Greetings from The Mangus Hollow Rehab Center, Salem, Virginia, USA. Usually the Rehab only accepts stray dogs, but they’ve made an exception and taken me in. I showed up on their doorstep in a February snowstorm, shaking and out of my wits. But, I get ahead of myself, first, the part about what brought me back to the motherland. It’s a shorta’ long story, but what else have I got to do but tell it? I’m unemployed and living in a place where coon hunting is the best nightlife the town has to offer. May as well make good use of the freedom and isolation.
Nineteen days ago I was plucked like a perky daisy in a May field bloom from my newfound life in Uruguay and plopped back down in the den of darkness in which I was raised. Sounds grim, I know. On that Saturday morning I received an email that Dad was not, “fine as frog hair split three ways,” as he usually describes himself. In fact, he was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. After pacing through his first 24 hours in ICU 4,300 miles away, I made the decision to pack up the happiest I’ve ever been and board a bus to begin the long journey to my father’s side. As you know, I most often occupy travel time writing the reflections I send to you, but on this trip I sewed patches on my holey jeans and then wrote Dad’s eulogy for the funeral.
Astoundingly, that piece of writing has been filed away for a later date. In Dad’s words, “I guess the Lord just doesn’t want me yet.” In my words, the man is as stubborn as a hot and thirsty mule standing in a creek during dog days. He's determined to not do what he doesn’t want to do, even when it comes to his own dying. I call it aggressive-passive behavior. It’s not that the Lord doesn’t want him. It’s that he’s telling the Lord to talk to the hand until he’s done watching his grandsons grow. (definitely my phrasing there--Pop would deem that image blasphemy.)
As for how I arrived at the Mangus Hollow Rehab, that story dates back to before Pop’s sperm put the move on Mom’s egg. Since I’ve already bought a ticket to Dallas for the day after tomorrow, I'd best not go back that far and just pick up with a week ago Sunday. It's a delicate issue. Let’s introduce it by saying a festering family zit popped and it was messy. Cosmically, I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. My paradise was lost (I was sooooooooooooo happy in Uruguay) and Dante’s inferno found (did not want to return to my "old" life, especially the one of 40 years ago). I now see it as a necessary blessing, a part of the journey that I've asked for and that will free my soul to soar to new heights.
Family fights are never about what they seem on the surface. In other words, when a wife explodes at a husband for not leaving his muddy shoes on the porch, tracks across a just vacuumed carpet aren't really the issue, they are just the symptom. Such was the case when one of my family members absolutely went ballistic because I relocated his bows and guns without permission so I could have a weapon-free environment to sit and read my book. I question a bit the ethical issue of hanging his dirty laundry out on the cyberline to flutter dry, but given that he's been loading the cannon with which he blasted me with stuff I've been sharing in these travel logs for the past decade, I’m going to let myself be human and feel no shame in telling the story, authentically, as I experienced it.
In no time a’tall the topic of discussion went from moving his cheese to his accusation that I am a gypsy, pothead, self-centered, family-abandoning, atheist, astray, lying, bitch who doesn't give a damn about the worry her traipsing off to foreign countries causes her daddy. Of course, I'm giving you the condensed version. There were many words between each adjective in that string, mostly citing construed evidence to support the insult from something I have written about in the missives.
I could have stomached it a little better, if he had delivered his tirade a bit more eloquently and accurately...something along these lines:
My dear, dear sister, having read your skillfully written and most entertaining travelogues over the past ten years I have come to the conclusion that your manner of living is quite to the contrary of my own, which I find to be rather disturbing, and thus inacceptable. I am of the Christian persuasion and a family man. My close-minded, conservative, religious upbringing mandates that everyone live like me. Anyone who refuses to follow suite is gravely astray from the fold and thus misguided, unworthy and in danger of eternity in Hell. It's not really of concern to me that the accommodations in Hell be to your disliking. Then again, you live in a tent like some barbaric martyr, so an eternity in the toaster may not serve as a sufficient recompense for the suffering you cause others. As for your drug problem, the fact that I personally have never seen you drunk, much less under the influence of cannabis, does not preclude the likelihood that you partake in illegal substances. It is enough that you shacked up with a bunch of surfers in a hostel in Uruguay. Birds of a feather flock together.
