Same Time Next Year

So Disneyland Dad has returned my children to me unharmed and unsnatched. According to the kids, who have probably been sworn to honor a pact, someone named Heather watched them for a while each day, but Dad only went to class for a little while. Lars has walked the tightrope of propriety and ethics again, but at least my children are home in one piece.

And now I get to prepare for my own vacation with the kids. To the little remote hamlet we always venture to. And I can not help but reflect on what a difference the year since our last trip there has made.

A year ago this very same week, this very same trip was pocked with all the hallmarks of a relationship in the horrid throes of death. J. and I were broken up, yet still in a place of relative civility - but clearly only because he had not yet admitted to himself that what he was seeing and experiencing was me walking out the door of his life, taking my ball and going home, leaving the Big Top and plugging my ears to drown out the calliope music. It was still blurred and unclear to him, though precise and crisp and sharp around the edges to me.

And even then, the real drama had not even begun to unfold: His uninvited, unwelcome, completely intrusive and bizarre trespass into the sacred Girls' Weekend. The hacking into my phone records and subsequent Googling and dialing of unfamiliar numbers that I'd called or texted while away from him (like my son's new number and my secretary's cell...hello, boundaries please!) And of course, the piece de resistance, the impromptu unveiling of the dinner-plate-sized, four-color tattoo of my FB profile pic on his barely wide enough, scrawny little thigh. (He'd seriously have to turn a quarter turn for anyone to actually view me from ear to ear...yuck) And so many more violations of trust and respect.

And while I could never have imagined at that time that there was that much drama, that much trouble, that many more police reports yet to file before I'd seen the very last of him, I had no way to predict that at the very same time, my relationship with my mother would unravel like a cheap sweater.

The few days she and Bill had spent with us last year were agitated, and tense, and harrowing, and fraught with the potential for disaster: The bizarre attitudes, the loud political rants, the guns, the alcohol, and the outrageous behavior. Followed by months of triangular conversation which ended in a stand off that threatened to interfere with the only holiday celebration my mother feels is important enough to exert herself to spend with family.

I unenthusiastically extended an olive branch at that time, but Estelle wasn't accepting, and I wasn't going to go waving it around for long. There were plans and backpedaling, more plans and then excuses. And then the biggest fail safe excuse, the threat of bad weather. Estelle and Bill came North and stayed away. Then retreated early.

The holiday was glorious in spite of the distraction I am never sure she didn't cause on purpose. She is a distraction without trying. But she took her bitterness to her friends' house, and ended up leaving there early too, following some terse words over God Only Knows What. Blamed the weather. Snow's coming so we're going. Like J., not seeing how by their own hand they were driving people from their life. And adamantly insisting that the problem lie with the other party.

Months later, I sent an Easter card; I called on Mother's Day. I did my part even though each act lacked genuine warmth. In its place, panic and dread and a sense of duty. There is a truce but no peace.

And even as I pack my bags for this trip I wonder if she knows we are going, and is telling herself that there is nothing unusual about not having been invited. Even though there is.

A few weeks ago, as I drove to a meeting, she called my cell. Not wanting to arrive at the meeting looking rattled in any way, I let the call go to voice mail. As I sat in traffic on the way home that evening, I called her back, wondering even as I dialed how I would dodge the issue if she hinted that she would enjoy seeing us and are we going to get away this summer.

Not to worry, she went on and on instead about politics and the state of the world. Told me she'd just bought a rifle.

I nearly drove right off the bridge.

She went on to volunteer that she'd gotten the gun because according to some closed-minded, right-wing redneck news source, people are upset with the state of things around here, and darn it, there is going to be an uprising, a revolution, looting and rioting - and darn it, she's going to protect what is hers.

I chuckled at the visual image of my mother, hair whipped and teased and back-combed into a meringue, Nefertiti earrings dangling, cowboy boots, pantyhose, Mom jeans and a really good blazer, cocking a gun to fire at someone trying to make off with her Weber grill.

I am secretly relieved at my de facto decision not to have invited Mom and her sidearm to join us on our tranquil vacation this year.

I am sure my children and the neighbors would thank me. If they only knew.