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I had the best weekend home ever. The flowers were coming out and I spent Saturday wandering around barefoot. Mostly, I spent it sitting on the roof of the garage reading. (or just sitting. I did a lot of just sitting.) I forgot that there is an amazing sense of power when you manage to pick up and carry a huge (extendable, wooden) ladder over to the side of the garage, lean it against the roof (without knocking down any power lines, thank you.) and then climb up to the top. It makes me feel strong. The wind was blowing just the right way, and I stood at the very peak with my arms stretched out and pretended I was on the Titanic.... before it sank, of course. And then I helped my dad take apart the lawn mower, and then we went to my cousin's baby shower and I drove while my dad slept. And that evening we went to see 10 things I hate about you. and I was happy.
And then I came back here. And it's not that I hate it here, really. I'm just not happy here either. I've been obsessing way too much about who I'm going to live with next year... I thought I'd have no trouble getting a single, because it's based on the number of credit hours you have... until I realized it's not the number of credit hours you have, it's the number you've earned here. Which means more than half the campus has a better shot than I do. I looked into transferring to the college closer to home... but they'll only transfer in 75 credit hours which means I would lose everything I've done this semester. So I'll probably stay here. I'm hoping I won't be miserable, but I'm sort of resigned to doing it even if I am miserable. I want to graduate. I'm tired of the whole subject, though. It's all I thought about today, what I'm going to do next year, and I don't want to think about it any more. I've gotten in the habit of whispering, "Shut up brain" whenever my thoughts go somewhere I don't want them too. And I don't mean whispering to myself- whispering out loud. I'm thinking I should get out of that habit before I do it in the middle of class and convince anyone who doesn't already know that I'm crazy. New Topic ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ So we took separate cars and my dad spent the baby shower in the garage drinking with the guys... and by the time I was ready to leave he was just drunk enough to be silly and start talking. He talked the whole way home about our family, and his brothers and sisters... and then he got to my mom. He told me (again) the story of how they met... they met at work, and the two of them were talking just a little and he mentioned that he'd heard she was moving... and she said something to the effect of her husband might be moving, but not her. That was sometime in the winter, and my dad didn't see her again for a while. And around Valentine's Day he decided he was going to take her flowers... so he went to the florists and got a dozen yellow roses and drove over to her house (he knew where it was because he'd worked on their cabinets) in a freezing truck, so that by the time he got there they were kind of wilted. And he gave her the flowers... he said he knew her husband wasn't there because he'd seen him out with another guy. Apparently her husband came home a couple hours later and threw the flowers across the room, which was probably the end of them. That's how my parents started seeing each other- while she was still married. But this time my dad kept talking, and he talked about how, in all fairness, my mom really didn't want any kids. She was at a point in her life where she had accepted the fact that she was never going to have any kids... while my dad was at a point where he was ready to settle down and have kids. He said my mom had been told by three doctors that she "had some problems" and would never have any kids, and that she'd had a miscarriage when she was younger. At which point I stopped him and said, "She did?" ...that was news to me. He said, "yep, if she'd carried her first pregnancy to term you'd have a brother or sister who was 17 years older than you. She was 17 the first time she got pregnant and 34 the second time." And I tried not to sound too shocked. That little piece of information- that she had a miscarriage when she was 17- seems to explain an awful lot. She spent 17 years telling herself she would probably never have kids, I'm sure by then she believed it and she probably really liked the idea. And then I came along, and she had no idea what to do. I'm not what she wanted. Really, that makes me feel better for some reason. I think maybe some part of me has always thought, "Well, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the reason she's so crazy." But it wasn't me. It was her all along. I keep saying it, but I'm still sure she did the best she could. I've just never understood why her best was never quite good enough for me. My mom didn't want kids then. Maybe she did before I was born, but she didn't want me then. No wonder I'm an only child. She had her tubes tied after I was born, I've known that for a while. It makes a lot more sense to me now. 17 years is a long time. I've wondered, since then, if she really had a miscarriage. My mom was 17 in 1965. Abortion wasn't legalized until 1972. And a lot of women became sterile because of illegal abortions. It's possible. That would explain even more. Possibly even including the bewildering, "I think it should be legal but I don't think any woman should ever do it" stance. It's something I don't think she'd even tell my dad, he's decidedly anti-abortion most days, although he thinks it should be legal because that never stopped anybody. Or she could've just had a miscarriage. Either way, I can't imagine how that went over in her house. She was raised very strict Catholic, she's the only one of the 6 kids who stopped going to church weekly. And I thought I was a difficult kid... my grandparents expected her to be a good Catholic... and she got pregnant when she was 17, dropped out of college to get married (when she was around 19, I think.) And by the time she was 34 she'd divorced that guy, married another, and divorced that guy. And then she called home to say, "I'm pregnant" and they had probably never even heard about my dad before. I was conceived around Valentine's Day... possibly on Valentine's Day (I was late- they had thought I was going to be born on my dad's birthday, which is exactly nine months after Valentine's Day.) I have no idea whether it was that Valentine's Day or the next one. This stuff fascinates me. I barely know who my mom is now I know virtually nothing about her past, and everything I do know came second hand from my dad- she's never told me anything about her past. So of course I'm curious. I want to know everything and I can't ask... because that's how my family is, I can't ask. So I speculate and analyze every little thing I can find out even when I should be studying for a chemistry quiz tomorrow. (I got lost when he hit thermochemistry.) ~me |