SIMPLY ELABORATE blog

Archive for the ‘family’ Category

It’s a different life, being at home. For the first time at Christmas I’m not running around killing myself to see every body and make sure I have my million things that need to be done. Because I didn’t feel the need to for once. I relaxed, have focused on me and my family and somehow things are turning out just fine.

Christmas Eve is going to be sad, yet again, as always, but I’ve come to accept it and just deal with it.

S is gone, she’ll call, of course, but it’s not the same.

My mom will cook this big elaborate meal that I’ll hate because we’re eating on our fancy dining room table, with the plates we never use because it’ll be just the three of us and I’ll be reminded once again that our family is quite small for being Italian. We’ll sit, eat our food quietly, while a fight will probably ensue, as always, because emotions are always high during this time of year and things get to be irritating quicker than usual.

My mom will say how the family’s turned their backs on us while my dad and I will roll our eyes and plead for her to stop holding grudges.

At the same time, it hurts me because I’ll sit and think, and wonder, just like she has, why we weren’t a part of so and so’s dinner – because our family blood tells us we’re “Christmas Day family” as opposed to the entire season.

It makes no difference, where we spend our Christmas’ now, because it’s all the same. What we do, who we spend it with, it doesn’t matter – because we have each other. But as the focus seems to always become “who’s turned their backs on us” and to “who doesn’t care” I’m left wondering how everyone became so bitter and scared that the feelings will befall me too, once I’m older.

I can sit here and easily blame my mother for the family’s distance, easily, but I can’t – she’s my mother, and I love her. I just get scared, afraid of one of two things happening; she’ll only realize the stupidity and unnecessary hatred once somebody dies and she’ll either live with guilt and regret for the rest of her life or she’ll just have a mental breakdown all together and hate us all.

Neither are good, but neither would surprise me.

Oh, ps. merry christmas.

Tonight was the first night I’d been in the departures floor of an airport since my sister left and it hit me hard. We said goodbye to the Italians and I realized how much we’d all grown attached to them. I’d only known them for a week and a bit, while my parents got to adopt some new children for a month.

While waiting in the airport’s check-in line with everyone, my mom and I caught up about the last month or so. Once everything was somewhat settled with check-in, we started our goodbyes and began our trek down to Gate 134.

Amidst one of our conversations about last night’s Christmas party the Italians all attended, we found out that one of the Italians didn’t go, instead opting to hang out with his boss’ daughter. My mom and I raised our eyebrows and I couldn’t help but smile at the cuteness.

ME:
He liked his boss’ daughter? That’s so unbelievably adorable!
(to our foreigner)
And so cliche.
(to my mom)

OUR FOREIGNER:
Well, I guess we are all leaving someone behind when we go.

And she was right. We do. We had done our job, showing them Toronto, showing them Ontario, and now all we could do was show them the way to the Departure Gates in the airport. It was this feeling of loss, so close to the holidays that I think we all felt deeply. The three of us stood, watching the five teenagers wait in line and go through the gate’s doors, leaving us all behind, just as my sister had back in August. Only then I couldn’t bear to watch her go through the archway, pulling my mother away – we needed to leave right then.

I looked down at the ground in an effort to reduce the feeling of tears and by the time I looked up, they were gone. Just like that.

Then there was nothing we could do but leave the airport, left with the emptiness of the house once again.

It’s around that time of year when I feel that too many people are reading this website, yet no one really reads it at all. When they read what I write and think they know everything about my life without actually taking the time to ask me about it and coming to conclusions that are false and completely irrational to begin with.

i.e. DAD.

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Heck, I’ve even got it permanately placed on the sidebar for cheese and rice sakes – if you want to read my website, DON’T BITCH.

I should have just kept it anonymous all those years ago.

I’m seriously looking into blocking IP addresses. Anyone know how to do that?

My mom told me tonight that we’re playing host to a couple of teenagers from Italy. They’re spending a month in our house. One of them is spending the month in my bed. Even next week, I get shafted to the guest room. I don’t mind, really, since the mattress in there was mine all throughout childhood anyway until we got one of those foam ones because my back started hurting in the tenth grade. The only thing that has me is the fact that the other teen is in my sister’s room for the time period, which means I can’t go in there. And I have been when I’ve been going home. Because although she up and left, her room still looks like she’s coming back in an hour. Complete with her photo albums strewn all over her dressers and perfume bottles half empty, loose change in her jewelry box and pictures printed off the internet. I would go and pick up one of the those photo albums, sit on her bed and look through all these pictures that I’ve seen a million times before, just because I could.

I was doodling in class today and somehow my pictures changed from flowers to my signature. Then I remembered how I used to forge my father’s autograph so I could write notes to my elementary school teacher that would allow me to go home for lunch because there was a time where I hated eating lunch with the people I did. So I tried it for the first time in ten years and low and behold, I was still pretty damn good at it. Once I compared the two, I realized that my signature kind of looks like his does now. And I couldn’t figure out it was because I used to practice his signature so much that his “f”s transferred into mine or they just look similar because he’s my father.

It was weird, nonetheless, looking at my almost perfect rendition of his name. It made me miss him more than I already do right now. And I don’t know why because I never really see his signature no matter where I am. Maybe I just feel connected to him based on the trivial fraudulent activities of my youth, he was, after all, aware of my ability and when he saw it once, had a pretty surprised look on his face but didn’t get mad. Probably because he knew that I wasn’t planning on using my skill to commit a more serious fraud than getting to eat at home for lunch.

I’m reeling in the fact that it’s early November and I’ve only been home once since school began and not missing it as much as I usually do this time of year. But now that S is gone too, my parents are dealing for the first time with both their children being gone. And I think one of the reasons I’m not too homesick is the fact that when I do go home I miss S too, so it’s easier to miss someone somewhere where you would have missed them anyway.

But as I desperately wanted to go visit S in the UK this Christmas break, and would probably be plausible if I begged hard enough, I don’t think I’d be able to do it quite yet. I wouldn’t be able to do it to my parents, especially over the holidays. And I don’t think I’d want to do it to myself either. I’d miss them too much.

And that’s what I figured out while staring at my dad’s fake signature.