see people. Martha wasn't here. In fact, no one seemed to be here. I ran around, seeing all the differences in the house... Martha had moved a lot of furniture around, but overall, it was mostly the same. It smelled good, and familiar. The truth is, I can walk this house in my sleep. I can traverse most of the grounds of Epworth in my mind. So I don't need to come here to remember.

Tom was here -- he'd actually been out by the car saying hi to my dad and ruth. My exuberance for seeing Martha sort of spilled out onto him -- I don't quite know why I was so excited.

It turned out Martha was in town with Marcos, getting groceries for the night. While I waited, I sat out onto the porch. I took huge breaths. There is nothing like smelling the smells of Epworth. I hadn't remembered the cars being quite so loud, but the wind came through and clanged through the windchimes, and there wasn't a sound or a tone that I had not remembered a million times in my dreams.

It took forever for Martha and Marcos to come home -- I sat on the porch -- the couch was moved, but it was still reminiscent for me of the days when I would come home with Henry and sit on the couch, laughing and gossiping. Finally, they came back. Martha looked very much the same, but she is definitely heavier. I will say that, moreso than ever, I remembered her as a mother. And I have said a million times that I would have given anything to exchange them - my mother and Martha. Martha has an entirely jovial nature and demeanor -- it felt so nice to see her again and feel that tangible, laughing love. I saw Marcos in the living room and we exchanged an enormous hug. At the time, he was wearing a baseball cap but he looked so remarkably different. I remembered him as being this suave, over-confident (and attractive) 17-18 year old guy, and suddenly, he looked mid-30's.

It was also incredible to think that Marcos, who I always pictured as much much older than me, is now only 27 -- so, he's Mason's age. So yea, he had a real paunch, and a double chin, and just looked dirtbag and fat and scuzzy. I can't imagine that the girlfriends he gets now are by any means the same caliber as some of the women he brought home then...

Of course, my dad, the king of tactless, says to Martha straight out "I wouldn't have recognized him -- he looks just like Alberto (her ex husband, a huge bastard)!" I mean, imagine being like "I didn't recognize you, cause you're identical to Hitler now!" ... It's practically comparable.
So anyway -- it felt good to see everyone, and it was just so pleasing to have my "family" around me again. I had wandered through the house -- the house that I loved and hated all at once -- full of so many happy AND painful memories -- so strange to me and yet so familiar.

After the formalities, Ruth and I helped Martha line the kitchen shelves with liner and start the turkey dinner off -- we needed butter, so Martha and I drove somewhat into town and ran into Susan French -- who is always "so happy" to see me and yet again brought up the fact that I'd had black hair 10 years ago. Man, these people have long memories.

It was nice having QT with Martha -- we have reallyl nice rapport, and when we got home we kept on talking. Inevitably, the subject came across to Cookie's homosexuality. It's really so strange because Marttha was always the most easy-going and laid back kind of mother, but she's really taking Cookie's gayness in the worst, most close-minded way possible. The trouble is, that I was trying to convince her that Cookie needed to be heard, understood, accepted, supported, but she really did have important points to make.

Cookie has transitioned between every sort of extreme in the time I've known her. She's been a Nazi, a wigger, a drummer, and now a lesbian. How exactly is Martha supposed to take her seriously? And Martha is taking it narcissisticly, that Cookie is doing it to spite her, but really, isn't there precedent?
Also, I found myself torn because I do sort of want Martha to disinherit and disavow Cookie, in perhaps some vain attempt that she'd take me in.

We talked a bit about the past, and she mentioned that she should've just adopted me. Even now, I wish she had. But at the same time, listening to her compare homosexuality to nazi-ism, or cannibalism ("baby eating") and listening to her be entirely obstinate and narcissistic, made me realize all the more how similar she is to my mother. How-- although they are so seemingly different in life attitudes and demeanor, that, at the core, they are the same.

On the airplane, it was so surprising to hear my dad chide me for not pursuing my Broadway dream -- my mother has constantly been down on me for wanting to be on Broadway, but my dad kept saying that, "not even as my Dad", he thinks I have real talent and potential. Sometimes I take him for granted.

