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| Lights! (My favorite picture from this trip) Downtown Riverside, CA |
I arrived back in Arizona last night, and spent the day reacquainting myself with loading and unloading the dishwasher and cycling clothes needing to be cleaned through the washer and dryer. This is my routine. This is my domain. This is where I live. It feels good to be home.
Kept busy on my trip, I was carted from this house to that restaurant, from my father to my brother to my nieces and nephews. Everywhere I went I met them in clusters. Most of the time it was very warm and welcoming. Sometimes it was tense. On occasion there were feelings of blissful ambivalence, which I cherished just to relax in merely being present. There were those moments too where “issues” wanted to be hashed out.
My sister was the easiest, but we have been working on our relationship for quite some time now. Little by little, one step at a time, I am winning her trust. She says she trust me more. This part of my trip was truly happy. My nieces and nephews, all of which share a history visiting my home from their early childhoods, relished the time we got to reunite and share again our stories--like the time their lizard escaped the cardboard shoebox in the backseat of my car as I was driving them home on the freeway. There were many laughs.
My sister’s oldest boy drew me a picture when he was five, and meant to call me “Auntie” on it but could only write “Anti”. That has rather stuck too. Now this boy is 31 with a wife and two young sons of his own.
Seeing my father met with a lot of resistance to the peaceful reunion I had envisioned. Throwing expectations out the window, I acquiesced to the conversation he initiated. Let’s resolve issues! Those words came from his mouth, but I wonder, do we ever find resolve or just repeat the same condemning accusations over and over again. Most of these injuries are thirty years old, but we want to pull the scabs off to see if we still bleed.
I don’t know how successful I was in wading through the landmines of what it used to be like, or if I brought any peace to anybody else, or myself, in how I acknowledged this topic, yet I knew enough to only call out my part. Today I know this: I had felt too guilty to come home before now. It’s not about what they did. It was all about my choices, and my perception, and how I felt about me that stood in my way.
My father gave me one direct request. Our third sibling, my other brother, had stopped speaking to all of us, well, except the oldest brother. In true alcoholic family fashion, calling upon me as the oldest child and designated alternate parent to this brood, the responsibility, said my father, was mine to fix.
I gave him the Al-Anon answer: “Let me think about that.”
I left there feeling like a sand storm had blown through my soul.
Yet there is good news and that‘s that the story isn‘t over. More will be revealed. Courageously I feel like I did all that I could do by showing up, being aware, speaking my truth, then letting it go to let God direct the outcome. “It wasn’t an easy childhood," I said to my dad, "But we took something useful from the experience that makes us better adults today.”
By the way, my father’s health was impressively improved considering that I learned before seeing him that he had surgery for throat cancer. Up and outside on his front porch to greet us, I was relieved to see his rosy color and the clarity in his eyes. He could not talk very well, but we muttered through all of that.
More details, I’m sure, will still come out in my writing to come. There is so much to process I’ve decided to put most of it on the back burner to let all the ingredients of this visit simmer for a while.
Today I went to my regular 3 p.m. Al-Anon meeting where we talked about prayer and meditation. Since I recently have taken on this group’s Public Information commitment, I stayed for the business meeting after to learn about the tasks expected of me with help on how to carry these out.
Back in my life, my house, my intentions of living the best life that I can, today I’m thinking about the guilt that has kept me locked away from others for so long. I’m making a decision to give the guilt up, let it go, not tie myself down with the past any more.
Kept busy on my trip, I was carted from this house to that restaurant, from my father to my brother to my nieces and nephews. Everywhere I went I met them in clusters. Most of the time it was very warm and welcoming. Sometimes it was tense. On occasion there were feelings of blissful ambivalence, which I cherished just to relax in merely being present. There were those moments too where “issues” wanted to be hashed out.
My sister was the easiest, but we have been working on our relationship for quite some time now. Little by little, one step at a time, I am winning her trust. She says she trust me more. This part of my trip was truly happy. My nieces and nephews, all of which share a history visiting my home from their early childhoods, relished the time we got to reunite and share again our stories--like the time their lizard escaped the cardboard shoebox in the backseat of my car as I was driving them home on the freeway. There were many laughs.
My sister’s oldest boy drew me a picture when he was five, and meant to call me “Auntie” on it but could only write “Anti”. That has rather stuck too. Now this boy is 31 with a wife and two young sons of his own.
Seeing my father met with a lot of resistance to the peaceful reunion I had envisioned. Throwing expectations out the window, I acquiesced to the conversation he initiated. Let’s resolve issues! Those words came from his mouth, but I wonder, do we ever find resolve or just repeat the same condemning accusations over and over again. Most of these injuries are thirty years old, but we want to pull the scabs off to see if we still bleed.
I don’t know how successful I was in wading through the landmines of what it used to be like, or if I brought any peace to anybody else, or myself, in how I acknowledged this topic, yet I knew enough to only call out my part. Today I know this: I had felt too guilty to come home before now. It’s not about what they did. It was all about my choices, and my perception, and how I felt about me that stood in my way.
My father gave me one direct request. Our third sibling, my other brother, had stopped speaking to all of us, well, except the oldest brother. In true alcoholic family fashion, calling upon me as the oldest child and designated alternate parent to this brood, the responsibility, said my father, was mine to fix.
I gave him the Al-Anon answer: “Let me think about that.”
I left there feeling like a sand storm had blown through my soul.
Yet there is good news and that‘s that the story isn‘t over. More will be revealed. Courageously I feel like I did all that I could do by showing up, being aware, speaking my truth, then letting it go to let God direct the outcome. “It wasn’t an easy childhood," I said to my dad, "But we took something useful from the experience that makes us better adults today.”
By the way, my father’s health was impressively improved considering that I learned before seeing him that he had surgery for throat cancer. Up and outside on his front porch to greet us, I was relieved to see his rosy color and the clarity in his eyes. He could not talk very well, but we muttered through all of that.
More details, I’m sure, will still come out in my writing to come. There is so much to process I’ve decided to put most of it on the back burner to let all the ingredients of this visit simmer for a while.
Today I went to my regular 3 p.m. Al-Anon meeting where we talked about prayer and meditation. Since I recently have taken on this group’s Public Information commitment, I stayed for the business meeting after to learn about the tasks expected of me with help on how to carry these out.
Back in my life, my house, my intentions of living the best life that I can, today I’m thinking about the guilt that has kept me locked away from others for so long. I’m making a decision to give the guilt up, let it go, not tie myself down with the past any more.
“By the mind one is bound, by the mind one is freed…He who asserts with strong conviction, ‘I am not bound, I am free,’ becomes free.” ~ Ramakrishma.
Seeing my family, the crux of where I harbored all these feelings, allowed me to see that my life is not connected to what they do, or who they appear to be, or who they may think that I am.
My life is my life. I’m happy for all the people who accept my invitation to share it, but I won’t be unhappy because of those who don’t.
Every day matters.
1 comments:
Good for you. I am glad that you didn't want to solve all the problems of the family. Those lights are beautiful. I will have to tell my sponsor that I saw a photo of the lights in Riverside. I don't know if he has gone to see them or not.
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