white wing

2003-10-05 - 11:32 p.m.

there’s a lot of sadness and ghost talks in this house tonight. our great uncle died a few days ago. henry. I think his name was henry. I cannot recall his face. but his death has caused all of us to pause and think about his brother, our grandfather, who is still struggling with cancer treatments.

mom and I were arguing, and I felt powerful in my rage. my voice got louder, my language more obscene, but I was right, and I knew it, and my heart yelled in primal non-eloquence. all I felt was the power of my awesome anger, and I carried it through until there was nothing left but bitter blunt words, after the last traces of sarcasm washed away. as I turned to leave the room I heard her voice go quiet. I turned back and saw the wetness in her eyes, and suddenly her humanness came flooding down on me until I could hardly breath. she wasn’t the wrong, she was my mother, and in my heady anger power I had forgotten that it was a human I was yelling at, just as fragile and imperfect as all of us. more than that, she was my mother, and has been all along. righteous rage is so much easier than sorrow and regret.

funny how we all think everyone else’s lives are so much easier. we always have clear suggestions and level paths laid out for everyone else, but when it comes to the self we get so confused, like clouds descended just around us. it’s so clear what everyone else should do.

I think about death more than they realize. the care-free middle child is a cliché that does not apply to me. point of fact, I am the exact middle child, halfway between everything, feeling parts of all things but never a whole anything.

it used to be so much easier when I thought only of myself. sometimes I wish I could borrow that ferocious bubble of seventeen again. instead I grow one more grey year, add it to the pile of fog that surrounds me. I wonder if this year, at long last, I can convince myself that my birthday truly isn’t special. right now I mostly wish it over with, something else in a long line of question marks that I can put behind me. one more unfulfilled fantasy, the never-ending birthday filled with lights and song and wine and laughter. black dresses and grown up jokes, that which we roll our eyes at but secretly delight in.

once upon a time I wanted to be a grown up just as much as peter pan wanted to remain a child. but I wanted to be a grown up in a grown up world, and since the latter is out of the question, but there’s no real going back, I remain, once again, fixed firmly in that incongruous place of middledom. queen of the middle kingdoms, that’s me. middle earth isn’t a story, it’s a real place, and I live in it.

most of the time I try to explain away our sadnesses on the alignment of the planets, because if it’s not that, then do I really want to know why?