Reunion @ MindSay

As you can surmise from the title of this entry, I just got back from Aunt Jean (Great Aunt Jean?)'s 85th birthday party.  Apparently, her actual birthday is June 28th (2 days and 62 years before mine), but the party was today, at Merri and Ramie's new beautiful house in White Plains.  I miss the old house; we had some amazing parties and gatherings there, but the new house is absolutely gorgeous.  It's big, and has 3 different levels, and they have a stream/creek in the back yard.  It only added to the wonderfulness that is being around that side of the family.

BIG UPDATES:
- Elana is still assistant teaching nursery school/touring.  She might be taking my tickets to NKOTB.  I have them up for sale online right now, because I can't really be at a concert in NJ on a Tuesday night when I'm teaching in Western Massachusetts.  But she could, and I'd rather they went to someone I know and love rather than a stranger.  Besides, the show is 2 weeks away, the tickets aren't selling online, and I want to be guaranteed their not going to waste.  I've been waiting since I was 6 to see them...that part  sucks, but I hope she can go.
- Adam is entering his 2nd year of grad school in San Diego for stage management, and he loves it.  It's weird that neither of us are in NYC this year, but I'm so happy he's doing well.
- Jared and Lauren are expecting a baby!!!! Oh man, I'm still squealing with happiness at this prospect.  Apparently, the 2 of them, their 2 dogs, and Ross all moved back in with Jan and Mark, so that house is AMAZING RIGHT NOW, but Lauren is pregnant, and I'm so excited.  I think they said she was due in Feburary, but my lord... we need to have a lot more family get togethers so I can see this child.  And Jared and Ross.  I miss them so much.  They were at the Jets game today, and I have to admit it was great seeing everyone else, but I missed the two of them like whoa.
- Alan and Janice are having a 3rd child!  That means' Joanie and Eddie have ... 11 grandchildren!
- Lindsay is 12 years old and SO TALL.

- Brandon is FIFTEEN, has a deep teenage-boy voice, and is apparently a lacrosse virtuoso.
- Kale and Seamus are soooooooooooo cute !  Roan and Brevin are growing up and look so much like their dad, but I interacted briefly with Kale and Seamus and they're adooooooorable.  Another group I need to reconnect with somehow.

- I drove on the high way today. 



*Important/funny family stories I heard about today that I need to write down and keep always*
-- Aunt Jean having a car for 13  years and it only having 13,000 miles on it.  She took it in for an oil change and a fill up every 4 months, even if it didn't need it.
-- Cousin Bobby, about Aunt Jean, "I called her up and I said, 'mom, how's it going?' and she said, 'terrific!' and I asked her why and she said, ' the toaster made my toast just perfect today!'.  She's such a sunny, happy lady.
-- Uncle Bernie's dance lessons, learning how to dance:  face-the-cabin, face-the-lake, face-the-cabin...
-- Grandpa Wally's photography, the wall of his pictures with all their prize ribbons, being one of Jared's first memories.
-- Cousin Robert ("the doctor") telling a story about being in the car with Grandpa, and grandpa was going to spit out the window, so he turned to the window and spit...but the window wasn't down.
-- The vision of Michael, Brian, and Alan attacking my mom in the basement.
--- *** MAYBE THE COOLEST STORY ***
             Aunt Jean's 85, which means her parents were around a loooong time ago.  Apparently Aunt Jean's dad was a trouble maker when he was younger and living in Maryland, and got sent to reform school.  While he was there, he played on the school's baseball team.  Do you know who else played on that team? GEORGE HERMAN RUTH.  Yeah, Babe Ruth.  <33

I've just looked over a four leaf clover where I was overlooked before. For you non-Blue Jays, the paraphrase is from, "Four-leaf Clover," fight song of the mighty Blue Jays of West End High in Nashville, Tenn. The occasion was the 45th anniversery of my high school graduation. Well, almost graduation. I was held back a year as a junior and didn't graduate with the class I had come up with. The class of 63 has kept me on their list, but the class of 64 apparently has disowned me. The reunion weekend included the opening of the school, including an "alumni room" where artifacts from the high school's history are on display. The school was reconfigured as a junior high in 1968 (someone correct this, please) so there are no homecomings to return to and haven't been for decades. This was my first trip back since I escaped with my diploma in June 1964.

When I drove away from campus that year I was piloting a Simca, a 4-door compact car with a cool factor of zilch. It got great gas milage, but gas was 25 cents/gallon. I turned into the parking circle behind the school driving a 4-door compact car, this time a Hyundai, with a cool factor of zilch, except for the 35mpg it got on the trip up from Chattanooga. My old  parking space had half an SUV in it. Near the side door sat a 1957 two-tone Chevy with the hood up. A primer coated 1930-something auto was parked nearby. A group of former teenage males stood around talking and looking under the hood occasionally. That was a clique I had not clicked with years ago and I wasn't there to try and rewrite history. I went in the side door and just almost went right back out. I would have recognised more faces if I had landed on Mars. It took a while to remember where things were, then I found the auditorium.

