I'm just about to leave and travel the fifty miles of prairie moonscape to my parents' house for the weekend. I've been spending a lot of time there, partly to visit my grandma as often as I can before the year's up, and partly because even though I'm completely into this journey of defining myself as an upwardly mobile, dynamic person who looks and acts her best at all times, it's still nice to know I have someplace to go where I can wear the same pair of sweatpants pants three days in a row and no will notice. Or, at least won't judge me outright for it.
I used to absolutely dread coming home, even though the comfort of being there always outweighed any burgeoning spark of independence I had during my college years. It seemed like every visit was another opportunity to disappoint my parents; we would have a painful discussion about yet another apron string that needed severing and then, given whichever adult privilege or responsibility I asked for, I would return home and fail spectacularly at it. My learning curve at being an adult is apparently a very steep one, second only probably to my learning curve regarding the correct tweezing of eyebrows or ironing dress pants.
Coming home during the marriage was another source of tension on all its own. My parents, naturally, were curious why I would spend weekends with them sans a husband, and my own stress from dealing with such a craptacular relationship combined with the exhaustion of hiding how bad it was from everyone made me, well, a humongous bitch. I took it out on my family, and since I wouldn't tell them why, the tensions were never resolved until I finally came out with it last February. The whole situation embedded a deep and bitter resentment in my mother, who didn't understand why everything couldn't just stop being broken...why I couldn't muscle up and fix everything that was wrong with my marriage. It put a small rift between my brother and me, because his senior year of high school--the one that was supposed to form the bedrock of stability and small-pond confidence he needed to take to college with him the next year--was shattered because his fragile big sister had just broken down and needed all the attention. And I think it even made things weird between me and my dad, because his daughter had not only failed at working hard enough to keep her marriage together, but since my husband's infidelity and all sorts of other weird things were involved, she had been embarrassed, too, and that's not something you ever imagine for your little girl when she's playing on your knee.
But now I think that since the aftermath of all of this is finally coming to an end, every member of my family is sort of faced with the strange opportunity of figuring out who they are. I guess that's the result of having so much alone time. My brother, who has completed half of his freshman year at Yale is finding new ways every day to become a superstar, a Captain of Industry, a Local Boy Makes Good. My parents--empty nesters, and realizing they had personalities before they devoted them to children--are figuring out things that will finally make them feel alive again. My dad wants to golf. My mom quit smoking and is currently a notorious Internet muckraker for our city politics. They're getting cruise literature in the mail. The other day they tried spices on their grilled chicken, and they lived to tell about it. Life, if not exotic, is at least good for Don and Rene.
And me...well, I guess my path is the whole reason this blog exists. My path involves figuring out why I feel so screwed up and then finding ways to fix it so when I'm in my fifties, I'll be able to send my kid in college a postcard of Puerto Vallarta from the cruiseship. And I guess part of the whole me-fixing process is just giving up on being so angry with the past, and realizing I'm really okay with my family. I even like them a lot.
Even if they do still think H'ville counts as the city.
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