I had a dream this morning

I was in some kind of an older farmhouse.  My dream house probably.  Wrap around porch.  Wood floors throughout. Big windows with lots of light.  My granddaughter was with me.  She was running through the house in her onesie pajamas with non-grippy feet and she kept slipping and falling. Two or three times this happened.  I would go over and pick her up and just like in real life, she'd put her hand on my arm and ask if I was “OKAAAYY?” and I would say “I’m okay, are you okay?” And she would say yeah and toddle off.  This is exactly how it happens in real life too.

Anyway, she was running through the kitchen into what I believe was a mudroom or closed in porch of some kind. There is a step down into this room, and she fell.  But this time she was crying.  I went over to her I helped her stand up.  She had fallen onto a pile of sheet rock screws. The kind that are long and thin and black and pokey.  They were stuck stuck to her hand and onto her jammies because flannel. 

I sat down beside her on the step and began picking the screws off of her pajamas with one hand and I’m hugging her with the other arm and I’m asking if she’s okay and she says yeah, then she asks if I’m okay and I said yeah and we go back and forth a couple times.  I look down to the pile of screws on the floor and in the pile is my mom‘s wedding ring, her mother’s ring, and her watch.  I picked up her watch and it was different from the watch she wore every day for 50+ years.  This was like a mother's ring, but watch version.  Every hour was a birthstone for each of her kids. 

I picked up her watch and leaned back against the wall.  I closed my eyes and ran my thumb across the face of the watch to feel the stones.  I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of something.  I start to cry. Just those two silent tears that roll slowly down your cheeks. I leaned my head back against the wall that I’m leaning on and I hear my mom calling me from the other room. 

She said “Stella what’s wrong” and I smile to myself.  The tears march silently toward my chin.  

I’m still sitting on the floor; still leaning against a wall.  Eyes closed.  I said “nothing.”  And she said “Stella. WHAT is wrong” and I said “nothing, mom.”  as I sit gently caressing the watch, stroking my thumb across the stones.  Tears maintain their steady slow roll down my face.  

In the dream it felt like I was glad to hear her voice. Or maybe comforted by it?  It was that feeling you have when you smile to yourself because you fondly recall a memory that made you happy years and years ago.

I open my eyes, and my mom is sitting across from me.  We’re on chairs, sitting at a table that I cannot see. I cannot see her body, only her face right in front of me. So real I could reach out to touch her.  But I don't .  She’s looking at me with her 74-year-old face. Her unkept short hair.  I remember thinking her cornflower blue eyes were alive as she sat there, blankly staring at me.  Then she turned and looked to her left side, she smiled, and she said something I couldn’t hear.  She turned back and looked at me. Again with that stare. 

I woke up immediately. The wake up when bolt upright in bed.  But I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Trying to figure out why I'm awake, but also why that dream. 

I could still see her face as I stared at the ceiling.  Like when you look at a light bulb then turn away, but you can still see the bulb.  It was like that.  Her eyes were so alive.

And I laid there, going over the dream in my head What does it mean? Where did it come from? Because I don’t really miss my mom.  As adults, we hadn't been close for probably the past 15 or so years.  I would call her on her birthday, and on Mother’s Day, and on Christmas.  I’d see her when we went to California.  Our chats were mostly superficial. 

So why this dream. With that stare? Was she trying to tell me something?  Do I miss her?  

I don't know.  I stayed in bed for probably 20 minutes, eyes closed, replaying the dream over and over in my head trying to make sense of it.  In a moment of brain silence, when I think I may have been drifting back to sleep, my inner dialogue said something that chilled me. In fact, startled me.  My eyes flew open for the second time this morning.  

I don’t know why you miss her now she was never there for you when she was alive.

Dysfunction at its finest

I got a call yesterday morning, around ten, from my sister in California.  We were discussing Thanksgiving and she casually mentioned oh by the way, mom is on her way to the hospital.  She didn't know why yet, just that our youngest sister had called her and told her she was on the way there. 

Around noon, she called me back.  The doctors think that mom had a mini stroke (again).  I said okay, keep me posted and then I bitched for a few minutes that she was the only one who had called me.  Not one of those selfish fucks in Utah could be bothered to call me.  Not my youngest sister, the crack whore, my brother or my mother's husband.  Asshat chickenfuckers all of them.  She then tells me that she isn't talking to anyone but her dad/my mother's husband because the crack whore pissed her off, but dad won't talk to the crack whore because she pissed off the youngest sister, and youngest sister has her baby at the hospital so the doctors won't let her in the room, and bla fucking bla bla bla.  

It's exhausting

Around four, my sister in California called again. This time, she sounded horrible and was obviously crying hard.  When I first said hello, and heard her voice, I thought my mom was dead.  My stomach dropped to my knees and I almost threw up.  I took a deep breath and braced myself for the worst.

_______________________________

They were taking her via ambulance to the main hospital in Salt Lake City (she lives in a Podunk town about 45 miles away).  The CT scan in her town was inconclusive and they needed more tests.  At one point they were going to transport her via Life Flight (helicopter) but they nixed that and decided on the ambulance.  I calmed my sister down and told her that if it was something life threatening, they would be using the helicopter.  My sister (they are all rather jumpy and irrational at times) was trying to book a flight to Utah for last night.  Having been through this before, I told her to try and calm down until we knew something more.  We didn't know if it was a mini stroke, a full on stroke, a bleed, or what.  I told her to call me when she knew anything. 

