Campfyre Stories

We parked on the grass and kind of snuck in to catch the part of the ceremony where the two of them jump over a broom.  They made the jump without touching any part of them to the ground or the broom (even clothing), so the universe approves of their marriage?  Something like that.  They ran off and jumped into the horse-drawn carriage and went off…  somewhere…

So, where do I start?  The groom and groomsmen were all in plain black suits.  The bridesmaids were in beautiful saris.  The bride was wearing a custom gown that was inspired by Star Wars, but I searched and I can’t find a picture.  It was beaded and gold and flowy and gauzy and unique.  I could go on, I have decided not to.

The bride and groom headed off in their horse-drawn carriage and the rest of the attendees headed inside for cocktails and appetizers.  I saw my former in-laws, some of them for the first time in very many years.  It was quite heartening how well-received I was and how happy they were to see me there.  Later in the evening, my ex-mother-in-law came to say that my presence there speaks volumes, my mother added, for all three of us.  The simple fact that Dragonmaker, Dragonmaker’s wife and I get along well enough for me to not just be tolerated, but welcomed at the wedding really goes to show that people can be grown-ups about divorce.  I do wish them well, and they know it.

So cocktails and appetizers.  My drink of choice for the evening was gin and tonic because I didn’t want to have to think about it.  I had to drive home, so I moderated my drinking and I think I only had about 3 drinks (over the course of 6 hours).  The appetizers were, frankly, strange.  I only tried the carrot/coconut shooter, which was like a very strange and watery pudding.  Dinner was much better.

Spawn, for the first time in his life, found himself playing the host at someone else’s party.  In addition to running with his posse and being followed around by female groupies (aged 2, 4, 6 and 8 ), he introduced people to each other, mingled like a pro and even had his first slow dance with a girl!  And what a dance it was.  Although this girl is practically family, it couldn’t have been a better person to have that first slow dance with.  He framed her well, looked into her eyes, held a conversation and (to a small extent) steered her around the dance floor.  The fact that she let him lead and he stepped up was so impressive to me.  "THAT," I told him later, "is exactly how you dance with a girl.  Remember all of it."

I did some dancing and even forced one of my two brothers out on the dance floor.  He claims that he can’t dance, but he made the effort and didn’t look nearly as much of a fool as he claimed he would.  The other brother dug in his heels and wouldn’t budge (I had to literally drag the other brother onto the dance floor).  A couple of friends of mine came with their 11 month old baby, who I was meeting for the first time.  She’s adorable (and I’m not a baby person!).  I went up to the dad and said "Give me your baby and go dance with your wife!"  He handed me the baby who fell completely in love with me, cracking up every time I sang to her or stuck my tongue out.  I think I made a new friend

My mother asked me if I ever regretted not having a wedding "like this".  She said that sometimes she feels like a bad mother for not having given me the fairy-tale princess treatment on my wedding day, but I’m really not a fairy-princess kind of gal.  I’m starting to think that I have so many stories from my past that deserved to be told that maybe my wedding is one of them, but for now I don’t want to take away from Dragonmaker’s day.

The bride and groom danced together.  Then the bride and her father.  Then the groom and his mother.  His mother was thrilled to be dancing with her son and it was wonderful to see how natural they were dancing together.  It made me heart soar and she told me later that it was a wonderful experience to have.  Good for them!

Dragonmaker is part of an improv troupe.  Several of his friends from improv were there and wanted to sing.  The first woman is someone I have met a few times, a wonderful woman.  She’s got a gorgeous voice and a matching personality.  She sang wonderfully.  The second girl went up and the leader of the band said "I don’t know if this is really a romantic song…"

Someone please tell me…  on what planet does someone sing House of the Rising Sun at a wedding?  She was pretty drunk and she butchered and forgot a lot of the words.  There was some measure of relief that I felt when she left off the line "I’m going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain."  Because, you know, inappropriate…

A third woman sang and, after a few false starts it turned out very lovely.  I was mostly trying to get my carful of people together, so I wasn’t paying all that much attention.

