(Tales of a Snow Pony)
I typed up a lot of this before, then it got deleted because I refreshed the page.
Add that to the list of troubles from the simultaneous worst and best day I’ve had for as long as I can remember.
Day started 9:30 AM, woken up by my grandma who’d decided we were going to visit my aunt (mom’s sister), her love interest, and my cousins, contrary to her decision the previous day that we weren’t going to go.
After taking 2+ hours to get going, we make a 2 mile drive in 3 hours on country roads thanks to my step-granddad entering in the GPS destination incorrectly.
I’ll get the family rundown out of the way early this time and then talk about the events so we have more structure. This is the second time I’ve done this so holy shit I’ve had a long day and night and I just want to get all these thoughts out so I can sleep.
My grandma (mother’s side) has been getting older, more fragile, and more senile. I’m visiting her because she’s always desperate for company and no one has visited her in her nice Florida house yet. She has the worst ADD in the family, is constantly losing her items, and parties hard for a 70+ year old woman. I love her a ton, but sweet fuck she puts a burden on me at times.
My aunt, mother’s sister, who I had met a few times before, is much like my mother in a lot of ways. Extremely intelligent, incredibly perceptive. I cannot summon the words for what else I see though. A lot of hurt. A lot of love.
Manipulative, controlling, cunning. She’s touching me far too much, like my mother.
To get this out of the way, my granddad on my mother’s side was a senator that used to beat my mom when she was a child outside the 7-11 I work part-time at nowadays. Apparently or supposedly my aunt sided with my granddad over her, which is why my mother cut off ties with her fairly early on and why I had only seen her a few times.
She’s greedy, with people and time. Very extroverted, saps my energy at times. She respects transparency and honesty, but then why does she lie about little things she won’t think I’ll notice?
She’s one of the smartest people I’ve met but also batshit insane. She does a cannonball for attention not once but twice.
She sees me understand her, and says I’ve started to catch on, but am not there yet. She says time is not linear and tries to force that concept on me. “Life is love and hurt together, the yin and the yang.”
After a while she gets into her cups and I want to tell her to fuck off.
“Dodger” is her love interest, and we’re staying at his beautiful palace of a home. He’s attentive, and caring, but somewhat simple. A Detroit kid who got lucky, probably. He at least is quick to fetch a first aid kit, and keeps a level head, progressing things along.
The twins are my cousins Katie and Liz, Katie who I met before at my uncle’s second wedding. We borrowed a golf cart with my older brother and went on a joyride the last time we say eachother, and had more golfcart adventures this time, though much more reasonable and with an owned golfcart this time.
They’re both half-black, I’m white as mayo. They worried there would be some apprehension because we didn’t know if we were all cool with all that we were. Soon I learn they are politically active in all the right ways, queer as hell, open as can be, and enjoy similar chemicals to what I enjoy.
I cannot express how much insight and happiness those two brought me.
At the same time I cannot help but feel robbed that I am only meeting them after their 24 years, my 26.
The other 26 year old cousin is Christian. Physically and mentally handicapped, intelligence of a 2 year old approximately, I try to make him smile as much as possible while I’m there. I help my aunt out and put my EMT skills to use pushing him around and helping him get from location to vehicle to location, etc. I hope I made him happy while I was there. I think I did, but it’s hard to tell.
At some point in the night my aunt mentions how lucky he is. Something about having a wonderful family who cares for him.
Bullshit.
He got dealt a rough hand and no one can understand what he thinks of all this. There are times I see him in discomfort and pain, and they’re frequent. He’s not lucky. I may be, as may be my aunt. Maybe we make our own luck. But William? He ain’t lucky.The first few hours go by swimmingly. I get to open up to my cousins (they both agree my ponysona is adorable.
), chill with them by a pool, tour a mansion, and relate to my aunt, gaining some wisdom from her, even if she is still trying too hard to mentor me and have me love her.Then my grandma takes a spill outside by a stone fountain while trying to push my cousin’s wheelchair.
I go into full EMT mode. It was the most focused I had been in years.
It’s a rough abrasion: left leg, not too deep, but about an inch in diameter, with some raw skin being exposed to air. Bleeding is a slow ooze, but still dripping a little bit. Pain is a 2-4 on the 10 scale.
Katie and I are the first ones on the scene. I delegate Dodger to get a first aid kit. He gets it quickly, thankfully. I start asking questions, feeling for breaks or blood, applying fresh gauze and pressure to the wound, and within about 6-10 minutes the bleeding stops completely. I get the wound cleaned up, my grandma in a position of comfort, anti-biotic gel on the wound, bandaged, taped, and then get my grandma moved inside. I give a sitrep to my cousins, my aunt, and Dodger.
She’ll be fine, she’s certainly been through worse (ectopic pregnancy and broken hip to name two), and her spirit is none worse for wear.
But for fuck’s sake grandma you do not have to take a muscle relaxant, drink vodka, take a spill, then have more wine with dinner. She hiccups and burps constantly on the voyage back but insists she’s not drunk.
As I said earlier, love her to death, but it pains me to see her get hurt. Not to mention then I have to take care of her more than I already do.
I swear it’s like caring for a drunk child at times. She has stream of consciousness moments where no matter how many times I’ve told her either to get some rest or that I’m trying to drive without distractions she will insist on distracting me with ceaseless talk of whatever thought crosses into her mind because she is entirely incapable of recognizing she is doing it.
Tonight was the most I have ever sworn, and I am ashamed to say I did a fair deal of it at my grandma.
In my defense she was swearing too and used to encourage it when I was a really little kid. She’s let me say things like “shit hell crap damn!!!” when I was 8 which was cute and fun.
But when she’s slurring words, using the lord’s name in vain, and having altered consciousness while I’m driving on a dirt road on a golf course her gps took us too, I kinda lose my shit.
6 hours of driving total, on a lack of sleep.
I always apologized and will do some more of that, but we both agreed that thing was a cluster.
She falls asleep eventually, but the first 20 minutes just getting out of the gated community felt like 2 hours. The first hour like 8 hours. Maybe time isn’t linear after all.
She keeps talking, I tell her to stop, she won’t stop but will be apologizing profusely for causing me such a burden. I tell her to stop. She doesn’t. She says she respects my medic’s care, then disregards it because fuck me I guess. I have to constantly remind her to buckle her seatbelt. I’m trying my best to go the speed limit and not get arrested or my grandma injured any further.
We make it back about 2 ½ hours ago as of this message.
Some pseudo-intellectual bullshit I peddled while with my family:
“We don't know who we are.
We don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment, and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory.
No knowledge of what went before.
No understanding of what is now.
No knowledge of what will be."
Taken from The Twilight Zone, 5 Characters in Search of an Exit. A statement on the human condition, brought to mind by the song Galaxy composed by SoGreatAndPowerful.
I miss him so much sometimes. I can barely stand it.
The other lines which I paraphrased from the unfettered mind, writings of a zen master to the samurai caste of how zen is paramount to the art of bushido.
“Don’t think.
Do not place yourself in the enemy’s blade, or you will be speared by it.
Do not dwell in your blade, or it will be deflected.
Do not reside in the moment between the two, or you will become lost in it.
Do not dwell on a single thought for more than a moment
You must have a mind like water, flowing from one moment to the next
Your life must be a constant cutting motion”
This was possibly the worst and best day I’ve had in ages. I’m thinking both perfection and imperfection can coexist together.
I’ve been struggling a lot lately, but I’ve never felt more prepared for what lies ahead. This is a beginning, not an end.
