Giving

It's better today.

I got nothing done yesterday. I mean, nothing. Okay. I put away three loads of laundry, cleaned out the kitty litter box, worked-out, did the dishes, got my labs drawn and visited the thyroid doctor, picked up my prescription, cooked dinner, went grocery shopping, and dropped off food for my advisor, whose father-in-law was just killed in a car accident. But other than that...nothing.

That's funny, because reviewing the list, I actually did quite a lot, but it felt like a vacation. I felt like an absolute slacker. Periodically throughout the day, I would burst into tears, But after I found the courage to sit, late in the afternoon, after putting it off all day, that got better, too.
You're not supposed to practice zen because it makes things better, but it does.

It's hard to make yourself do the things you're supposed to do. One of the things all the years of sitting ( or maybe just all the years, by themselves) has done is that it has woken me up to the lies I tell myself. At least most of them. It's harder and harder to get away with shit.

It's very hard for me to rise to the occasion. To give people what they want out of me. I resent it. I'm a terrible gift giver. I shop at the last minute, barely wrap things. When I do break through the mud and ice and invest myself in giving to another human being, I am reminded this is the only way to truly live. But then I forget. And I'm back to my nasty, time hoarding self.

Last week was my mother's birthday. My mother is really hard to shop for. There are all these rules--rules that you don't know about until you break them. And if you break even one, you screwed up the whole thing! The birthday doesn't count. All or nothing thinking, one of my therapists told me. Typical of children and alcoholics.

My parents drove Nick to the train station 4 hours away to put him back on the train to New Orleans (he'd been up visiting us). It was Mom's birthday.

"Can we go out to dinner and celebrate after you get back?"(they get back at about 2 in the afternoon) I asked.

"No," Mom said. "We'll be too tired."

I had clinicals in the city the next day, but I'd be back at 8pm. "What about the next day, when I get back ?"

"No," Mom said. "That's really too late for us to eat."

"Well, then, what about Thursday?"

"I have bridge. I never miss bridge."

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were out because, again, 2000 has become too late to eat.

"Well, we'll try next week."

But I knew there was going to be hell to pay. So Lilly and I wrapped up her presents early, with beautiful bows and perfect wrapping paper (17 bucks on wrapping paper frou frou!) and I got it there to their house while they were gone, on her birthday, with balloons, so she'd have presents to open.

Radio silence.

"I think we might have done it, Lilly, " I said, excitedly. "I think we might have finally covered all the bases."

"No, we didn't." Lilly says, shaking her head sagely. "We victimized them somehow..."

Two days later, I get the email from my father. "Well, again, you screwed up Christmas and now you screwed up her birthday. You need to call your mother and take her to lunch. She's heartbroken."

I never respond to these, but this time, I was pissed. Because I felt we'd really tried. I mean, someone has to meet us halfway, right? They're like the cats. They think I control the weather.

So I pointed out that we'd dropped off presents so they'd be waiting for her, and had tried to arrange 6 outings.

He wrote back: "You always have to be right, don't you Haley? It doesn't matter whether you're right. She's unhappy. Fix it."

And yesterday: "I'm still waiting for you to call your mother."

God damn it. It's very hard to be born to a couple like this. It's hard to explain, but everything has been my fault pretty much since I was three. You fell in the pool and almost drowned--stupid kid--you never know where your second grade reader is--stupid kid--I mean. They only had one child. And my mother stayed home. How hard could it have been?

I started to call Harriette to bitch. But then I remembered that Harriette's mother had died two years ago of pancreatic cancer. Then I thought about calling Ruthie--but her mother died 3 years ago of brain cancer. Then I thought about calling Matt--but his mother has been hospitalized for alcoholism, again, and her liver's almost gone and she's suffering from encephalopathy. And she stayed home with her children--and was filthy rich on top of it--so what's her excuse?

So, I called my mother instead,

It's only an hour.

That's my 1/2 hour