Ever.

here's a post I saved as a draft Dec 26, 04 and forgot about. I was just about to delete it but I'm gonna publish it instead. It's not finished.

I don't want my parents to die. Ever. Don't tell that to my 13 year old self, she won't believe you. They are Christmas to me now. I concentrate most on them. Seeing them, giving them something to make their time more rewarding. Asking lots of questions to find out what needs to be better, is everything cool? Anything I should know about? Are you okay, is time kind, do the old hurts still matter, is the worry over, are you surviving life alright, are there batteries in your smoke detectors? Has your well water been checked? Is that wood stove up to code? I don't ask all of these questions, my parents are quite capable, intelligent & lucid, but that kind of worry is beginning. I can see now how easily I will be taking either of both of them into my home to care for them if it's ever necessary. Even 2 years ago I couldn't imagine that, couldn't imagine losing my independence. I couldn't imagine ever losing my independence for anything. Not for marriage, not for parenthood, not for a job, not for the skake of my siblings, not for anything, ever. What's changed? Love. All these years of love being so intangible, so littered with loss of self, absorption of feelings, loss of logic rather than clear emotion. Oh yeah, the last of the teenage angst has finally left the building and it only took about 2 or 3 decades to do so.
Funny, I always knew Carlo would have everything to do with my understanding of love. I knew he sparked my understanding of love the first time he sparked that other feeling akin to love in my 9 year old belly. What I didn't expect was that it would be the absolute loss of him that would finally teach me what to hang onto, where to lay my eggs. In learning to let go of his existence I started searcing for worth. Reasons to be, reasons to stay, reasons to remain, reasons to breath. I've turned my back in painful ways on a lot of things that weren't fulfilling. All actions that didn't feed life were discarded. The plot continues. Everything is evaluated now: "Will this sustain me?" & accepted or not on the answer to that question. So what sustains me? The new fear. The new fear of commiting myself to a more rewarding life. A life that isn't all about me, where other's feelings actually are my responsibility and I do actually have something to live up to. I am going to marry this friend whose fulfillment matters to me as much as my own and be responsible for the way I make him feel. I am going to pro create & have that ultimate resposibility of not totally screwing up someone else's life. I am going to be there for my family instead of taking yet another stupid road trip that I can't remember half of anyway & I am going to follow through on promises I'm in the process of making & I am going to ...

You know those thoughts that break you?

We were watching Amistad. He loves that scene where the character yells out "Give me free!" He walks around saying it for days, you know how people spew lines from Reservior Dogs & Arnie movies and all that? That's his movie line, "Give me free!" Sometimes i'm shaken because it's still relevant. That movie has hard scenes for me, like the one where they need to lesson the weight on the ship so they chain a bunch of the humans together and just let them slide over the side to drown.
That movie reminds me that there is no control. No matter how senseless human activity gets, there aren't means of control. The documentary I just watched on aging concentration camp survivors and what this hospital unit in Ontario is learning to aid them in their old age. They call it a cruel twist of fate. When you've been through something so tragic and you're in your later years you may not be able to remember to put your shoes on before you go out but you remember the way the guard smelled when he came to collect you bunk mate for Dr. Mengele.

His grandmother's house in New Orleans has her mother's framed freedom papers on the living room wall. My mother's house has a framed knock off of a ship at sea painting. Wierd. maybe it's the ship that stole his family and brought them to America where years later freedom papers would be framed and hung on the wall. The family's most prized possession. "Give me free!"
You know I still ache that my grandmother died too soon because she grew up in Whitney Pier, home of Canada's largest toxic waste site and I sign all of those petitions to clean up the tar ponds. I don't think pain felt ever leaves a family. I think it gets into the genetics. I wonder what it would feel like to know she had been owned, beaten, shackled, bought, sold, raped, worked to the bone, cold, hungry, scared her whole life?

I wonder sometimes when I look at him. If history hadn't changed and some people hadn't been so brave there are things I know about him. Because he is strong minded and because he is also gentle and protective, if he had to have been a slave he would have had his feet chopped off, he would have been whipped for insolence to the master, probably a lot. He would have suffered all that and still would have been shot in the back at his final attempt to get out. "Give me free!" He would have gone crazy. I wonder sometimes when I look at him how he handles these family memories.
Same way he handles a lot of shit handed to him on a daily basis.
My mother is a humanist. She raised us to be humanists. My mother was the Mom all the kids came out to. Whether they were gay, pregnant, suicidal, addicted, abused, raped, whatever, she was the go to Mom. She raised her kids to be anti-racist, tried to teach us what they weren't teaching us in school. So she did a good job making sure we weren't assholes or ignorant morons, but there's still a lot to know. I wish more people were like my mother.
A few weeks ago he said out of nowhere "You know your kids will be black"
I got a little offended, what am I dumb? I took sciences in university, I know his melatonin is way pushier than mine. I know he'll completely kick me out of the ball field when eye and skin color is getting made. What's he think, I'm stooopid?
Oh wait, I am stupid. There is going to be a completely different experience out there for them. it really is one thing for me to not be racist and it really is another thing to be in the face of it, to be on the receiving end. Do you all hear that? It's the sound of a white woman opening her eyes. I will not be able to stop people from treating them differently or maybe even badly just like he's never been able to stop people from treating him that way. And there are a lot of levels to this. And I have been ignorant. It's not enough to "not be racist".
I wonder about him sometimes. he sees the future so clearly. He's always predicting things that are going to happen to me emotionally. I think when he realized he was going to really be with me he sat down and thought out all of the ramifications from begining to end. I love him for that. I love it that he's like that. I didn't do that at all. I just dove in all in love and colorblind. He has every reason to be so much smarter than me about it. I never had to think about it. I considered it all done just because I wasn't a racist. He's faced it every day since he was born into it.
I really can get so progressive that I'm completely ass backwards.