In the waiting line...

So... life is interesting. Today, February 15th, my mother happened to be in the city I was born in with her SO. He had never seen any of the places there which were important parts of her life, they had never had the time, so they decided to take a little tour of her past. Her past, and as it turns out, my past too.

As they neared the house where I was raised for the first 3 years of my life, where my brother died... they noticed a little old woman in the yard. She looked at them and waved, it was my grandmother. So they debated, and chose to stop. My aunt was inside. I remember seeing my aunt a total of three times in my life, my grandmother I only remember seeing twice. (I don't remember anything from my time in that house.)

My grandmother is experiencing some dementia now at 85, but she was adamant about how much she had been praying for this and how she knew it would be today. (She's a woman who believes very strongly in particular versions of events, in all honesty I wish my imagination or conviction or delusion - whatever it is - could be that strong, she lives in a charmed world where everything is as it was meant to be and only as it was meant to be.) They looked at old photos throughout the house that will never go to me but my mother feels should have - which my father also died in and now it seems my grandmother likely will too. My grandmother talked of me incessantly, and finally insisted my mother do her a favor. She led her to a table and told a final story: she said when I was just 3 years old she took me to a garage sale looking for a nightstand. I insisted that THIS was the right nightstand for her, she had to get it and keep it and put secrets in it. This nightstand (I have no idea what it looks like) has a removable top, but apparently you'd never notice just looking at it. My grandmother removed the top, and gave my mother a letter. A letter to me, from my father, written on February 15th, 1998. They couldn't understand what my grandmother had to say about it, she broke down and became incoherent at this point. Something about my father being somewhere when he wrote it, likely prison. It was unclear whether he gave it to her to send to me, or wrote it and hid it away himself rather than sending it. It only took me moments to place that date - shortly after I wrote him a painstaking letter I labored over for hours, thought about for weeks, etc. asking to meet him... when I would remember him. He sent me a birthday present that year, a bible... with a card suitable for a small child. I was 14 going on 40, like always. I remember how hurt I was that he didn't send me a letter in response... and I chose not to reach out again in any way.

My grandmother made them fit that table into the Corvette they take their road trips in (my mother is not wealthy, but her SO is doing just fine for himself), and my mother is mailing the letter to me tomorrow. I didn't ask her to read it to me. I just don't know what to think until I get it. My aunt got my mother's e-mail. My mother and her SO finished off the trip by finally buying my brother a marker when they visited the cemetery - something I was going to do for her 50th birthday this coming year - but I am so glad she finally got to do (my father went and canceled the marker purchase to get the money back after my brother's funeral many years ago - and he's gone unmarked in Babyland 5 *shudder* ever since). I don't really believe in graves in any way, I think they're very unenvironmentally friendly and unpleasant... but it means something to her. As The Militant Ginger said in an incredible post on tolerance: "Tolerance is the subtle art of not getting up off your arse to meddle in somebody else's business.... Maybe you should leave them to do whatever they want to do and confine your opinions to how you live your life." That's where I'm trying to get with every part of my life, and I certainly am there when it comes to this issue with my mother and her son's gravestone. All that matters is that it's important to her....

Being abandoned by your parent is the sort of thing no one can understand unless they have been through it or something very similiar... which sounds cliche but I promise it isn't. I have found that I have this affinity for those who have experienced similar things, we're drawn to one another like moths to the flame, while there always seems to be some undefinable quality that the rest of the population (the un-abandoned) possess that forever keeps a gap between us, no matter how close we become. It's one of the things that hold SP and I apart, and brings me so close to my BFF.

I'm so lost in thoughts about this letter, so curious what it will reveal, all I've ever wanted is an explanation. I forgave my father years upon years ago for everything, what's the point in not? I went through my anger phase, I still occasionally go through my sad phase (I don't watch movies involving parental relationships much to avoid invoking one), but all in all it's a-ok with me. I can see I'll be writing more about this later... like when I get that letter I feel like I'm going to need to reprocess my entire life experience with my father. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

****

In other news, I will know the results of some biopsies I had done last week on March 2nd - I'll be finding out if I just have precancer or actual cancer... and then what we can do about which one it is.

I feel like I'm in a holding pattern in many areas of my life right now. For some reason it's made me very introspective. /sarcasm

So for those of you who were here because this was a sexy blog, haha, good luck with that. I never started this to be in a class of sex bloggers, I just happen to get along with them and find them interesting. I also just usually happen to be very sexual (and like being artsy and naked), but this blog is more about all the private sides of me - not just that. There's going to be a lot less sex until I get the ok to land, and a lot more of the pure me working through my own private nonsense.