family ties
11.28.03 @ 4:24 p.m.
Thanksgiving dinner was quite lovely for all that it was held up by my brother and his wife, who arrived late. It was only my parents, my siblings, and their significant others. Oh, and Grandma, of course. No Uncle Don or Aunt Bev, at least not for dinner. It was nice. Sister-in-law Julia seems less scary, though it was slightly odd to hear her rapid cell phone conversation in Russian between dinner and dessert.
Before that, there was slightly awkward conversation with Joanne (whom I'm just not all that close to) and fianc� Sean (or Shawn? Dunno) but my brother just oozes charisma. Seriously. He's funny as all hell, for all that he was giving me grief about my D in Information Gathering (which he knew about thanks to my big mouthed father, grrr). Oh, and then as nonchalant as anything, he tells us he found and met up with his birth mother last month. !?! I find all kinds of interesting things about my family lately. That my brother went through alcohol withdrawl when he was born. That a couple that tried to adopt him right after my dad and his first wife, Genny, adopted him possibly included his birth father. I also learned last night, while asking my mother probing questions that she only knew vague answers to, that when I was a baby, they sent a photo of my (half) sister and I in front of a christmas tree to my sister's birth mom, who was living in an institution in Provo. She sent a card back that started out saying semi poetic things aobut how one of us was a diamond and one was a rose, which then shifted abruptly into Spanish, talking about how the revolution was coming. I guess my dad and Genny were already having problems in their marriage when the chance to adopt Joanne came up. They were approached because they'd already adopted a mixed race child in Dorian. (Whose specific ethnicity I never knew until yesterday: His mother was Irish, German, and Cherokee and his father was Caribbean black. When he announced the Irish heritage, my mom said "Welcome to the club." Then he announced the Caribbean part and my sister laughed and repeated my mom. It was cute, really.)
Slightly frightening but compelling stuff, as far as I'm concerned. I don't know where all the photo albums went, but somewhere there's a picture of my sister with her birth mom, and they look staggeringly alike.
Dorian, as usual, told as many embarassing stories from my infancy as he could, all things I can't remember at all. Except that I've heard the stories from him before, and everyone laughs like crazy because like I said, my brother has a way about him. He's a natural born storyteller.
And now I have to rent The Hunted because my brother and his wife are extras in it. How fucking cool. I complain about his irresponsibility, but I really do love my brother. I never got close to my sister and feel like I hardly know her, but my brother is always funny and without fail I can talk to him about the Beatles or Star Wars.
Then the sibs left and I was all set to let the turkey do it's work, lazing sleepily by the fire. And we did relax for a while, but then my aunt and uncle showed up. Conversation was somewhat interesting until it turned to politics (which, yeah, I should pay more attention to) when it got intensely boring and like almost every visit with my Uncle Don, I started to wish he'd just go away. He's a bit of a pompous intellectual ass, and while sometimes it's fun to act the same way, it gets old very fast.
Today is Perry Mason and leftover turkey sandwiches and Stephen King books by the fire. Well, and I wrote a short part of "I Can't Reach You," which is very garbled at this point. I'm having trouble with the reactions of the two main characters to one another and a major secondary character is having slightly split loyalties. If I rush through, though, I can get to the name-dropping part I really want to write at the Speakeasy. Tonight I'll try to do homework. Really.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
