So it appears to be a solstice, which I’m spending in England explaining why it’s still so light way past bedtime to my son. Also, I visited Aunty Irene today – the first time I’d seen her in 19 years. Normally I try to obfuscate and avoid too much personal meanderings, as A. the whole world is watching and B. I’m somewhat of a retiring person and C. it’s not really that interesting. Now given that these family dramas are limited to a blast radius of about three people, and that I finally realize that A and C are mutually exclusive, I’ll drivel about it here a little, assured that no-one will make it this far in the first paragraph, let alone any further into the analysis of blended estrangements.
Aunty Irene is my ex-step-dad’s mum. For various reasons that I’m not 100% sure of right now, I haven’t spoken to my ex-step-dad in a few decades, and through more laziness than malice, haven’t spoken to his mum since 1993. There seems to be a history in my various families of becoming estranged from one another – of parents and children not talking after some seemingly insignificant incident (or at least that’s as it appears when I’m outside the immediate impact). Someone gets cut out of an inheritance, someone doesn’t get invited to a 21st birthday and then nobody talks to anyone for the rest of their lives.
It always seems sad to me – people that you’ve known all of your (or their) lives, suddenly nothing but a topic to be avoided. Of course, they sometimes show up at the same funerals, and might even exchange pleasantries, but never seem to pick up from where they left off. Then of course, there are my own estrangements (thinking about it, that’s how past partners are generally treated – or that’s at least the view I was given as a young emotional sponge), which I just treat as convenient simplifications which probably seem sad to other onlookers.
A nice man named Steve told me that if we weren’t so busy being distracted from one of the only things that we really should know – that we’re going to die – then we would spend more time trying to “be complete” with those around us. I for one, am the master of distraction, and even take on multiple concurrent projects to not only distract myself from the pointlessness of existence, but even from the pointlessness of the other projects themselves. Heck, I bought a 1990 NA Miata MX-5 just before I left Texas a while back so that I would have something to distract me from the preparations for leaving the country.
So lately I’ve been thinking about what Steve told me, and realizing that I really miss my UK friends and family an awful lot. Almost enough to actually get off my Miata and get in touch with them. I had a moment like this before when I was walking across Scotland – not too far in the grand scheme of things from the places I’d spent 30+ years mooching around. I realized that there were octagenarian relatives there I’d never met. So I walked to their town and knocked on their door and they took me in, gave me biscuits, tea, and memories – both shared and recounted.
Yesterday I dropped by my maternal grandma’s eldest and only remaining sibling -the allegedly 97 year old Aunty Mary. I had a strange fascination – a desire to share my latest project (Number One Son) with her. A curiousity about her family business – Boden’s in Beeston, and just to let her know I was thinking about her. Biscuits were served, and I continued the tea and penguin tour today at my estranged Aunty Irene’s new door with a son and a step-mother in tow, looking to see how old and sick people had got in the decades of my neglect.
Aunty Irene was spritely – whirling around tables and chairs and parasols getting together a spontaneous tea party. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an impact on a front door step. Once she literally figured out I wasn’t a Jehovah’s witness, and I introduced myself, she grabbed me squeezed me hard and kissed me many times. When connecting with long lost relatives, I have this Tolkienesque introduction, “I am Golthor, son of Gawain, ruler of men and last in the unbroken line of Stella Artois” which is less grand than that. But my mother does have an unusual name which I won’t share here for the sake of my bank account login recovery purposes. So I said who I was and Aunty Irene’s eyes grew enormously wide as she jumped up and down and got things ready for our biscuit-fest. It was the (a) Q(q)ueen’s jubilee a few weeks back, and the word bunting sprung to mind afterwards.
Number One Son (NOS) was treated to some Ribena and a barrel full of biscuits. Pausing to reflect on this, I think aged relatives have always done this – for my sister and I as a child, and now for our offspring. I struggle to refuse the sugar laden beverages and to parry the deft and repetitive lunges with numerous cake products, and I think NOS has had more biscuits in the last few days than perhaps in his entire life. I can only imagine that visiting relatives as a kid for me was made all the more palatable through such addictive offerings. And it made me wonder how senior English citizens can always have so much sugar crack on hand and not eat themselves silly.
I mean, staying with my dad, there are Cadbury’s mini-swiss rolls (of which one is no longer enough for a taste – today I’m up to three in one helping), penguins, chunky kit kats (I’ve finally had so many of these that I realized yesterday that they actually have segments and aren’t one continuous bar) and other random sweets in a cupboard in plain sight. I can’t have the things in the house. And I can’t even have a shop that sells them nearby. I just mechanically, predictably and exponentially polish them off over a day or two. So how do old people manage to stock pile them? It must be all the napping. Or maybe the napping is caused by the chocolates. Either way, everyone we drop in on unannounced has hefty cane in their treat arsenal.
Aunty Irene regaled us with stories, cried as she told of her (I guess now our) estrangement from her son (my ex-step-dad if anyone’s got this far) and repeatedly through our visit told us how lucky we were that our blended family was all on speaking terms. I know that I’m not the card sending type, though that is the language of appreciation that some folk understand – Aunty Irene digging out letters and cards from 1974 to show us, and an amusing photo of me back in 1993 on our last meeting. I think I can send a few photos every now and then, and I see that this brings joy to remote relatives, not all of whom are linked to my social media (pictures of kids really) efforts.
The experience has made me want to be more complete with more people. It’s kind of addictive, and I’m sure would be just as so if there weren’t biscuits. I can live without the cups of tea though. I feel that my alimentary canal has been remodeled and now no longer runs on water and spinach but on jammy dodgers and tannin. It plays havoc with the architecture, but then all great buildings crumble eventually don’t they? Maybe the lucky wants get blown into dust over the centuries after they have served their initial purpose. Or maybe they burn to the ground after being complete.
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