And then the bride and groom sang "Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off", which ended the musical portion of the reception.  Once they were finished the band packed up and I started making my goodbyes.  Spawn was having such a good time, that he decided to leave with the rest of my family, so I packed up Girl and my two brothers and we went back home.

Spawn got home about an hour after us and we all wound up staying up Far Too Late for having plans to hit Tulip Fest the next morning.

Some time back, Spawn was given a recliner + ottoman from his (almost) stepmother’s father.  It was leatherette and extremely comfortable and it was his chair.  He explained that it was his and he intended to take it with him when he left (for college or his own apartment or whatever).

And then it broke.  And he was devastated because this was his chair, so I promised that I would buy him a new recliner with some of the tax return money.  This past weekend, since I had the car, we went to the BIG store and picked out his new recliner (a much nicer and plushier one than the one he broke).

So we hunted down the sales associate and did all the pre-sales stuff, joking and laughing the entire time.  When we were standing in line, I mentioned that I was going to cry when Spawn finally did move out.  Not because he was moving, but because he would be taking the chair with him.  The SA was shocked and actually said that was something that he never expected to hear a mother say to her child (but he said it with a smile on his face). 

When we got to the cashier, we were still joking around and I was trying to include the cashier in our jocularity.  When he handed me the receipt to sign, I turned to Spawn and said "HA!  You see that?" pointing to the total amount, "And they say you can’t put a price on a mother’s love.  Well there it is, kiddo, right there."

Well I thought that the cashier was going to fall over when I said that.  If "I won’t miss YOU, but I’ll miss your chair" was bad, this was probably worse.  I suppose there’s some comfort in the fact that I said it to two different people probably mitigates the whole thing (Spawn, of course, knows me well enough to know that I was just playing).  When the cashier did recover, he chuckled, explained how long we have to reschedule the delivery and offered a warning of "So don’t get into trouble with your mom or she’ll delay your chair."

Heh.

So I was talking to Oz the other day and he mentioned how he was a contender for Father of the Year and why.  I told him why I was now out of the running and, when I saw Spawn later on, I conveyed this to him.  "You know why I’m out of the running for Mother of the Year, right?"  And he said…

"Because you already won it?"

Hot damn, but I do love my son.

I’m really done with winter.  My hair is done with winter, my body is done with winter, my spirit is DONE with winter.  Unfortunately, winter is still not done with me.

So last night, as we were listening to the weather forecast (for more damned snow), I mentioned to Spawn (tongue-in-cheek) that I blame the groundhog.  He looked at me like I had grown a second head.  Apparently, we had ALL been remiss in his education of US Legends and he had NO IDEA what Groundhog Day actually was.  (He has some fault in this as well for never having asked about it.)

So I explained the lore, and he thought I was loony for sharing this information with him.  Let me just say that explaining Groundhog Day to a 14 year old really makes you realize just how ridiculous a tradition this whole thing is.  His immediate question was "All the groundhogs in the world?  Or just a specific one?"  This, of course, led me to explain about the handful of "famous" groundhogs and the only actual name I know which, of course, is Punxsutawny Phil.  He nearly fell off his chair laughing at me as I stammered through the explanation that there is ACTUALLY a town called Punxsutawny, PA.  I can’t even imagine what would have happened had I been fully up on the lore and told him that Phil emerges from a place called Gobbler’s Knob. 

Frankly, it was a rather humiliating experience for me.  Has I been making it up, I wouldn’t have minded nearly so much, but to give my kid factual information on some US lore and be mocked for it  was not really something I particularly wanted to deal with.

So for all you parents out there who have failed to explain Groundhog Day to your children, I implore you, save yourself some embarrassment and tell them while they’re young.  And maybe don’t tell them about the name of the place from which Phil emerges…  ever…  especially if they’re boys.

Spawn and I have a new game that we’ve been playing for a little while.  We only just named it "The Definition of Ten" because, frankly, it needed a name.

It’s pretty simple, really, and I’m sure that others play this same game, but unlikely they do it to the degree we do.  "On a scale of 1-10…" is how it starts, but it was defined when Spawn would answer (how hungry are you or how badly do you need to find a bathroom) before I had defined what 10 actually was.  "Don’t you want to know what 10 is?" I would ask and he would say yes, then, after he heard the definition of 10, he would bump his originally given number down by one.

