...far a longer way to run...i've had that song in my head since last night, when my cousin therese was putting her son sean to bed--so adorable in his little red footie pajamas. he's got therese's big blue eyes and her dark hair, but apparently brian's appetite. such a mix.
yesterday i drove up to minneapolis to see the whalen side of the family. i always think it's going to be more difficult than it is. i don't know why. it's like i build myself up for this horrible, horrible experience and then nothing happens that's horrible. strained, sometimes, but more often than not you just have to confess how your job is going and if you're buying a house or whatnot. there was a good portion of my family actually there--i think the only ones missing were my cousin steve and his sig other, elsa, who live in ny, ny, and my uncle dan, who i think is either in ireland or germany right now.
the reason behind the gathering was my uncle, jed, who was up visiting from ca. always good to see him--he's got a delightful laugh. but the stroke, and i think coming out even tho it's been six or seven years now, have changed him a great deal. he's not the person i remember. he wanted to give me a hug, but didn't seem to want to talk to me. kind of standoffish. i talked to dan about it on the way home and he agreed, but he said it's been like this for a longer period of time. i don't know if he feels alienated or what the deal is, but it was just awkward. i'm a huggy, chatty person; it's difficult to think that someone would feel uncomfortable around me. dan pointed out that it seemed to be everyone, not just me, and wasn't an isolated incident. that did make me feel better.
it makes me think about how people change, how one time you see them and they're a totally different organism the next time you see them. it seems like they're consistent, that their personality is a constant, and then three months pass and you see them again, and something in their environment has served as an evolutionary force. i still love this other incarnation of my uncle, just like i still love my grandma even though she has changed greatly. you don't stop that part, that's the constant. it's like this equation, or worse yet, word problem. your relationship changes based on the individual changes in the other person; you make changes in your reception and your conversation based on something minute, something the other person perhaps does not realize they have done.
i think about when i was a kid, how my sister and her friend got angry because they'd found one of those spots you claim as a kid--down by a drainage ditch, nice little stream. me being bossy little twelve-year-old kim took it upon herself to move rocks out of the stream, so that (in my opinion) it would better flow. sara and amanda threw a fit; why change what was working fine already, etc. in retrospect i've no clue as to why i thought those rocks should be moved. it was just a general nudge to do so, and when you're 12, you don't consider consequences in the same way you do ten years after that.
did the rocks i pulled out of that little stream affect somthing broader than my sister's attitude? probably not. it's a drainage ditch, right? but it affected her to this day. she still remembers that whole scene as something where i was standing on her toes. i think back on it and i don't remember my sister's reactions as much as i now think about the cellular level and any frogs i may have impacted due to my "assistance."
something small that turns into something larger--something more broad. dad's stress test turned into six bypasses, and 50 lbs of weight lost, a diet changed, a treadmill bought. he is a different person than he was prior to that february day--different, but not entirely different. still dad. grandma whalen, despite the dementia, is still shaped like my grandma--now with regrown hair. she still smells like grandma, she still acts like grandma. when i think about it in those terms, the erosion of brain tissue--it makes me want to know how *i* have changed over time. what things happen to make you less of an open person. has it been the slow build back into having high blood pressure? will this half a pill i take nightly impact my personality? has it already? what is my guide for knowing if it has? there's not a chart or scale i can use.
i wish, oftentimes, that there were. that people had hanging around their neck some kind of code that told me how best to interact with them. perhaps jed didn't want to have a heart to heart discussion, or even a how's-the-weather chat. but the only way for me to know that is to ask, and the only way to learn is to experience. it would make a life a lot easier if it was simplified--i could just walk up to someone who WANTS to chat and chat with them, as opposed to trying to feel out your conversation partner and getting snubbed.
which i'm sure jed didn't feel like he was doing. who knows. he will fly back to ca with whatever impressions he gathered, and i will remain here, with what i have.
it was good to see the family, though. colin and sean, the under-5 set, grow so quickly. kids are just plain cute when they're little. interesting too to see my cousins, kelsey and ericka--i remember when ericka was just born--she was at grandpa whalen's last christmas in 1988 and was just a baby then. and now she's driving and getting ready to graduate high school in a few years. or less. yikes.
time goes faster, exponentially, the older you get. it's like you walk to the top of a very big hill--most people run, i think, really--and then when you get close to 30, you sit down, and it hits you that you're maybe more than a third of the way through your life expectancy. but instead of time returning and being a further climb, you lay down, and you roll down the hill. i'm just starting to gather speed, i suppose. you measure your life in the size of children around you. those long and bored afternoons of your youth are shorter and filled with adult crap like paying bills and cleaning the oven and filling the birdfeeder. it will be interesting to see people at the whalen reunion this year, measure the old tree and see what rings have changed and what rings have grown.
anyway. i'm off to fill some time before nathan calls with more stuff that i didn't have to do when i was seven--hose out the bathrooms, clean up the kitchen, vacuum, laundry, mundane stuff that i should be able to wish done. *sigh* so long, farewell, auf wiedersehn, good bye.
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