How are you doing this holiday? This year, I have a new perspective. It doesn’t involve patriotism but instead jumping up and down and thanking the gods that we are not British. Do you have any plans this year? Mine is mostly to comfort the cats and eat bomb pops. The fireworks probably won’t bother them much, but Achilles is skittish, and hanging out like normal will probably help them see that everything’s normal.
In the spirit of the holiday, here’s one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken, at a firework show a few years ago. I probably won’t go out today, but it was fun.
I was reminded a few days ago that we were in the zone of ‘today maybe could be the 8th anniversary of losing everything’, and now that we’re at the end of that (since I know we were at the cabin by July 4th), here’s something I’ve been waiting for since it had been about two or three years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee-KXn81UMA
It’s finally time! In the absence of a happy ending, we get time-appropriate song lyrics. This song reminds me more of Mom (Mel) than of you, and has for a long time.
Mom (Jess) got mad at me recently for trying to tell her not to refer to Aaron as my dad (an uphill battle since I was twelve and we met the guy), and she thinks I’m being childish and it’s my trauma’s fault. She said something to the effect of, kids who get abandoned by their dads don’t feel bad this long, and nobody’s as insistent as you. I’m just kind of sick of other people trying to tell me who my parents are. I don’t want to be lenient on something as personal as that. You and I have had people trying to define what our families are since 2016. I think we should get to define our families for ourselves. Maybe that is trauma — but man, I don’t think any abnormalities that come out of it are necessarily worse. We have lived very different lives than most people. We don’t have to be normal. It just feels so easy to not call me his daughter… Mom thinks that’s disrespectful. She wants to put me in grief counseling to change my mind. I’m just going to try to not mention it, like when she wants to talk about trendy thirteen year olds having a transgender phase. Sigh.
This got away from me. I think the point is, no matter how long it’s been, I know my family is back in Eugene and Florida, even if it doesn’t want me. You can rest assured that I’ll never replace Mom (Mel) or you with anybody. My family has not changed since I left Eugene with Mom eight years ago.
With love,
Alice
P.S Did you hear that cousin Charles and his wife had a baby on my birthday?