The auditorium held the stage, and the stage held the memory of the first time I met Thespis and experienced the total rush of reaching an audience, holding an audience, and leaving the audience in stiches. It was all the sweeter because I was not a socially adept nor popular kid. The mastermind behind that 2 minutes of comedy, speech and drama teacher Bill Geheres, was, is and forever will be my hero. And he was there when I entered the room off to the side of the stage.

After saying good-bye to Mr. Gehres, and attempting to maintain some degree of composure, I walked out on the stage, faced the cavernous room full of empty seats and recalled how the school custodian, Mabel, had made a fiery speech during a pep rally and quite nearly brought down the house. Then a group of girls, daughters of some of my classmates, I presumed, came giggling down the side aisle. I was leaving the stage when I heard my name. Turned out that the "daughters" were Andy, Bess and Carolyn, all from my class of '63. Refreshed I went in search of the alumni room.

The alumni room holds the art-deco blue jay that sat on stage during pep rallies, a band uniform, football jersey and various newspapers and yearbooks. It was populated by groups of guys who mostly seemed to be former athletes, the popular crowd. I was pretty much a misfit then and anyway these folks were older than I so I wandered the halls taking a few photos, mostly through the large arched windows that gave our school a look of elegance. And during this little stroll I met several nice gals. It was funny how they all had the same name. "I'm Justa Spouse," they each said. I walked to the parking lot alone with my thoughts.

The sounds of Janis Ian filled my car as the trip back home began, "I learned the truth at 17..." You and me both, girl. I turned up the volume. Loud.

I missed the dinner party that night to stay with my mother, who wasn't doing well at the moment, but that was ok. I don't have the wardrobe to meet the suggested dress style the email announcement had carried. And anyway that was the class one year ahead of me. I'm still waiting for the in-crowd of 1964 to call.

It has so been a while since I've last done this. Mostly because I was off of work for about 10 days and I avoided computers like the plague. Seriously.

 

In my job (like many) all I do is stare at a computer screen all day long and check my email hundreds of times a day. So when I didn't have to work, no email, no blogs, no Yahoo! news, no computer technology of any kind. I didn't even charge my iPod. Hmm.

 

During my time off, a few things did happen. First off, my one remaining grandparent turned 90 years old. Happy Birthday Grandma! (June 22nd, if you were wondering). You know, it is funny to me. I am on the cusp of turning 30 (well, 9 mos away, but still) and for many people, that's a big birthday. Then comes 40, where most people start to seriously freak out, over the hill and all that. For me, so what. I am kind of excited about turning 30. I think I am in a good place for my age. If I haven't accomplished everything I wanted to, well, so what? It isn't like I am dying or anything. I'll just pack it all in by 40--or 50. So there you go, I am getting on board with the whole decade change thing. Not everyone does, though, as evidenced by some friends of mine who have been turning 30 for a few years now.

 

The point is this: I kind of always figured that there comes a point when you honestly say "it's just another birthday" or something to that tune. Which I why I was surprised that my Grandma, 90 people!, was so darn crusty about her birthday. After all of these years, isn't she used to birthdays? Tons of people don't get to live that long or enjoy anywhere near that many birthdays. And grandma is healthy as a horse (mostly....she is 90 after all) so she actually can enjoy being a nonagenarian. Yet, there she was, crusty as week old bread about her birthday. I don't really get it. My sainted (oh yeah, I canonized her since we last chatted) mother threw her a beautiful birthday party on the day of her birthday, and that really seemed to push grandma's buttons. It is all a mystery to me, as most things relating to family seem to be.

 

So, the party was sort of a mini-family reunion. My grandmother's 6 kids and their respective spouses and children were all in attendance. Most of them live out of town, so it is a pretty big deal to have them all in one place. I thought it was really nice. I got to see many people, cousins and such that I haven't seen in years. In fact, the last time we were all together was for my grandfather's funeral, six years ago. And it isn't like we were yukking it up then...

 

Anyway, I liked it, I thought my mother did a fantastic job, and I enjoyed seeing nearly all of my relatives.

 

Here are a few highlights.

 

Aunt Kate, Cousin Sara and Sara's two kids, Hunter and Hadley, stayed with us for an extended visit. As they are my favorite relatives, this was highly enjoyable.

 

This is Sara and Hunter hanging out at our place:

 

 

It was our first time meeting Hadley, as she is only 4 months old and resides in Alabama. And here she is:

 

 You may remember her first appearance in my blog, found here.

 

Cousin Lizzie from Texas was in town (sans husband and kids, but you can't win them all) and every time I see her I remember why I like her so much.

 

Got to see one of my favorite high school teachers, Mr. Hanson (though I call him Doug now), as he is married to one of my dad's cousins. (I'm his favorite, too).

 

Aunt Mary and Uncle Rick didn't stay long.

 

(Okay, see, that one above sounded mean, especially since they came in from North Carolina, but Aunt Mary was at her worst. Seeing my dad for the first time in six years, her brother, her only remarks were "you're gray and fat." That's it. Then she walked away. Only came to talk to him once more to complain about the beer we were paying for her to drink. Years now, my mom has been telling me she is a bitch, now I finally believe it.)

