He chose a city on the edge of that zone - far enough to discourage unannounced visits, but close enough to get there quickly in case of emergency. Brilliant.
My situation is not like his. I came to Florida first and my parents – well, they’ll probably never come at all. They’re in Northern Michigan near Lake Superior.
I would need a bigger compass.
I look at my map and there is some satisfaction in being closer to Castro than my mother. I’m about 400 miles north of Havana, 1700 miles south of mom’s.
Both dictators are getting on in years.
Mom is much younger, mid 70s. Castro – well, he has to be ninety by now. I think I’d have a better time with him, but he never calls – he never writes. He doesn’t know I exist.
My mom knows but she doesn’t care much. She had one child - a bastard – that’s me. That was her defining moment. She came home pregnant at 15 and got heat from her mom. Sure, blame the Gram for being upset because she already had her hands full raising three kids while her husband – Grandpa – was suicidal; crazy on his ass with bipolar.
Despite the hardships, Gram welcomed me with open arms. But my mom? According to her current life script, she never forgave her for coming home pregnant. Funny, I don't remember it that way. I grew up with those two and I never saw my Gram dish out anything but food, shelter, love and money.
Some years after mom married – still stalking the ever-elusive happiness - she went into therapy and came out blaming her mother for every disappointment. Her resentments started growing right around the same time Gram started slipping gears.
I told her I thought Gram was getting dementia. Mom disagreed. She said she was playing games.
So - of course - after years of steady decline Gram died of dementia. She has been gone for four years, but my mom continues to claw at her memory like a housebound cat attacks a scratching post.
I have a hard time picking up the phone to make a call. I miss my Gram; she's glad she's gone. Sometimes I prefer email because written words don't cut as deep as spoken words. There is something powerful in a person's "tone."
I’ll bet Castro doesn’t have this kind of drama. He wouldn't permit it. He'd wave it away in a hairy knuckled cloud of smoke.
I’ll bet he embraces his bastards as living/breathing signs of macho.
He would be full of himself – like her – but he wouldn’t give me creepy, judgmental stares over a steaming mug of herbal tea.
She sits curled on the left corner of the great blanketed Collie Couch, with one or two of the great wooly beasts dozing at her feet. If she has food, they huff and puff with desire.
It annoys her that I am vegetarian; but she says she is too - well, except for the bacon. Oh yeah, and the burgers.
Castro wouldn't take my shit. He'd have his chef slap a big bloody steak on my plate and inform me it's that or nothing; at least I could go on Atkins for the duration.
Not so at mom's. She bakes cakes and pies the whole time we're there. She's an incredible cook. Maybe that's how she shows her love. At the end we waddle back out to the SUV with our bags - emotionally deflated and physically fat.
Castro would have a fully stocked bar of prime rums and brandies. I imagine him puffing as he leans back comfortably in a heavily tufted leather chair. It might have some ash burns.
He might have a dog – or maybe even a cat. I could see him with a cat. He probably has people standing by with lint-rollers. In fact, he would have an entourage of trusted friends and cohorts.
My mother doesn’t because she is fierce.
My step-dad hides out with the remotes in his ginormous but somewhat drafty family room. The kitchen is the late-night demilitarized zone where they elbow roughly past each other, exchanging muttered “fuck you’s” in the dim light of the open fridge.
The open profanity usually occurs at the dinner table when the stepdad asks her to pass something and she'll respond with something like "fuck you, get it yourself."
It was unnerving but sort of laughable when he was stronger; now that his health is bad, it's intolerable. We've started taking her aside to tell her to calm the fuck down. Well, not me - I'm afraid. My son does it.
I'm afraid because if I get into it there's a very good chance we will never speak to each other again. Ever. And if I have cause to get into it, I would probably be ok with that.
The dad sleeps downstairs in his own room. It WAS the prime guest room. Mom takes offense to that, but then she takes offense to most everything he does.
I remind her she has a blessed life and it's all because of him.
I sleep upstairs under a dozen glassy eye deer-heads. I get the pull out sofa with the metal rails that bite because I’m the asterisk in family visits to The Great White North. Don’t get me wrong, I like it that way – below radar, with my son, daughter in law and granddaughters out front like the marines.
I make it up there about once a year. I drive to my son’s place in lower Michigan, then we drive another 500 miles past that. We go in my son’s great guzzlin’ SUV with sleeping kids, spilled Cheetos, farting dogs and The Little Mermaid on DVD.
My first daughter-in-law misses us. During delivery of Emma, my first granddaughter, she discovered the joy of pain meds and drugged herself right out of a perfectly beautiful family. Today she has a new family but she misses the life she had with us.
We've hooked up on Facebook and it's like old times. She asked if she could list me on as her mother and I said OK. I always loved her. She was young, she fucked up. We all fuck up sometimes.
She's sorry.
This week she sent an email asking me to tell my parents she misses them.
I understand how she feels. I miss my ex-husband's parents, they are awesome. But I knew what was going to happen.
I sent an email and my mom wrote back: "We will NEVER forgive her for what she did.”
I wrote back saying that doesn't change the fact that Becky will always be Emma’s mother. I envision my mother making some unforgiveable comment that will offend Emma for all time.
It seems like my mother has become the mother she manufactured in her head, the mother she THOUGHT she had. I half-think a person who has never met me or us will read this silly overview of our family's maternal dynamic and have more clarity.
Maybe one day I'll have that. I wish I could understand.
I'm pretty sure my Gram would have accepted Becky’s apology. I think she lived 96 years because she knew how to forgive and accept.
So I’ve got my map and I’ve got my drafting compass.
Let’s see … only 400 miles to Castro’s; 1700 miles to the mom’s. It takes a lot of gas, forgiveness and acceptance to go there.
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