The popular vote was to keep my travel stories here and open.  This is probably the first time I ever followed a poll's advice.  I can not guarantee it will stay open for long though ...

Los ojos de mi tía

or

My aunt’s eyes

or, perhaps more appropriately,

Why I suck

 

 

 

instead I get the guilt-driven I'm not dead yet email:

> Hello there!, is anybody home?. I haven't heard a
> word for a long time. Is everything OK? About me,
> I know I getting closer but I'm not dead yet.
> How are the little girls, let me know.
> dad

Not sure how true this is, but I read that Urma Thurman will not participate in anything critical about her children's father, Ethan Hawke. "It is terrible for my family," she states " I'm just another American woman who was in an unfulfilled marriage that fell apart."

What a concept. Can you be my mommy Uma? (Yea, you are younger than I am, so what). My parents have not been together since I was a teenager and STILL not only have bad things to say about each other, but seethe in a boiling cauldron of hate and want nothing less than an extreme painful death and eternal damnation for the other (well, if my dad believed in eternal damnation). Rare outings, froth with self-righteousness and tightened jaws and squeezed colons, are nothing short of stress and heart-clenching tension sessions. Every time I visit..every single meeting...I hear it, I feel it.

Somehow, in divorce, parents forget that you are genetically 50% of that person you hate vehemently. My mother will say "I gave that family class by marrying into it!"...does that me I have 50% classlessness genes? My dad takes one of the poetry magnets that says "MONSTER" and puts it on my picture of my mom...does that mean I am half monster too? Like it not I DO have both of them in me, I see my mom's eyes and stealthiness, I have my dad's analytical nonspiritual thinking.

I know they have been through a lot, leaving family and fortune and starting tabula rasa in a country not hospitable to immigrants, especially the darker kind. It would take decades to calm my dad enough so that a loud noise or tire exploding wouldn't make him hit the ground thinking a revolution was starting. My mom had to learn to do things for herself after years of having servants. Together they accomplished many things, but divided they became. I remember being very happy when they parted, I thought peace would come at last. No...

When does the statute of limitations start? When do you stop blaming the other for all your downfalls and take responsibility now? I have always told people you can only blame your parents for your shortcomings for so long, at some point you can take therapy, move away, create your own destiny. Mom? Dad? I know it is easier not to think that you had any part in your unhappiness. But give it up. Your lives have gone on OK, see it right there? Can't you see it? You've been eating and laughing and driving and sleeping and loving your pets and children and grandchildren just fine without the other messing it up. Yea, you will always be stuck loosely with the other parent of your children, but they are not the true demons of society. Smile and shrug and hum instead, it feels a lot better.

Out of the blue I hear from my uncle, the black sheep that used to race motorcycles. He was the moon of my youth, hanging big in my little sky.

From: <***@tuecuador.com>
To: <***@***>
Subject: Edsel
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:10:03 -0500

***,

Tu Mama me envio fotos tuyas y de tus hijas en un Edsel, estan lindas tus hijas y te cuento que yo recuerdo haber paseado en esos carros hace muchos años, con mi papa osea tu abuelo.

Besos,
Uncle Gary

Last night my dad asked, "How long have you been living in this house?
Me: "Four years."
Dad: "Do you know how many steps to your front porch?"
Me: "Um....four?"
Dad: "No! Five!"
Then he gets this incredulous look on his face, like not knowing that simple step/rise fact after so many years is insane.

My dad is town for Thanksgiving. This means all the hours I am am usually left alone he is there next to me, following me from room to room. He is there telling me the stories and jokes I've already heard before. He is there to tell me in detail about his new refrigerator (white and not the 1970s avocado green he had for eons and other consumer information stuff that I did not absorb), and how much I will like its water filter (for some reason he thinks Californians require extra special water). I have heard about each dog's sleep habits. How sick he is of Bush (Ok, I don't mind hearing about that a lot). I've heard that "work is a four letter word" 31415929 times.

My dad's new idea is he wants to sell his house and give my sister and I half the money. "Daddy I won't take your money," I tell him. "Where are you going to live without a house? How will you pay the new higher rent?"

"No matter, I'll probably drop dead tomorrow." He says this even though there is nothing physically wrong with him. He is spry and healthy for his age. His mind is as sharp as a tack. If I tried to start a running count for every time he has told me about his imminent demise, I would have to use scientific notation to tally it; I'm too lazy for that kind of Math. ;)

I try to remind myself that these very things that get so on my nerves during this time he is with me will turn out to be just the things, in retrospect, that I'll miss when he is gone. But sometimes the enormity of his martyrdom engulfs me, not as comfort, but as a too heavy a blanket. People who think Jews have the total monopoly on guilt should visit some more Latino families. My family can be either supremely funny or insufferably morose kvetches.

Oh gawd I have a morbid family. My sister, too, is the sometimes malcontent and hyper allergic whiner. She says she has a brain tumor every time she gets a headache. Deb has been saying this for decades and so far this phantom malignant growth has failed to grow and kill her (though many times I've wanted to sock her in the head and give her a goose egg bump to match her imaginative one). In fact, she recently had an MRI for her migraines and it came out normal (for her). Yet I peeked in her LJ yesterday and she is still saying she has a brain tumor.