 

That's pretty much the whole of it. Family is exhausting, as is throwing giant shindigs, and certainly we are glad it is over. Still, it was nice to catch up with the ones we miss, and to remind ourselves why we don't miss them all.

 

If only grandma could realize that when all was said and done, she got a nice afternoon with this trying family that she spawned and beyond that, it was really just another birthday. And she owes my mother a giant thank you. Okay, I'm done now.

I looked at my profile on here yesterday, and it said that I had posted 199 times, which is a ridiculous lot in my mind (I've subjected you guys to 199 posts about almost nothing of import?  My sincerest apologies!), but I couldn't help but feel like #200 had to be important.  No story like 'I saw a cute boy today ::giggle::', or 'I went to teaching today.  nothing exciting happened.  ate dinner with Mike.  it was fun'.  No, it had to be earth-shatteringly awesome.  So, I envisioned not posting here for a long time, maybe until Relay for Life, or later, graduation (which is speculated by JessCha to be someplace REALLY COOL that if I haven't revealed it here yet, I'll hold that in for a future post).  Or at least next week.  And then I'd try to find something poignant like I read in other people's journals,  or maybe even something political (bust), but I was really going to make my next entry here have some kind of substance, something someone might actually care about.

But then the New Kids on the Block are getting back together.  Possibly touring.  And I STILL listen to my New Kids music, even though I was probably too young when they came out.

And there you have it, folks.  Dumb post # 200.

The problem with keeping a journal on a computer is that when you buy a new computer you don’t transfer everything from the old to the new because maybe that particular day you don’t see the reason for a specific file anymore and it’s gone gone gone.

 

Such went the personal folder labeled all the sad stuff- letters and entries relating to the short term connection with the first daughter to which I gave birth. I saved the photos of her in adulthood but the words and thoughts- from her to me, from me to her and from me to me are all gone and linger only as a memory. My husband tells me that my last confessional letter to her was very brutal towards myself but I wanted her to know everything and so I poured it out in one big emotional vomit- maybe because I didn’t believe she would ever really accept me and it might be better if I gave her really good reason. All that self fulfilling prophecy shit. And taking control to insure the bad rather than just risk ambiguity.

 

But I confess I think of her often. Sometimes with jealousy. Sometimes longing. Sometimes irritation, Sometimes simple curiosity.  I don't know she is aware of the imprint her birth had on me and how vivid every one of those memories is burned into my heart and mind. Taking the train to the city and the uptown bus to east 94^th street where I signed the papers relinquishing her for adoption. And waiting at the bus stop to go home with those girls from sacred heart- all nice 17 year old virgins in  plaid skirts and knees socks. And me outward looking the same but never the same again. Nor the way her birth informed every relationship I have ever had since. Or how when she turned 21 I planted 21 daffodils in her honor. and how somehow deep in my freaky telepathic heart I knew that she wasn't placed in a happy family and wasn't always being treated well. I thought of her internally as a little blackbird. my little blackbird but I never let that thought go beyond my mind.Back then by signing the papers I gave up every right they told me. and was just left with the pain whcih even that I was told would go away before i knew it.  

 

SO since everyone was lying to me, why shouldn't I join the game and lie to myself. Accept the verdict, internalize it and expect the rejection when it came. Oh it hurt but it was no surprise. And so when everyone you know in adulthood tells you that you are funny and smart and generous and gracious and you get sickof hearing it because they might have read conrad but they don't know the heart of darkness.

 

Recently I mailed her a book titled The Girls Who Went Away or something like that – a book that gives the view of what it was like to be a “good/bad girl” in the 1960’s and be sent away because being pregnant  unmarried was incompatible with being in decent society.  It was a clumsy overture and she responded- with the articulate directness that I think is genetic because she writes quite well and is honest without being bitchy but it hurts all the same. And she has every right to build her life just the way she wants  and I know I have every right to want to be a small part of it and she in turn also has the right to say no. But I don’t like that.

 

Maybe if Jim and I had  had children the hole would not be so big. We tried many times and did extraordinary things and even got on the adoption roller coaster for a short while. I long ago stopped believing it was retribution for the errors of my youth.

 

But you know. It really sucks to be told plainly that someone doesn’t want to be in your life because of who you are…not because you did the right thing in having them adopted- even if aspects of the home was really bad- many of us survive bad biological mothering and I am sorry she had bad adoptive mothering. ANd yes i know that love must be given without expectation and I love her, but I dont know if I like her.

 

  Anyway I also learned she reads my blog ( as I go to her website to see what's new) and I could make this entry readable only by mindsay members or even close my entire blog to only mindsay registrants… but I also use it as entertainment, soapbox and a fun way to tell friends in Alabama and Denver  what is new. So do I exploit my pain and her privacy and submit this?  Which ever way I can always change it later. Right? Right.

 

P.S. there is  a response from her sitting in my uotlook inbox and I am not sure I want to read it. God I see the icy intensity she brings to relationships and I know it intimately. Nature has a lot more going for it than nurture. Yes. I know that manner very very well. It's mine. out out damn spot