They tell me it came from Beijing and is over 120 years old. |
Warmer and raining - the misty kind that just touches your skin with little cold pokes. Enough to make my hair curl even though I’d dried it straight. The sky is one smooth blanket of light grey, like so many of the days in Seattle, but the light is still bright and outside I was squinting despite no evidence of sunshine.
I met Kathy at the Hyatt Hotel around eleven for lunch. I felt happy so I splurged and ordered expensive, fattening food that still sits like a pile of bricks in my tummy. Why do I always do that to myself? Anyway, it was good going down. We sat on the terrace area where the whole southern half of the city is in perfect view. The light rain had cleared the pollution from the air and I could see all the way south to my apartment. I could even see beyond the edge of the city to the steep mountains protecting it. Against them, the city looked small; nature was more grand for the moment.
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Is it any wonder I fear change? It’s one of those things about myself I don’t like and I try to overanalyze, wondering if I was born like that or if I learned it. Tonight I can say I learned it. My G-ma is moving in less than two weeks to her new home, she announced today. I don’t know what the other family members feel about it - I mean really feel - because all I get is positive reports about the place where she'll be living and how excited G-ma is, but almost no one has said a word about what they think is smart or how they are personally affected. G-ma thinks it’s all communication and not also problems with the process. Man, she’s missing the boat. And this is the part that makes me furious and glad not to be there so I won’t be yelling: The time frame. Who in their right mind makes this kind of decision so hastily? This kind of thing is a long process that should be well planned out. … I’m not making detailed sense because I’m too upset right now. The change is too fast - that’s what I’m trying to say. And I realized, when I just learned of the actual move date, that this is how she does things and that the hastiness is too much for me. Her coping mechanism has created mine. What a drag. I hate change and plan it carefully over a long period of time, no doubt it’s because she never does.
At the beginning of this (her "thinking" about moving) I was entertaining the thought of returning home to be involved, to say goodbye to my childhood home, and to take care of my affairs that are also affected by her decision. Now, time after time of being told a decision has been made with little warning, time after time of soliciting more info and not receiving it, I’m just too mad to give a shit anymore. Whatever. Why should I waste my emotional energy on a family that's not willing to do the same thing for me and my concerns? (There are a few exceptions - some exceptional people.) I think I should’ve learned by now, but damn! I just can’t sever the connection. Somewhere inside there is a powerful part of me that recognizes the gravity of completely severing ties from those who raised me. It’s the part that knows regret. I keep putting myself through the ringer so I don’t have to feel regret when the innate affection for people I’ve known all my life surfaces in response to their physical loss - their death.
Even if I still wanted to go back to help, G-ma’s method of giving short notice would force me to pay out the ass for airline fare. It’s not worth it.
And it’s not worth talking about this horrible subject anymore.
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Yesterday my new antique Chinese cabinet arrived on the scene. The delivery people never came during the daylight hours, so I called and whined about a fake dinner appointment I had to leave for and that had them at my door in half an hour. It’s absolutely beautiful! I pushed it back into the place I had picked out for it then just sat and admired it. The hue is darker than it appears under the florescence of the warehouse; it is so much more beautiful in the light of our apartment. I feel that flare of happiness one experiences when they get something they really want.
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