Thursday, May 19, 2005

Eggs

I’m out for a few days, to make brief escape to my hometown to visit my family. Hometown: Effingham. Say it out loud, revel in its obscenity.

Many emotional events have turned my head inside out in the past month, and it occurred to me that returning to the source for a few days might benefit.

In the past I would not have considered the source any kind of healthy salve or sabbath. No, family visits never resembled any sort of spa, unless brochures for such a place commonly advertise screeching, tentacled mother-daughter fights or passive-aggressive meta-talk because everybody’s too squeamish to speak truth.

One Easter morning that should have involved pastel eggs instead involved my mom and I standing in front of the house, screaming so loud at each other that words blurred into one howling wave. Neighbors in a two-street distance each direction us from played audience to our tragic psycho-slaughter upon the grass. Blood and chips of flesh ashed over the yard at the end. The applause when we bowed was silent.

Things haven’t gone that way in at least a couple of years. Finally after many years of angry daughterhood I find comfort in my mom again, which was more often than not the source of sourcal disease.

The charring decade-plus-long disintegration of intimacy between my mom and me, and the following arc up and into this comfortable room with its comfortable couch and warm fire in the place we have now, awes me. I maintain distance on occasion, when she "acts up", but I’m entitled to do so, as she is when I "act up", though mostly she accepts me as I am, in meditation rather than with a tongue-lashing. What a gift.

When I said I needed to get away, and said I was going to visit my family, several people eye-bugged: You're going to visit your family to get peace and quiet/space/escape? Why not a tropical island? At least this once, I reply, Oui, oui, mes amis.

5 Comments:

Blogger glomgold said...

Hey, if it werks it werks! A tropical isle is no guarantee.
Effingham. heh heh heh

5:04 PM  
Blogger {illyria} said...

my thoughts go with you. along with my heart. may peace, that elusive bliss, finally find you, dear sara.

10:10 PM  
Blogger Sara said...

thank you all. it was good. conclusion: my parents rock and i feel on the up.

8:38 AM  
Blogger 8ZERO8 said...

Great line: "Hometown: Effingham. Say it out loud, revel in its obscenity."

I love eggs!

1:52 PM  
Blogger Sara said...

8zero8--thanks. yes, eggs. in most forms, they rock.

8:43 AM  

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