By now, I was apprehensive and nervous and all of the bad thoughts that can run through a person's mind were on full sprint in my head.  While I don't have the best relationship with my mother, and I don't really care if I never see her again, I also don't wish her dead.  I just wish to be invisible to all of my family members except my sister in CA and my brother who lives with me.  The others can disappear off the face of the earth and take their drama with them.  Really. 

I was driving home, thinking all of the thoughts that we all think when someone we know has a brush with potential death, like, how I need to tweak my will and custody agreement, I need to up my life insurance, I wonder who will pay for her funeral if this really is her time, the fact that if she dies, then I will have lost the two most profound women in my life within a span of 13 months.  Ya know, THOSE kind of things. 

Anyway, my phone rings and my heart skips a beat, and I see that it is my step dad. 

I take a deep breath and brace, yet again, for the worst.  He tells me that he is just barely on his way to the hospital after getting back into town, they still don't know anything, but they think it was the mini stroke and once she gets to the hospital she will be in the ER until they finish the tests and then they are keeping her overnight.  I told him to call me, no matter what time, on either the home or my cell phone and let me know as soon as she is in a room and let me know what they know so far.  He agreed.  I then called my sister in California to tell her. 

I waited up until 11:30 last night and finally went to bed. I woke up at every sound.  I'm tired as hell.  I called this morning before work and left a voice mail to call and let me know what was going on.  I called my sister on the way to work and told her the same thing. 

I've called all of their cell phones and no one answers. 

It is 3:55 p.m. right now, my sister just called me.  They released my mom at 2:30 a.m. THIS MORNING and said she had a severe migraine and sometimes a bad one can mimic stroke symptoms and sent her home.

Nice of them to let me know.

You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family

I’m really cranky right now.

Partly because I have a left over migraine from yesterday.

Partly because I’m stressed from work.

Partly because the holidays are coming and I’m not thrilled about that just yet.

Mostly though, because my sister is a big fucking twat.

Those of you who’ve been reading me since before my name change may remember my sister the crackwhore (as we affectionately refer to her), who used my identity to get arrested for prostitution, possession and paraphernalia. Not once, but FIVE times. She caused me a lot of pain and anguish and, quite frankly, embarrassment that continues to crop up even today, four years later.

I almost lost my foster care license when she was arrested the last time and I had to go get finger printed and write out a whole statement about how it wasn’t me. I had to go to court to appear and get the judge to actually change the charges into her name, from mine, but learned that day that I will always be an alias of hers and if I ever get into trouble and they run my name, she will show up as an alias of mine. AS IF! Last year I was denied a tax credit as a student because of my FELONY CONVICTION that she gave me for my birthday. Most recently, my boss told me that I’ll have to disclose the arrests and final disposition when I make my formal application to law school and there is a very good chance that I’ll be denied entry if I don’t have good proof that IT WASN’T ME! Finally, I learned that it will cost between $50 and $500 to expunge MY ARREST RECORD to have my name cleared. People, I’ve never been arrested, questioned, handcuffed (well, except for that one time with that one guy....)

Moving on...

Imagine how hard it was for me to take the high road tonight when she called to bitch about how my mom has ruined her life and the life of our youngest sister.

My mom and her husband had a gas bill in my youngest sisters name at sometime during the past five years (Apparently, and this isn’t the first time this has happened either, my parents had their gas shut off and rather than pay that bill, they had it turned back on in one of us kids’ names. I personally paid over $2,000 to various gas, lights, water, cable, newspaper and milk delivery bills when I turned 21. All of which were in my name, unknown to me of course.

Crackwhore is pissed and had the nerve to call my mom and bitch her out for ruining our youngest sisters credit. She demanded that my mom take steps to fix this problem so little sis can get gas in her own name (because her live-in-boyfriend has a bill and won’t pay it). Crackwhore called the gas company, posed as my little sis (she is good at posing), found out that since little sis was a minor when the bill was incurred, the only way to dispute it is to call the police and make a report. Of course, she called my mom and told her all of this then proceeded to bitch about how because of this, my mom is ruining the holidays for her and she just doesn’t know what to do.

Of course my mother and her husband should fix the problem. They should pay their fucking bills. They should stop using the people around them, including their children. They should grow the fuck up. However, they are adults and make their own choices. We all do. Someday it will all catch up to them.

In the meantime, it was so hard for me NOT to remind her of the little story about the pot calling the kettle black. Instead, I told her it wasn’t her business and to stay out of it. Then she had the nerve to ask me to call my mom or at least tell her how to handle the situation. I told her I wasn’t doing shit. Not my place and not my business. If it weren’t for my dysfunctional self inflicted brain fart idea that somehow I NEED TO SAVE THE WHOLE DAMNED WORLD AND MAINTAIN THE PEACE IN THE FAMILY AND PLAY THE MEDIATOR ALL THE TIME I’d wash my hands of the whole fucking lot of them.

I swear to God I was switched at birth and somewhere, some place, my real family is looking for me.