what absence makes

There was a moment tonight when Peter's brother-in-law asked his wife, Peter's sister, Monika, if she was wearing new earrings. And she said no, she was wearing her mother's earrings. And that kind of just slayed me.

I am pissed at my father for deciding to stay hunkered down in the midwest, for abandoning his whimsical trucking expeditions that would bring him west, to dinners with me and my sister, to trips to the farmer's market for nightly supplies, for homemade wine that tasted of South African soil and my father's smart hands.

I am dumbfounded by my choice of staying here, so far away from them. This year my grandma Karl forgot my birthday, which is so unlike her. And I realize, again, how old she has become, and how I, since graduating from college, have barely seen her once a year in the past eleven years. And how that is so unfair to both of us.

I am happy to be here, at this funny artificial fun-times ranch for people with means. I am happy to be accepted so graciously into someone's very good family. But that doesn't mitigate the missing of my own family, the longing for a father who will drink one glass too many and tell me how much he loves me. Of a mother who started a crazed second family at the age of 46, of two half siblings who probably wouldn't recognize me in a crowd right now, of a brother whose fiancee I have met once and whose second meeting will be broached at a rehearsal dinner.

If Elly wasn't out here, I don't know what I would do. Family is this essential, critical thing for me, and yet I have managed to place 2100 miles between myself and them.

I suppose this is all that much more poignant and retarded given that tomorrow is a childlike holiday for idiots who believe in the second coming of hares and the love of a god who is embraced by bullies. But still. I remember Easter at Grandma Martin's when Mom went to TX to visit Dad. There are those pictures of her sitting in a big Western saddle, thin and beautiful and so grateful to see her husband after months away. She is smiling and buoyant and unbelieving in her good fortune, to be at some ranch outside of Dallas-Fort Worth with a man who was burying telephone cable outside of Houston ghettos, who would call her and expound on the dangers of driveby shootings and the fantastic maneuverings of those kids who could spin on their heads on pieces of cardboard. I thought of that picture of her today when I rode a slowpoke pony to the breakfast compound on this ranch. How they did such a good job raising us. And how I can never, ever, tell them enough times how grateful I am for having done so. It may have taken everything they had. They did it on odd jobs, government assistance, repeated rental housing, unemployment. And through it all, they imbued a sense of respect and reverence for the world and its residents in all three of us. Which kind of blows my mind.