Riders on The Storm

Riders on the storm
Into this house were born
Into this world were thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm

-The Doors

I thought about Riders on The Storm when I read Tree's post about her Thanksgiving and feeling the 'calm before the storm'. I think my family and myself feel like we're riding out this hurricane as best we can.

This was our first Thanksgiving without my grandma and it was just not a bad day. We were all trying to still make it happy for Babe because it was her first, but it was hard to do that because she didn't even really know it was turkey day time. So, inevitably, we tried too hard and set up too many expectations of ourselves and it ended up being rather shitty and sad. My mom usually does all the cooking but this year could not bring herself to make a turkey, granny used always cut the turkey and we just couldn't look at a bird without her hands being there to cut it up. So, my mom made bar-b-que chicken, mac and cheese, greens, mashed potatoes and sweet potato pies and it was o.k. Just o.k. but it wasn't the food, my mom can throw down like none else, it was the fact that everything was so different and we were trying even harder to make it even more different. We were all acting, but without even really acting if that makes sense.

My uncle also cooked at his house and wanted us to all come over, but before we could make it out there my aunty called to say he'd been taken to the hospital for chest pains. So we waited anxiously until they called back, and thank God he was fine, just gas and a broken heart, or the later is my own diagnosis.

I also had a random friend from high school come by, her mom had heard that I'd had a babe and visited a couple of weeks ago. Random friend (who really wasn't that much of friend because she tried to get me beat up once, that's a story for another day) lives and works in NOVA and has just bought a place up there. My dad overhead this info and proclaimed that she was doing "big shit, because she left and never looked back." This was preceded by him telling my bro and I the night before that we were loosers. My bro because he's not going to school, me because I didn't start the PhD program. Dim the lights on hope.



So, we ate and tried to talk and have fun. My cousins and I ended up looking at pics of folks we knew and trying to make ourselves feel better by telling ourselves that we really aren't doing that bad. That didn't work but for so long.

Now I think we are all worried and anticipating Christmas. We always did Xmas eve at granny's house, I just went there for the first time in months tonight and it was hard, but I felt guilty because I never go and my aunty and her kids still live there. So, I don't know what we'll do for that holiday, everyone keeps telling us we'll get through this and that we'll be closer and have fun at holidays again, but right now I don't feel it. I almost dread it, even though again, its Babe's first.

I think the entire family just still feels so lost with out granny. She was our center and now its like we've all dispersed, like what happens to an atom when you divide it, all the electrons fly out and disperse to other atoms, or some shit like that. We're just all bouncing, some times together, but more often than not, so alone, so alone. Fade to black.

I do have my moments of clarity, when I can say or see how I might try something, but then because of all this stuff that has happened I'm even afraid to plan anymore because I realize how little control I have in life. I want to try to slowly get myself back on a schedule, try to keep teaching, try to get into a program again, but I feel like everything is so scattered and just keeps changing, I don't know where to grab first. Enter Faith from the left.

When things change I have a hard time bouncing back. Like now, I feel like I'll never get into school again. And I won't if I don't study for the GRE and try to actually work towards doing stuff on my CV. I also can't have a good work schedule if I'm staying up until 2 and 3 still and then sleeping away the rest of the day. If I wanted to, I could go to bed with the babe and still get up at 8 or 9 and read. But I feel so knocked off the school horse that its hard for me to get back up there and take control again. Resilience, please take center stage.

I don't know. I guess I should just take it one step at a time and not even put too much hope into Christmas. We did get more stuff done at the county house and hopefully we'll have plumbing by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. At least I'll have a pot to pee in.

Exit stage.