You may or may not know that my parents are, well, special. I am glad that they hooked up long enough to have me and my siblings, but the combination of their various problems and family backgrounds is so toxic that most people that have known them longer than about a week would suggest theirs is not a model marriage.
It turns out, though, that if you manage to struggle through fifty years of matrimony, you are entitled to a party. Held at a resort sort of in the middle of nowhere. An awkward, emotionally challenging event with good cake and strange stories.
I went into this attempting to contain my expectations. I knew that things would not be cute and sweet and loving and fun. I knew that I would want to spend the whole vacation curled up in a beer bottle (although would not actually do so), and that tears would be shed. Even so, I just wasn't prepared for this event. I'm not even sure I can describe it properly.
How do I? It was nice to see extended family, both sides, including cousins I haven't seen in at least a decade. It was wonderful to see my children frolicking happily with all levels of cousins, getting that tribal experience that they don't get normally because we live far away from everyone else in our immediate family. The cake was great. Okay, those were the highlights. For the rest of it, it might be easier to get through it all by presenting observations in roughly chronological order:
Two days before we were supposed to leave for the trip, I broke a bone in my foot. Ouch, physically and financially. One day before we were supposed to leave for the trip, part of our AC equipment died, effectively claiming what was left of the travel money we had saved.
[This brings up a good thing not yet mentioned -- my parents unhesitatingly said they'd pay for the AC repairs if that meant we'd come. It's at times like that that I can see a glimpse of their love for me. They obsess about money and having enough, so the fact that my mother made that offer without batting an eyelash speaks volumes.]
My hubby has been a superhero ever since I broke my foot (actually, he was a superhero before), and he spent the entire Party day running around trying to manage the various details of a life on vacation with small(er) children. We needed to do laundry, which the hotel offered, and DH did it but the dryer didn't work properly so we had to spread out the wet clothes in one of the rented rooms so they wouldn't mildew immediately. My sister was zooming around in a wonderfully organized fashion, getting the cake, keeping track of what members of the family was doing what activity, etc. We had a lovely time in the hotel bathroom arranging wildflowers in Mason jars to put on the dinner tables.
At some point, we managed to get everyone dressed and downstairs, and eventually we were allowed into the banquet room to sit down. We had a very interesting dinner, which included about ten visits from my DD whose eyes were stinging and watering so needed help. There were two competing theories about why this was: swimming in probably overchlorinated pool water with her eyes open, or the funky eye makeup applied by my niece. I was pretty sure it was the former, while my mother and aunt (her sister) decided to assume the latter because it was more fun to disapprove of my niece than to accept the dread hand of fate. It was bizarre to have the two of them come up to my table together to "speak" to me about the issue. I just sat there looking up at them in disbelief. I had already done my best with wet paper towels to clean off the eye makeup, I had arranged for a couple of cousins to go with her to the bathroom and rinse her eyes at the sink. I'm not sure what else I was supposed to be doing, since I was neither going to wring my hands in panic nor call 911 about it. This had happened to her a couple of days earlier, I had told her that she was no longer allowed to open her eyes under water without goggles, what else is there to cover on a Sunday night in the middle of nowhere?
Anyhoo, my sister got up and asked those present to share stories about our parents' lives together. Many of their wedding party were there, so we figured there would be some good stories about the reception, if nothing else. I just don't know how to describe what happened next. It was like everyone there was feeling the same way but no one would acknowledge it directly, except maybe my sister and even then it was fleeting and vague. But the stories were not what you'd expect, truly. They included:
1. The time my father, while my parents were still dating, borrowed his future in-laws' car and rolled it, almost tearing off one of his ears and effectively landing with the car on his head.
2. The time that my parents dressed in Halloween costumes made out of burlap sacks and Spanish moss, not knowing that the moss is often infested with nasty insects and who were miserably itchy for days and days.
3. The time my father changed the oil in his car while visiting at his sister-in-law's house and accidentally got oil all over the garage floor.
4. My mother playing various pranks on her sisters.
5. My maternal grandmother filling my mother's suitcases with rice, including in the shampoo bottles and other toiletries. She was so thorough that my mother was finding rice in things for years afterward. That sounds funny at first, but when you think about it, well... You probably had to have met my grandmother to know that it might not have been meant in an entirely nice way.
Almost every single time after someone got up to speak, my father would get up after them to offer a lengthy rebuttal of sorts, which was really just taking the opportunity to expand upon the tale and add material. My mother then took her turn at the podium, because she felt that she was being left out of most of the narrative, and proceeded to give the kind of life summary you'd get from a combination of her resume and Christmas letter. She also went on at length about a young women they had met through a foreign exchange program that she considered to be a sort of adopted daughter, one that talks to her more than her real daughter does. While looking right at me. Nice. There was a strange detour into my parents and their experiences of benefiting from desegregation policies because they were white folks going into historically black institutions and therefore getting special incentives and benefits. It was really, really odd.
My sister and I agreed that I would save my contribution for the end. I made a quilt, a wall hanging that contains a lot of symbolism about the family their marriage created. That was my angle, the best way I could view this celebration. They had children, who in turn had children, and that's good. They had many pets, mostly dogs, and those dogs (past and present) have been dearly loved and well tended. I made the quilt because I wanted to make it, and I knew that whatever their reaction was would be different from what I wanted and would probably hurt. It did. They didn't say a single word to me about it until three days later, when my mother asked when they would receive the finished piece. I then asked if she liked it, and she said she did very much. I'm glad she liked it, but the sad little girl inside of my head wants to know why it took three days and an odd preamble for her to say that to me? In the grand scheme of things I suppose it doesn't really matter. But it does.
I'm glad The Party is over. I'm glad that my children are having a lot of time to play with cousins. I'm very glad that my DH has been able to visit with his family too as part of our extended trip. I'm glad to be spending my first two weeks on crutches while in a crowd of people that can help mind our children and prepare our meals, so that DH doesn't have to run himself completely into the ground taking care of everyone.
And while it pains me to say it, I'm glad to have these people, these specific human beings, as my parents despite it all. It pains me because I feel like there is no middle ground between pretending nothing is wrong and letting the world know how horrible most of my interactions with them make me feel. I know I can't change them, even if I want to. We fit together like the pieces of a puzzle, even if things that happened, that continue to happen, are not what I want. Even if a reasonable sample of people would agree
that life with my parents was not normal, that what happened and what continues to happen is unhealthy and hurtful and difficult. Even so.
I want to cry, I want to laugh, I want to yell, I want to sulk. I have done all these things so far on this trip, and will likely do some of them again before we return home. But in the balance, I guess it's worth it. Maybe. Probably. I guess.
