Strange blood
We were making our way through the Endymion crowds headed back to the house because Tin was beyond ready for his nap when someone jumped in front of us. It was my niece. Dana was standing there on Carrolton with her sisters and her mother and their kids (my great nieces and nephews). Everyone said hello and Dana said to her daughter, “You remember Aunt Rachel?” And everyone just looked, well, I don’t know how they looked. Her name is Rachel because she was named after me.
“You remember Aunt Rachel?”
I walked away feeling like if I ran into my niece’s husband, Mark, who caused all this, that I would give him a piece of my mind. But then I thought, let me see, Mark falsely accuses me of coming onto him because of some latent fantasy he has playing out in his head, and all of my nieces and their husbands ostracize me for four years? Seems bizarre that his myopic masturbatory accusations would lead to something so radical from them, each and every one of them.
I walked back to the house, sulking, just feeling icky, because as much as I still would like to slap Mark for his stupidity and for spreading such a self-serving malicious lie, I just wondered if when my nieces look at me now, walking with my girlfriend, carrying my brown baby in my pack, if they have more reasons to believe I am so different from them, so easy to dismiss, and not blood at all.
At the end of the day, it matters that we all surround ourselves in loving and supportive relationships because it is there that we will thrive. So my anger, sadness, sort of turned into me scratching my head that my brother’s children would be blocks from my house, a house they have never set foot in, and that these girls were babies, who I spoon fed and changed their diapers and have always been there for, and to be on the receiving end of their anger (read: fear) is sad. Just terribly sad. I feel bad for them because the damage my brother did to them by having an affair with a woman for over a decade and fathering a child from that relationship has irrevocably formed their perceptions.
The fact that that child, also my niece, turned out to be a lesbian I’m sure helps them connect the dots to why she and I are suspect. Or maybe that is me reaching into a swirling pot of emotions and drawing conclusions that are really quite simple – they believed the asshole (Mark) who said I was coming on to him and decided they couldn’t live with that even though I was accused, tried then punished with no opportunity to speak up for myself (except here of course).
I came home and put Tin to bed and looked at the photograph of my mom hanging in his room. This woman kept herself so insulated from family to the point of being a recluse – perhaps with reason. She told me that Mark was an ignorant bastard and to let it be. And so here I am, letting it be.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Some people just have a way of trivializing their lives. Good that you don’t let them hold you back. We are our own destiny–no one else to blame.
February 15th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Thanks Alice – sometimes it takes perspective and sometimes it takes a swift kick in the pants to my own self – like you say, I have the whole world in my hands – and yet, it still is hard sometimes when you hit these roadblocks and wonder, what could possibly be the point of all this? And yet, it is what it is. I sleep at night and that is what gives me solace.