Except for me of course. I'm not THAT macabre. I'm not like them, my problems are REAL. The last two weeks I inexplicably lost a good bit of weight (for my height) for no reason, so I am the one with the disease, really. If this mysterious weight loss pathosis doesn't kill me a bus at the infamous crosswalk WILL.

So when I meet the Grim Reaper earlier than expected and become a worm sandwich, I hope you all remember me fondly, make sure I'm buried under that pomegranate tree and eulogized properly in all your journals. :P

From Angels with an Attitude (found through wtf_inc). This is TOTALLY how my mother would have me look like! Impossible! AACK!:

I need some blue contacts.

It is so hard to wake up from a long daytime nap. I get groggy and disoriented. Who are you?

Aw, I got this email from my dad today. My sister and I pooled our resources a few years ago and got him a puppy for Father's Day after his beloved dog died of a heart attack:

Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 04:05:41 -0500 [02:05:41 PDT]
From: ***
To: ***
Subject: Happy Birthday

Crazy Casey is 2 years old today if you just don't happen to know. I think that he's the best pet that I've ever had (that includes my old Drinker and more recently Morgan and "the old lady" Ashby) and is for sure the best Father's Day present that anybody could ever get. Thanks to both of you and my four little devils.
dad

(the little devils are my kids and my sister's)

When I was a child I thought my dad was The Smartest Person in the World^TM. No one else's dad could make light switches and phone jacks magically appear. No other dad could create new mechanical and useful devices from scraps of disparate junk (he MADE me a slide projector!). No one else I knew liked to do complicated math problems for "fun" like my dad.

If it broke The Smartest Person in the World^TM would fix it. If it wasn't broke he would take it apart and put it back together and declare "Oh, I know how they did it. I can make this!" People would drop by with old TVs, VCRs and other such junk for my dad to put his masterful mind and adroit hands to work. "I found this in a burned building and thought you'd want it!" someone would say and sure enough my dad would clean it, fix it and deposit it somewhere in our house. We were the only family in my working class town, I'm sure, that had telephones and TVs in every room (even the bathroom); we were definitely in the running for the oldest living washing machine and dryer in the State of Louisiana. I'm positive we had the first home computer in our and all the surrounding parishes (i.e. counties to everyone OUTSIDE Louisiana). This drove my mom crazy. She wanted new things and wasn't impressed that he could revive the old or dead. She eventually left him.

The Smartest Person in the World^TM did the traditional dad things like teach me to ride a bike and kick a soccer ball, but he also taught me how to look up at the sky and pick out from the dense gauze of the Milky Way the constellations ("Celestial Navigation" is what he called it). He taught me to play chess and cards before I could read. And he told us the most wonderful stories of the happiest days of his life when he was piloting large naval ships at sea. He told us how he could travel to the Galapagos Island without the need of any other navigational equipment but the stars and knowledge of how the ocean currents strayed.

When I was 15 I did not like my dad and felt that he just "didn't understand me" (who understands a 15 year old!). I was angry that he made me grow up in the most unforsaken god-awful place in the planet, that he had no ambition to make a lot of money, that he let my mom walk over all over him, that we had to be so different from everyone else---I was angry angry!! My dad and I lived in the same house, but in different islands of existence. Yet even amidst all that isolation and anger I still thought he was The Smartest Person in the World^TM. The poor man hadn't a clue about how to handle his daughters; he still doesn't most of the time, it just all matters less. Those teenage years were necessary in order to reach these current calm waters of old age, this affection, this cherishing and valuing of the unblinking love my father provides...that unconditional pure love no other man has ever been able to give me.

In college I realized my dad may not be The Smartest Person in the World^TM--perhaps maybe Stephen Hawkings and Carl Sagan might be smarter. Yet although my dad just looked like a man that was successfully ordinary and blended in with every other successfully ordinary man of his generation, no one really knew the life he had given up for us, how he wrestled opposition his whole life, or that his IQ stood at 160. No one here knew how he had survived typhoid fever, military coups, gave up a respected career and left his beloved homeland to live in secrecy in the states. How despite his superior intelligence he endured racism and xenophobia in the states. How he had to watch his marriage turned ugly and have his two headstrong daughters challenge his every thought and wish.

Yet his struggles were not in vain. He instilled us with the importance of an education and a respect of all people. He taught me knowledge comes from discussion, not conclusion and exclusion. He taught me not to let your fears and hatred of those that are different to be my guide, and not to invoke God to justify any hatred. He was the first Feminist I knew. He is a Democrat, an Atheist and the Most Decent Person in the World. And he gave me something that will always remain inside me--those tough and indestructible genes of fortitude that tell me I shall be able to bear any of the difficult circumstances that come across my path too.

I want to tell him how touched I was by all his acts of kindness--to me, my sister, my children and all his loyal friends. I want to tell him how much I appreciate all he has done for me, all that he is continuing to do. I have a rushing sense from all the things I want to tell him; but I know I would just embarrass him. So I'll simply say, Happy Birthday Daddy, The Smartest Person in The World^TM to me!

