Brutal
I believe that everybody has a moral compass.
I believe that most people put a magnet near it to forgive them for the way they know they shouldn’t act.. but do.
It’s been a brutal weekend.
Actually, this time of year is ALWAYS brutal but I can never seem to over come the notion that THIS will be the year that the people around me will do the right thing. But they never do.. and that means that I wind up disappointed and alittle down in the dumps.
I don’t generally bring it up to them.. there’s no reason to. What’s the point? They won’t think they’ve done anything inappropriate and will just throw out an insincere “sorry”.. which will piss me off more. In all honesty… it’s really my issue. I’m the one that thinks they’ll change. They’re just following suit. So who’s really wrong here?
But.. still waters run deep.
Here’s the deal.
I shared a birthday with my father. My father who thought that HIS birthday was THE birthday. It was his day and he loved celebrating it and being the center of attention. So being born on that day meant that I really didn’t have the types of birthdays that normal kids have. Normally, the cake would read HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANG with the “and leese” kinda squeezed in somewhere around the roses.
What also sucked was that my birthday is smack dab near the middle of summer… which meant that all my school friends were away and it was useless to plan a party. Didn’t help any that our age difference meant that every milestone I had.. HE had.
But that’s the way it was up until the day he died… and continues to be.
In the 11 years that he’s passed, the conversations around this time always center around my father.. and how old he would have been.. and what things would have been like.. and the grandkid he never met.. etc. etc. etc.
There isn’t no good way to say this without coming off as selfish or narcissistic or center-of-the-world-ish. But that’s in no way the sentiment.
But for the past 11 years I kind of held out hope that the way they celebrated his birthday would be passed down to me. That it would be.. I don’t know.. for me the way it was for him.
It never is. Usually, the fact that it’s also my birthday is generally forgotten about.
For example… two years ago was a big birthday for me. And it would have been for him. Given that the Golden Child had a huge soiree when he turned the same age AND my mother through a huge soiree for his WIFE when she turned that age… I just assumed that I would also have a huge soiree.
Nope.
There was a huge soiree alright. But it was in honor of my dad.. and the milestone he would have reached, had he been alive. In fact.. this time there wasn’t even an “and leese” squeezed in on the cake.
So that’s what I put up with .. and that’s what I hope will change every year.. and that’s what doesn’t.
Normally, the weekend before our birthday, I’ll head out to the cemetary and hang out. Don’t get me wrong. I adored my father and there isn’t one second of one day that I don’t miss the hell out of him and want him back. Turns out that the last time my mom was there there was something wrong with the headstone.. it was sinking or something so she called who she needed to call and it was suppose to be fixed. I told her I’d check it out on Sunday.
So I go and I do the thing that I always do when I go there. About a half hour or so passes and my phone rings. It’s my mom asking me if I forgot to go to the cemetary. Not “did you?”. Not “are you”. But “.. did you forget?”. It goes over my head because that’s just her. Or rather, that’s just HER when it comes to ME.
I tell her that I didn’t forget.. in fact, I’m there now and “… no, they didn’t fix the stone.”
She doesn’t comment on that but asks me if I had any plans for later on. I’m alittle dumb founded because normally, for everyone else that shares my DNA, birthdays mean Sunday dinner at Nonna’s with the fam and a cake. Same candles for everyone! I naturally thought that that was the game plan.
Let me just say this here.. this is the family that actually forgot to tell me that Christmas Eve dinner :: which I take very seriously! :: was actually 5 hours EARLIER then it normally is and I show up just in time to see Nonna putting on her red Christmas coat and walking out of the house. So why in HELL would I even think about Birthday Sunday?
She kind of makes a noise in her throat and says, “.. why would you think that?” I don’t really answer because my bottom lip stuck out and I started chewing my upper lip. She decides to fill the silence by telling me that she needed me to pick her up at Golden Child’s. She still my mom and the only parent I have left so I tell her fine. I’ll shoot up there after I get done at the cemetary.
She asks me how long I think I’ll be.. I tell her probably about another 15 minutes or so. She says fine and we hung up.
I got done doing what I normally do when I’m there and started the hour drive up to Golden Child’s.
About 40 minutes in, she calls me again and asks where I’m at. I tell her the highway. She asks which one. I ask her why it matters… I’m on my way and I’ll get there when I get there. Unfortunately, there’s alot of traffice and the Jetson car is having it’s fuel injectors flushed.
She tells me to stop being a smartass and that since I’m already on my way up there then I might as well stop at the supermarket and buy myself a birthday cake so that they can cut it up there.
Now.. there some things I just won’t buy for myself. Birthday cakes are one of them and I got insulted and indignent and attitude-ish when she suggested it. I told her that I will NOT buy it… that right then there were 8 people and 6 cars that could drive the 3 miles to pick one up.
Her answer? “… then I guess you just don’t get one.”
And I didn’t because I wouldn’t.
I know this sounds bad. But you have to take in to consideration that for as long as I’ve been on this earth, my mother doesn’t “get” me. She thinks I’m THIS when I’m actually THAT.
I’m so the type of person that appreciates any thought that comes my way. To me, it’s not the gift.. or the price tag.. it’s the sentiment behind it. She says “.. I never know what to buy you.” or “.. you pick it out and I’ll buy it” .. or “.. you’re so hard to buy for.”
And that really isn’t that case at all. She thinks I’m so difficult to buy for because she never really got to know me.. and to believe me when I say, “.. it really doesn’t matter” just reinforces that.
So today I basically hung out at Golden Child’s with my chin on my knees. I did call Goober but the connection was bad and I dropped the signal that my carrier SWEARS doesn’t drop.
I called D but he was less then half paying attention to the conversation because he was trying to get his kid to show him something on the computer. Actually, I wouldn’t even have called if I thought she was there. For some reason, I thought she would have left by then. He said something about giving me a call sometime tomorrow or something but by then I was feeling bad and just wanted to hang up.
Goober wound up calling me around 11 and said just the right things that made me feel better.. and made me just want to be near him.
I really do need that hug right about now.