So it has become a game of clever definitions of 10.  Examples include: "so hungry I would eat [least favorite food that he’s forced to eat on a regular basis - not by me]" [I need to pee so badly], just hand me a cup", [in reference to cold] "what are those penguins doing here?"

We have altered the game so that the definition of 10 is given before the underlying question (how cold is it, how hungry are you, how much do you like this) is asked.  That saves us the time of having to ask "But don’t you want to know what 10 is?"

We’re both pretty clever and witty and will take the extra few seconds to come up with something that will both get the other person wondering what the basic question is going to be and also maybe get a chuckle or at least a smile.  The best part, I think, is that we both win when we play because it’s not a competition, it’s just a way to get the other person to smile.

…until we were halfway through the Bucket List.

10 minutes before the movie ended, it wasn’t the grief in the movie that hit me, but the humor and I started sobbing silently.  Wracked with physical sobs, tears streaming down my face, the only sound I made in the theater was that of blowing my nose.

To tell the whole truth, the light humor in this movie about a dark subject…  this is how it went for us with Dad.  He joked until the end, so we did, too.  It had to be funny because that’s what his whole life was about.

I think, that had I realized what day it was, I would have suggested that we see a movie NOT about people dying of cancer.  Had I realized what day it was, I might have warned the other 5 people who didn’t know me a year ago and not put Princess in the position of having to explain why I was so lost in my emotions that I couldn’t even really move or put on my coat, let alone talk about it.

And I wish I could have explained that it was not only ok, but good for me to have that reaction.  That it wasn’t unhealthy and, while unexpected, it wasn’t too much.  That I’m fine and please keep laughing because, in my family, we don’t do solemn very well or for very long.  That I don’t want to be cajoled or comforted or any of that sort of thing in a movie theater.  That it was the shock of how fitting it was to see this movie, on this day, and not any kind of unresolved emotions or repression that caused me to break like that.  That it was the humor in the movie and the lessening of it in my daily life that made me cry, so much more than the grief.

But I didn’t come away from it feeling judged.  If there was an uncomfortable moment, it’s not one that I feel I need to apologize for and I think that it’s more a situation of others not really knowing quite what to do.  And what they did - just letting me have that moment and then moving on - was exactly the right thing to do.

So I came home and got in touch with someone that I hadn’t seen in a year and hadn’t talked to in a couple months.  I think it was something that we both needed.  And I sent an email to my father’s widow because I knew that she needed to be reached out to a little, too.

But I still wish that I had realized what day it was earlier, and not gotten blindsided by it.

I’ve tried, really I have, and I can’t come to any conclusion other than I have failed, miserably, at teaching my child to be responsible for his own actions and choices.  I doesn’t help, of course, that I’m consistently fighting the other parental half saying "He’s only [insert age], it’s something he’ll learn with time."

Well, at 14 he hasn’t learned it yet, and for the past TEN years he’s flat-out refused to do his part to contribute to any household.

Every now and again, he’ll clean up a hairball from one of the cats.  Usually, he puts a new trash bag in the trash can.  Outside of that, there is nothing at all that he does around the house without first being told.  Not asked, because asked means that he will decline.  "Spawn, will you please do some dishes so I can make dinner tonight?"  "Will I or I have to?"  Because "will you?" clearly means if you don’t do it, then I will happily wash the dishes and make you dinner, and then I’ll do the dishes afterward too.

Yeah…  not so much.

Finish Reading »

Today would have been my father’s birthday.  We’ve all, I think, been thinking a lot about him lately, and the actual day of his birthday is kinda tough.  The week leading up to it, now that I think about it, hit me harder than the day itself.

Whenever I get into those states where I’m thinking a lot about my dad, he stops in to say hello in interesting ways, usually through people who knew him…  often people I didn’t actually know myself, or at least didn’t *really* know.

Earlier this week, I ran into a former co-worker of my dad’s who asked me if I could get him some pictures and also who he should talk to to get copies of dad’s music.  That was a beautiful thing, knowing that people were making efforts, probably unbeknownst to them, to keep dad and his music alive, not just for his family, but for even all the people who never knew him.

