Jan
21
2010
Altanta Homecoming
Author: SamI wasn’t planning on going home for awhile, at least not until I got out of my 20s. The high school years were tragic enough, as they are for everyone who thinks differently, or dresses differently, or has different ways of making decisions, and that was certainly my case. It did not matter so much that of all the friends I had, I could only trust one, because in the end, even that one started to become somebody I didn’t recognize. But when my father started to get sick, I had a feeling I’d be back sooner than later.
We meet in the lobby of one of those luxury hotels in Atlanta, the ones where everything is there for the asking. This is the kind of Southern charm and hospitality that I’d missed when I was growing up. It was ironic, then, to be sitting in front of the woman that I thought I would never forgive. She married my father after I’d given up on hoping for the mother I never had. She was worldly, and liked to travel, and was all of the things that I did not want in a mother, so I never gave her the respect that I can now see that she deserved. I also noticed that she had given up on waiting for anything from me, and seemed oddly at peace with it.
There’s something about Southern families that remind me of the saying about blood being thicker than water. At times, it felt like I was living in a Beth Henley play. But at moments like these, when we were talking and planning the services, I understood that there are ties that bind and can be as strong as a bloodline. Or nearly so. Six years of taking care of one of the most unreasonable human beings in the world had turned her into a member of the family. She understood more about him that any of us, and even knew about some of his hidden obsessions. I’ll never understand why my father hated Bob Hope so much, but she did, and at this moment, it was just enough.
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