Marcos came out after his nap, minus the baseball cap, and he was practically unrecognizable. Between the double chin, and the almost COMPLETE baldness, he really just looked like an entirely different person. He even walked different. The over-confidence was gone.

Having Susan French at dinner was so strange as well, because SHE kept saying (and Martha too) how I should be on Broadway and how I should turn my journals into books, and I just felt like the center of attention and it made me really uncomfortable. Which is surprising, because usually I don't mind being the center of attention. But having everyone superimpose their expectations upon me -- and knowing that even now, I am somehow not living up to them, is really unnerving.

Susan French hasn't changed at all -- maybe her jowl area has gotten a little more wrinkly, but other than that, she seems exactly the same. Jim French is apparently dying, but Susan is taking it very lightly. She was laughing and joking about it ... I don't know whether it was a mask, or whether, after decades of putting up with his BS, she finally can sense the freedom.

William is apparently writing a book about getting in shape and having discipline and stuff -- I had to interject that, in my rummaging through the trunk of junk, that I had found a picture of his ass. She, of course, laughed. In fact, people seemed to think that everything I said was funny. Again, unsettling. I'm not that funny.

I worry that my sentimentality and remembrance of old stuff is reminiscent of my mother, since she basically lives in the past. I don't live in the past, but certainly a big part of my memory is like a file cabinet and is easily accessible enough to sort through and catalog every now and again.

I didn't get to sleep in my old room -- which doesn't really look like my old room with Cookie now anyway, since it has a big double bed and our old twin beds are downstairs. My dad and Ruth ended up taking our old room, and I slept in Marcos' old room. This cottage has perfect and wonderful windows -- they swing up and are suspended perpendicularly from the screened window, and they're big and go across almost the whole wall, Sleeping in a room with them makes you feel like you're actually sleeping outside -- the wind blows through and it's just really idyllic.

Martha and Tom seem really happily married. She does seem to mention a little too often that he's "the most wonderful man in the world," but actually seeing them relate to one another is very much like relations that I am familiar with. They laugh, and tend to take themselves not particularly seriously, and Tom cracked me up when he was saying that Martha and I were "cruising for beefcake townies" in their hot little mercedes convertible -- that is, when we were going into town to buy butter. He was chanting "beefcake, beefcake" and just making me giggle. I'd hope to have a husband like that. Martha seems really happy.

I've almost entirely forgotten to drop the bomb. So Martha and I had a lengthy, terrible discussion about Cookie, and I was trying to remind her that, even before she went to Sweetbriar (the "hotbed" as Tom describes it) she had lesbian tendencies. That all of the boys she dated she didn't really *like* and Martha was trying to tell me that that's always the case. Which, at least, in my experience, is untrue. And SHE said "there was only one man that you're mother ever really liked, and that wasn't even until her 30's. " and I interjected something, ignorant, and Martha continued with something like "so much so that she was able to enjoy sex with him" and I was about to say something and then I was like... what?!?!

::mental processes:: My mom and dad married when she was 23 and stayed married until she was 52. 30's would make her married. Like man. Man not Dad. Enjoy sex. With Man. Not Dad.

...woa.

My mom had an affair.


I can't mention anything. Of course. She'd never forgive Martha for telling me.

but....


My mom had an affair.


Holy shit!!

I slept like a log in Marcos' old bed. I woke up, aware of something, maybe it was a dream? Not quite sure where I was. Or what time it was. I was almost remembering that it was night... before I went to sleep? I guess I fell asleep really fast. And was unaware that I'd fallen asleep.

I woke up at 8:something and padded downstairs and made tea. The kitchen is newly renovated (Tom did it all himself) and looks great, but it was comforting to see that the mugs were the same in the cupboard. Some things never change. I went out onto the porch (where my dad was already sitting, ready for church) and journaled. I was enthralled with this beautiful sunlit spiderweb that was undullating in the breeze. The windchimes are the same ones that have been here for 20 years. I could hear them in my head anytime. Everyone is going to church.

Mayhaps I will go back to bed.