After my much needed bitch session yesterday, I went home to guzzle down said glass of wine...alas, no Gallo in the house so I settled for the $20 bottle of something I cannot pronounce....but only after I went through the motions of domesticated housewife....starting with picking up Goober #2 from his 3rd day of school...and for a moment my heart didn't feel so heavy as his sticky little fingers grabbed at his backpack and he lunged to wrap me in a baby gorilla hug....
The surreal twilight drive home was followed by being met by Goober #1 at the front door, indignant and pissed because I wasn't home earlier to help with her homework and she is emphatic "my STEP father" is not equipped to assist her with writing spelling words 5 times... mind you the biological father doesn't probably even know what grade she is in, much less how to help her study for spelling because he doesn't give a shit..but I refrain from very rudely pointing this out and instead am met with a long hiccuping rant down the hallway complete with door slamming wind....and all because when I had the nerve to ask why her step father couldn't help she broke into unintelligible sobs, and retreated to her room....
That's a battle I put on hold until I can come back with reinforcements....and God knows when that will be because I am at a loss as to what kind of reinforcements can wrangle and tame such a beast...how can someone so tiny be filled with SO MUCH rage and still manage to break my heart and soul with all her love? Christ...I am so unprepared...she is my Waterloo for fucking sake and I cannot die in exile because of the arsenic in the wallpaper.....
So I refocused my attention to the duties that come with the proverbial shackles of the apron, and thus I managed in a matter of 20 minutes to transform reheated leftovers into plates of perfection while my husband with the help of the Maxx, complete with little hammer and all, hung up the Kandinsky that has been sitting in the back room for 4 months.....love how I dropped the name of the artist and left out the parts where you find out its a framed reprint, mind you an EXPENSIVE frame, and I dove into our dumpster to get it because some jackass was too lazy to fit it in her car when she moved.....
So feeling a little more calm, a little sophisticated with our garbage art....we settled down to a quiet meal....well, what started out as a quiet meal until Shark emerged from her room to give her rating of my culinary skills or lack thereof....she was quite amusing with her loud-doth-protest-the meal-before-her-highness-routine....I mean if anything the kid is destined for drama classes in high school and maybe a career as a scream queen...
With the one kid retreating yet again to her room for a dramatic and overthetop crying fit, I turned my attention to the two sane males at the table and realized women can truly be crazy....or maybe not crazy but the hormones combined with being emotional and logical creatures I realized I was fucked since the day she was born....did I, did she ever have a chance of escaping the heartache, the hot salty tears, the desperate racking sobs that accompany disappointment, the anger, the fury, the thought patterns shooting a million miles a minute to understand how it is that the world can be the way it is....
Was the problem us, that we FEEL EVERYTHING ?
there is no simple or even complex way to verbalize the moment I had staring at my simple boys with their simple smiles other than they love her and me so much more because we aren't simple.....we are messy and complicated, and beautiful and a madness is coursing through our veins I can only describe as being a woman...as feeling the way only a woman can, as thinking the way only a woman can....as seeing the world in such a completely set of different eyes that no man can understand...and when they finally do they stare at us quietly as we hiccup and gurgle with mascara streaming down like Rocky Raccoon and pass us tissues at exactly the right moment.....
Or pick up the exact flavor of ice cream that will erase all our troubles.....or give us that hug at the very moment we say we don't want it...because they knew even if we didn't want it, we need it....
Well, when a sudden silence filled the house, and then I watched as she slinked her way back in, he rose from the table and pulled out her chair, and asked her to finish her homework....
and so it was that he took the Madd Maxx and retreated to the bedroom, leaving me with 30 minutes of uninterrupted Charlotte time, her calmly finishing her homework and me asking her about school....now as any outsider might see it sounds like a bipolar dysfunctional family....who the fuck goes from one extreme to another in a matter of minutes?
Well, we do. And we aren't bipolar or at the very least we don't choose to be dysfunctional....we are just a family trying to hold it together from coming undone at the seams....and the seams are becoming a little tattered and need mending....
But that was for another day, and so I settle for the quiet, for the peacefulness, for the fighting to stop, if only for 30 minutes....
And so this storybook fairytale ends with the wicked stepfather falling asleep with the evil dwarf after a good book reading, and a unexpected and non self serving kiss from his Cinderella who skipped off to bed, and one where this old witch retreated to the front stoop for a much needed glass of Merlot and a cigarette....
shaking and unable to come to terms with the path my life has taken, I slowly took a drag, chased by a chug because I am not putting on airs that I have ever been a lady, and I sit...and stew...
And I realized something, sitting there in the dark, freezing my coat less nicotine puffing drunk self off....A) I remember why I quit smoking in the first place B) not wearing shoes was a bad idea and C) I cannot change the things beyond my control, and I need to accept that not matter what the outcome, I know what I am doing in this life is better than the alternative...
That days and nights like these test me beyond fucking belief....and even when I think I'll fail, I have to hold out hope that I won't....I have to believe in myself, in my Charlotte, in my Maxx, in that asshole I sleep next to who farts loudly at 2 am and forgets to replace the toilet paper....I have to believe we'll make it.....that today doesn't overshadow tomorrow or the next or the next....that the days we have like our Sunday, our visits to the zoo, our trips to the beach, the moments when we make a puppy pile on the bed and watch Mr. Popper's Penguins....those are the things that keep me going, that I instill my faith in that no matter what, things can only get better....
But for now, I sit here this morning, teary eyed and a little hungover, a little better, a little drained, and a little hopeful that maybe I am too jaded to realize that our storybook fairytale isn't a fairytale at all...but just a story whose ending remains unwritten....and its up to us goddamn it to write the ending....and I better make it fucking awesome.
So what will your ending be?
No comments:
Post a Comment