My mother intends to start a MySpace page for General Eclectic (the best incarnation of their band) and I think it’s going to wind up getting them the exposure they could have had, if the internet had come about 20 years earlier.  I think there are a lot of people who either knew dad or know one of us kids who will be amazed to find out that not only are we not exaggerating dad’s musical and songwriting abilities, but probably playing them down to some degree.

Girl told me that Dad will forever live in her memory for the worst jokes she ever laughed at.  That it was his delivery that, no matter how bad that joke was, still made her laugh…  and that’s pretty universally agreed on.  That no one could deliver a punchline like Paul.

There are a lot of things that no one could pull off quite like Paul and the people who knew him each have a different one thing that stands out for them.  I’ve come to believe that each of us has that one spark of uniqueness that never leaves this plane.  Whether you believe in reincarnation, heaven, or nothing at all…  I don’t think that anyone entirely moves on, because I know for me, and for everyone else I know who has lost someone close to them, that they are not just reminded but watched over, poked in the shoulder, if you will, by that loved one who is no longer here.

I think that it’s similar to Orson Scott Card’s use of the term of aiùa in the later Ender series and that’s the closest thing that I have to defining it.  Whatever it is, it never actually goes away.  The reminders, however, sometimes are hard.

Things are gonna get easier.

I can’t blog too much on this topic until after it winds up resolved, so I may be dancing around the subject a bit.

We need to find a new school for Spawn.  The Jr. High that he’s been going to is not a good school at all and we need to get him out, for a myriad of reasons.  I’ve been a fan/advocate of the school voucher idea for a long time now, but we still don’t have them, they don’t appear to be in the works, and what do you do when you have no options outside of 1) let your child be abused in a failing school system/district (NYS has something like 8 of the top 10 worst in the country) or 2) suck it up and get him into a private school?  Hopefully Spawn will qualify for scholarships because I don’t know how else we’re going to do this otherwise.

I finally saw, first-hand, the falling standards of the American (public) education system last night, when I suggested that Spawn read a book that was required reading for me in 6th or 7th grade and people told me that it was above his (8th grade) reading level.  I think that the level of honors classes that Spawn was taking may be slightly below the regular classes when I was his age.  That’s a pretty sad statement on our attempts to educate our children.

The argument went down that one parent is a hard-ass and the other is too coddling.  The child says there’s truth in both statements.  The parent(s) think that the two roles are the result of the opposing role.  There’s truth in that, too.  Coming to the common ground is emotional and difficult to navigate without bringing in old baggage, I think, but eventually you find it.

It’s hard to be sympathetic when you try to relate your child’s teenage experience to your own.  It’s hard to be judgemental when you try to draw the parallels.  It’s hard to be objective when you’re still harboring your own regrets or gripes from that time so long ago.  I think that parenting is supposed to be about teaching your child how to function in the real world while retaining a strong sense of individuality and self, but when you wrap your own childhood/teenage years into those of the child you’re trying to raise, I wonder how effective you’re going to be at teaching him/her to become a good person rather than shielding him/her from the mistakes that you (or your parents) made when you were that age.

This whole thing blindsided me.  I don’t know what’s going to happen or how it’s going to work out, but I needed to let off a little of the steam that’s building up.  I’m way stressed.  Maybe getting out of town will help.

When Spawn was around 7 or 8 years old, I took a vacation without him.  When I came back he asked me if I had missed him.  Even though I knew it would be hard to take at that young an age, I felt that it was an important point that needed to be made.  "No, I didn’t miss you, I was having way too much fun to miss anyone."

It took a little more explaining than the one sentence, but he did come to understand the point.  When you’re distracted and enjoying everything that goes on around you, you simply do not have enough TIME to miss people or places or even things.  The only time we ever miss anyone or anything is when we have the time to think about what it is that we don’t have.  So, for example, I’m a lot more likely to miss someone when THEY go on vacation and I lose my standards of communication with them than when _I_ go on vacation and am distracted by whatever adventure I have embarked upon. 