You know dear, sinning sibling, your choices in life are the reason that I am screaming and cursing at you right now. It's your fault that I am so angry about where my choices have landed me that I have lost all control and am raising my fist and threatening to smash your face in. None of this would be happening if you would just conform to suffering and unhappiness like normal people do!! If you would have just done as we were told and not questioned it, I wouldn't have to see the truth of my entrapment in the contrast of your freedom and overpower you with physical violence!!
I didn't stick around for the closing act and that's how I ended up at the rehab, which is what I call my cousins' house down the hill. For thirty some years Mikey and Allan have picked up dumped dogs from alongside the road and nursed them back to health. Anytime their four doggie beds are full, they pay for shots and neutering of the overflow and find them a loving home. My hab mates at the moment are a standard poodle, Bella, who is taller than I when on two feet and Hank, a short-haired mutt with a split personality. He was severely abused as a pup and at the slightest sound--a crinkling of a plastic bag, the closing of a drawer, an unfamiliar voice--he hightails it into hiding. Sometimes a petrified look comes into his eyes like he is having a flashback without any provocation. After a few days, he finally let me pet him, but Mikey and Allan are the only humans he really trusts, which tells you much about the love they radiate. But, alas, Hank has arrived at canine heaven without having to die. The daily routine: breakfast, petting, treat, short walk, petting, trip to the park for a long walk, treat, afternoon nap, treat, petting, play time, petting, dinner, t.v., treat, bed. I got just about the same attention except instead of a Milkbone, I got my laundry done. In conclusion, I could have found no better refuge for riding out the familial storm. There you have this edition's example of how unexpected kindness shows up everywhere I go.
As for my making meaning out of the unwanted interruption of the happiest I’ve ever been: I needed for my brother to get so mad that he raised his fist to hit me. I needed to be scared so badly that I shook, cried, talked nonsense, locked myself in the car and had an emotional breakdown. And, as a gift to soften the blow, this all happened in a snowstorm, a sign that I was not alone. As my meltdown unfolded inside the car, out the windshield, I starred into one of Nature’s miracles, the white one, the one that purifies and leaves a healing hush in the forest the next morning so thick and inviting that a frozen soul can find comfort and warmth under a blanket of cold crystal.
I needed it all to happen just as it did to break with the past that’s bound me, to find the place of joy within me from which I want to live the rest of my life. Fear of family disapproval has kept me half-assing any commitment to my calling. I’ve been living with one foot in my dreams and one foot stuck in the quicksand of my raising. They will say I am a coward and abandoning my father. I say I am choosing my well-being over a self-destructive loyalty to people who confuse love with control. The final swipe of the icing knife passed over the cake when Pop said, “It’s just hard for me to understand why a woman of your education and accomplishment is settling for so little…..” So little, Pop? Can you find a measuring tape big enough to go around the waist of inner peace and happiness?
So, what next? everyone wants to know. Back to Dallas to regroup and then ????????. There’s a hankering to hunker down in silence, read the trunk of diaries I've kept since third grade and write the book I’ve started a gazillion times and never finished. I visualize that happening in an inspiring accommodation in Nature where contact with humans is optional. Ideally that would come about as a house-sitting gig or a work/stay trade. We'll see if that opportunity shows. There is another hankering to get back to the happiness I left in Uruguay. Between now and whatever I do the goal is trust that if I continue on the course of healing with the end in mind of helping others do the same, I will be provided for. Ain’t easy, but it's the choice I'm choosing.
I’m departing VA with Pop saying he's, “fine as frog hair split three ways…and shaved,” --that’s better than I found him. I take with me his final words as I walked out the door, “I love you….to the end.” I leave behind “Me too, Pop,” and all the rest.
Much love,
G
