pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- STINK SPIRIT I'm in the midst of cooking roast beef with carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, pole beans, and onions while watching Spirited Away with my seven-year-old niece CeeCee, who is curled up against me on my sofa. The stink spirit is in deep need of cleansing, sitting in his bath just burping slime as I sit here in awe of this beautiful movie. Meanwhile the cicadas are singing at the top of their lungs outside; we can hear them over the movie (which I, mercifully, convinced CeeCee to turn down). Gawd I hate television, don't understand why people spend their time watching it (unless, of course, ACC basketball is on). Today is the one-year anniversary of my break-up with the Ginger and I don't trust anyone or anything right now, am in solitary confinement, a foul old stink spirit throwing walls up around myself so that no one can hurt me that much again. I have moats now. Really. And walls ... for today, anyway. Called Farmergrrl this afternoon to see if she wanted to get ice cream with us at the dairy near her house, but she's having a colonoscopy in the morning and has to fast all day. (ick.) And I decided that I probably won't call her again because our interactions feel too one-sided and I don't like how that makes me feel. So many thoughts have been racing through my head today. I feel horribly guilty because CeeCee keeps saying that she wants to live with me and doesn't want to return to South Carolina, where we're going tomorrow, and I can't help but remember how much I wanted to escape from my family when I was there and how there was just no easy way to do that. She's clingy and manipulative in a see-through-it kind of way today and so, so sad. We went to a park today and I thought about how I would have gone hog wild there as a kid, jumping from rock-climbing wall to wonderful twisty slide to rope-climbing bridge to swing (which I would have, of course, twisted tight before unwinding it and jumping as far as I could). But CeeCee just wanted to hold onto me today, do things that required me being right there by her side. I guess this is about abandonment, but it could be Grandma's paranoia and overprotectiveness instead. I have been encouraging her to be independent, to climb those rocks if they look appealing and to just enjoy herself in this big world. She also said she used to ride her bike, but Grandma won't let her now because she wouldn't listen. She is so unbearably sweet in between her temper tantrums, just precious, and I worry about her. Seems like a kid ought to be able to ride her bike around the neighborhood, right? Maybe the problem is that there aren't swarms of kids around to protect her like there were when I was a kid, so she'd have to ride alone—which I'm sure would freak my mother out. And maybe my mother recognizes that she just can't keep up with her. Still, she could let her ride around the vacant church lot across the street. And apropos to nothing at all except the fact that this happened and reminded me that my mother is a religious fanatic, CeeCee told me today that I should ask the Lawd to tell me when the roast will be done. • I've been thinking about something that happened this past weekend. See, Pottergrrl and I went to South Carolina to my uncle's funeral and I kept thinking that, thirteen years ago, I went to a hospital where my sister's twins were born and saw an old man walking down the hall. He was decrepit and old and it didn't take me long to catch up with him. Then I realized with shock that the old man was my strong and vibrant and larger-than-life father! I still have trouble fathoming it. but he would have turned seventy this year if he'd lived past the age of sixty-three, when he succumbed to cancer. To my great alarm, my mother had that same look this past visit. She's lost a lot of weight and looks old and sick, the way her mother looked when her heart was failing. And we've almost lost her so many times already. • I resorted to tricking the ducks till there was enough room for the turtles to stand some chance (unless the catfish snatched it from them). CeeCee ran around freely today, racing ahead on the trails and bouncing around on the rocks. It was good to see her less clingy, just being a carefree kid again and skipping (actually, she galloped. It was cute) along the trails. We're finishing up coffee at the cafe, then going home to pack. Then we'll stop at Jiffy Lube and get an oil change before we begin our trip. I'm not looking forward to sleeping in my mother's house again. I don't like it there, but don't want to drive ten hours in one day either. (Already did that once this week.) and don't have much extra money left for a hotel room. Will go to mountains this weekend to visit Pottergrrl and am so looking forward to it. 11:50 a.m. - 2005-07-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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