Even those fleeting moments of "I wish so-and-so were here to share this with me," isn’t so much missing them and I put it in a separate category.  Those feelings of wanting to share an experience are less about missing their company (which is usually based in a dissatisfaction with your surroundings) and more about wanting to share your own enjoyment of the moment (which is a desire to remove them from their daily routine and into your unique situation). 

When Spawn came home from his 2 weeks in Michigan, he was filled with stories of all the wonderful things that he did while he was there.  I’m sure we haven’t reached the end of the stories, as they will likely last for weeks.  One story he told me was about "The most expensive phone call" that he received from his father, who is currently in England.

So I asked, "Why did he call?  What did he want?" and Spawn’s reply was "Well, I don’t actually know…"  It was at that point that we both kind of decided that maybe he wasn’t having a very good time (or as good a time as he could be having) and found himself actively missing Spawn.  I’ve trained the boy well.  Instead of being touched at the sense of "Aww…  he was thinking about/missing me," he said it was too bad that he had the time to miss anything about home.

I actually had this conversation with a friend of mine a week or so ago.  He was pretty horrified that I would tell a 7 year old that I hadn’t, in fact, missed him while I was away.  Though he prides himself on his honesty, his response was "That’s one case where I think you should have lied."  But I find that children are pretty able to accept things that seem unpleasant on the surface if you take the time to explain how they are not actually unpleasant all the way through.

When I conveyed that conversation to Spawn (it took place while he was away), he said, "Before you even ask…  I didn’t miss you,"  to which I replied, "Good.  That means you were too busy having a good time."  He smiled and told me that this was the first time he really understood it from experience.  That he had understood it conceptually, but that it was nice to experience it.

Even though he didn’t say it, I have a feeling it was also pretty freeing to not have to answer the question of "Did you miss me," but even more so, to know that admitting that he hadn’t was not only acceptable, but something to be celebrated.

Now that Spawn is out of town for 10 days, I find myself with freedom I haven’t experienced in quite some time.  There are very few demands on my time and I am absolutely reveling in it.  They’re almost all really small things, but for 10 days, they’re really quite a lot to my well-being.

For example, I went grocery shopping without having to consider anyone else in the equation.  As a result, I bought *only* foods that I would eat, and didn’t have to listen to "Ewww…  why did you buy THIS?  I’m not eating that."  I also don’t have to ration what I brought home.  There’s an amazing comfort in, say, buying a bag of baby carrots and knowing that they are still there.  (Spawn can eat a 3lb bag of carrots in a single sitting.  I’m consistently amazed that he hasn’t yet turned yellow.)  It’s also nice to not have to hear "How come you ate…?" when a teenager fails to remember that you still need to eat - even when he’s not home.

I don’t have to fight for the television, which means I can watch whatever movie I want, play video games if I feel like it and not feel like I ought to be letting him have a turn.  That’s a really nice change of pace.

Any mess is my doing and my responsibility.  Spawn and I often go head-to-head when I ask him to help out around the house.  He’s very careless and takes up a lot of space, but doesn’t feel any need to help with the clean-up outside of his own bedroom.  Knowing that everything that needs to be fixed up was caused by me makes it easier to do the clean-up.

No curfew!  Woo!  I know that sounds a little silly, since a 31 year old woman shouldn’t have a curfew, per se, but when the boy is with me, I don’t want to just leave him on his own after a certain number of hours or a certain time at night.  It puts *me* on curfew and finds me often having to beg off joining friends in various situations.  "I can’t, I have to get home to the kid," is a statement I’ve made on many occasions, but I don’t have to now.

I hope to no end that he’s not missing me or anything about home.  I hope that he’s having a wonderful time and has forgotten about me, the cats, his dad, his grandmother, his cousin, his brother, etc., etc. because it breaks my heart when he says "Did you miss me?" to answer with a "no".  For me, the reality is that for 17 days (counting in my time at Falcon Ridge) we will have seen each other only once and it’s actually a good thing.  We make each other crazy when we spend too much time together and I’m sure we both needed a break.

And when he comes back, I’ll fall back into getting Netflix movies mostly for him and tailoring the shopping to his wants and fighting over the work that needs to be done just because.  But for now, I’m really enjoying the time off.