Summertime, and the living is, uh, interesting?

Last I wrote the kids were nearing the end of school. I had a summer plan. Really, this time I did!

We'd cruise through the end of the school year. Have a couple weeks with me and the kids, first one taken up with going to visit Granny and Grandpa. (My partner's parents whom I dearly love.) Then one week swimming, working in the garden, and enjoying each others company. Then my personal care attendant, hire for the two middle kids, would ease us through by providing a gentle pair of 17-year-old, energetic hands.

HA! Want to get the universe to laugh at you, not with you? Start making plans, baby, because they will be turned upside down when you least expect it!

We did OK for the first week. With the grandparents. At first. But.... Did you know you can spur-of-the-moment hit a restaurant in Chicago and run into your brother, his kids, and zealot wife? Oh, yes, truly it is possible! Pouring rain, enduring a long train ride from the suburbs into downtown Chicago, a little shopping, and on to meet my partner's local friend at said pizza place. We order, wait, eat and are ready to pay the bill and "TADA". Here comes brother with 5 of his kids in tow. Curiously, brother's wife, who wrote me the prior posted letter, remained seated across the room. I don't see much of this brother on purpose. But the blessed stars aligned to add a "sparkle" to my day!

My family of origin was meeting in Madison a few days later for a wedding celebration. I knew this brother would be attending, but really, seeing him in Chicago? For another opportunity for this woman to ignore us and remain seated while her family came over to "say hi?" I like my nephews, they are a good lot. But, my brother and........ SHEESH!@

On to the wedding. If you have not attending a fundamentalist baptist wedding you've missed out. On what, you say? The opportunity to hear how marriage is supposed to last forever, that people are to remain virgins until married, how the wife will submit and look to her husband for leadership and protection, how marriage is between a man and woman as god planned, how the world is going to hell because marriages today aren't commitments like they were in the old times, and how you need to accept Jesus as your saviour so you can go to heaven and have fabulous riches. Most people attending (as I knew many who were there) HAD been married and never divorced.

Many young people wore the unbelievably vain "promise ring" on the wedding finger to show their pledge to remain virgins until marriage. (Hey! Look! I am a VIRGIN! Take that you sex loving perverts who defile yourselves by fooling around! I'd never do that because god would burn my ring finger right off by activation of the IMPURITY alarm within the promise ring!) Isn't the decision to have sex or not have sex before "marriage" a private decision? And don't get me started on the idea of the insane "Purity Balls" (*snort*) the fundies like to have for their precious virgin-stock females. (Hey everybody! My daughter's virginity is mine to protect! Keep away from her pants!)

After successfully navigating our lesbian, multiracial selves through this snow white event, we moved on back home. The next week summer school started and our PCA started helping out. I am able to accomplish much with another person watching the risk-taking trio. Then camp for two of the kids, then I had surgery. Then my aunt died. And on to another interaction, quite emotional, with my family of origin.

I work on not being drowned by my past. It's hard, but I've made quite a bit of progress. But put me at a funeral, put me at my aunt's bedside for a couple days before she died, place me in a room filled with people from my past (some I've not seen for over 30 years) and the switch is activated. I can easily slide into the girl who didn't fit in, who had too many questions, who seemed to always be on the outside, who was and never would be good enough. My aunt always supported me, altough I'd lost touch with her in the past 10 years (the whole lesbian coming out, brother shunning me and manipulating family gatherings held without my knowledge, alcoholic in recovery thing. And the lesbian wife, lets not forget her!)

The last weeks dumped me deep into depression. Working through the feelings of loss, of accepting I can never be welcomed with open arms, with seeing people who have had successful marriages and are still together after 20+ years, that takes a toll. I want to be the smartass who gets by, who can "sarcastic" her way out of any situation, but I am not. The tears still fall. If I have any regrets for the past years they are allowing other people to hold me back, to hold me down. My aunt was a giving, loving person and I could have been in her life had I the strength to say "what the hell" and plan my own gatherings. I can't change the past, but I can change what I do in the future.

I am OK for who I am. I know this. The time is now, for me to act, react and be a part of life. I started by contacting the "good cousins" who love me for me and planning get togethers. I have phone numbers and email addresses. I've made the hospital visit for a friend who had surgery, rather than sitting on my ass and thinking I should do something.

Life lessons suck, they do. But coming through these past weeks I've shed some of the sensitivity which has burdened me. My family is my family, my friends are my family. The people related by name or blood, well, some I don't define as my family. They are under the same catagory as irritating neighbor or door-to-door solicitor. I can acknowlege their presence but they don't HAVE TO mean much to me. My choice, either way.