I sent my sister the eyebrow pics and she said:
"You are so bored with life that you made yourself look Romulan?"

EDIT (a few hours later): My response - "Just getting back at me for that time I called you 'Chewbacca'?"

My Mom: I disapprove of your look.
Me: What's wrong with it?
My Mom: You look like a hippie.
Me: Hippies don't get their hair finely coifed at the finest salon in Berkeley every 6 weeks.
My Mom: No, your earrings make you look like a hippie. Your hair makes you look like a Lesbian.
Me: But I have good references.

When my father was a boy he contracted Typhoid Fever. He was living in a 3rd world country and during a time before reliable vaccinations and cures existed. Then, the death rate from typhoid was 99%. When he was sent to a quarantine hospital, his clothes, curtains and mattress were burned. His extended family prepared his coffin.

Obviously, as I exist to write this today, my father was the 1% that survived. But before his miraculous recovery his poor mother had to bear witness to his body unravel to almost nothing during those 2 months he cried out with fever. But he fought fire with fire. His hot tenacity and refusal to die were like the blazes set to save a burning forest. In the end, he won.

I heard this story told many times by my dad and grandmother. With each iteration I felt myself in his body, as if I, as his daughter, shared a congenital triumph. I stole his fire. Throughout my life I had full faith my body would not betray me. I never got influenza, I was fertile, I healed painful scars. Dammit, we may have been foreign and funny-looking, our souls may not be saved, but we were genetic giants!

All this made it harder to watch the dismal signs of my cat Zoomie's vitality ebb away to nothing. It was an awful reminder of how everything ends and many endings are not pretty. Yet Zoomie's eyes remained large and expressive during his illness, all the more so because they were straining into mine to save him. To do something. But my shear stubborn will alone could not make HIM the 1% that survived. So many things remain beyond my control.

I remember how fun it was being the little tomboyish sister to the nervous and bookish Deb. I would love to run out at her from the hall, or jump out from some back door, or sneak up behind her back and laugh fiendishly or just shout BOO! She would leap as high was her small roundish feet would lift her and she would scream--a high piercing scream that would remind me why she was a soprano in choir. My dad would come running. My mother would scold me. I knew I was not their favorite so who cared? And I had a way of sneaking into her personals, writing "Carrie was here" in the pages of her diary or leaving dead cockroaches among her trinkets. I could hear her yelling upon discovery even as I bicycled down the street so far away.

I also remember waking up some mornings and deciding it was a nice day to refuse to talk. Deb would ask me a questions and I'd stare blankly at her. This would drive her mad for she was a squeamish girl with so many important things on her mind (alligators under the bed, a mysterious skin peeling that reminded her of leprosy). Of course this would extend to school. I would not talk in class. I remember Cindy Amacker saying "She's being quiet just to get attention", but no, I was practicing the art of terrorizing my sister. How cleohs put up with her strange friend I know not.

Deb is 2000 miles away. I have no one to torment. No one.

My dad is visiting. He is a simple man. He is a complex man. Like me, lots of stuff goes on under that plain exterior.

Today he surprised me. After a lifetime he rarely surprises me. He brought papers for me to sign as a witness to his desire to donate his body to science. To LSU to be precise, our alma mater. I tell him, of course, I would go along with any of his wishes...but wouldn't it be nice to have a place that me and the girls can come talk to you? His answer, "To say what? I won't hear."

My dad is an atheist. It makes sense. I feel funny.

I walk in the room and find my kitty, Zoomie, the 5 month old cat, wrapped in a baby blanket like a burrito and being strolled around in a plastic toy shopping cart by my girls. Despite 50 million years worth of feline evolutionary survival instinct seething through his cells he seems to just be taking abuse. Though upon my arrival he just looks up at me with eyes that say "Is this necessary?"

In the past I have had cats that were seemingly calm but without warning punch me in the face as to say "Ha! Caught you off guard! I descend from Sabertooths, Homey!" Not Zoomie.

I rescue and unravel Zoomie from his confines and give the girls a speech about how he is a living creature and not a toy. I admit got one foot on the banana peel with the kids. But I'm not sure whether I want to be one of them to get inside their minds or simply continue to live among them taking notes and photographs.

I am the daughter of a Navy man. He still tells me the EXACT time about everything. "I arrived at 8:56" "I fed the girls 2 popsicles 18 minutes ago". So, although not quite the fanatic as he is, I pretty good about being punctual. I'm always on time. If the meeting is for 2:00, I'm there about 2:00 (my dad would be there at 1:59).

So, you see, I got TIME all covered. Then why oh why am I always off on the DATE? Yesterday, for the nth time, I arrived at a 2:00 meeting at 2:00, but ONE WEEK EARLY. Last Saturday I got my daughter to a birthday party right at 1:00 --but the party was on SUNDAY. I've been known to arrive a potlucks with food in hand a week after the potluck was given. I can give so many examples, but it will bore you to tears or laughter.

Even my babies were born one week early.