Insane. I hit the century mark today – 115 visitors. <\/p>\n
My older daughter keeps doing bad things to my younger daughter, then getting this evil smile on her face. I call it “The Damien Smile”. Hub and I talked about it the other night just before falling asleep, and I had to reassure him that she’s not evil, but she is two and that’s as close to evil as you get this side of puberty. He was ready to call a priest. I remember after we had her christened, she would make these horrible creepy double-voice noises and we wondered if the baptism took. It was my feeling that the holy water would have left blisters if she were truly evil.<\/p>\n
On to other thoughts…<\/p>\n
My mother died, quite unexpectedly, when I was 16. For years afterward (and even now, occasionally) I had dreams that it was all an elaborate plot, that she faked her death for some reason and nobody would explain why. She’d just come back into my life like nothing happened. In my dreams I would be so emotionally mixed up: hurt, that she left without saying goodbye; relieved, that she came back; and resentful, that she felt like she could come back and try to assert herself as a mother again.<\/p>\n
My father died after a long illness when I was 21, so it was quite expected and I had a chance to say goodbye properly, more or less. I don’t recall ever having those types of dreams about him. I think they stemmed from my utter and complete lack of closure with my mom. I mean, my last words with her were an argument about going to bed, for cry eye eye. <\/p>\n
She came to visit me once after she died. Honestly. It was at her wake, at my aunt’s house, where I was sitting on a footstool trying to eat something but not wanting to. Mom put her hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear to sit up straight. It was so real I could smell her. How typical, too – she was always wanting me to sit and stand straight. You’d think, though, that she’d tell me goodbye or something rather than “sit up straight”. <\/p>\n
My dad came to visit me once, too, about 5 years after he died. I was brushing my teeth and thinking about him because there’s a painting that I have that Mom bought because it reminded her of him. I was looking at that painting and heard him call my name, clear as day. The exact same way he used to call me to breakfast every morning.<\/p>\n
He was the early riser, not Mom. Dad was the one who used to wake me and feed me before school. He’d make me breakfast every morning – usally either poached eggs or peanut butter and jelly on English muffins. And either hot tea or cocoa. He did nice things in a quiet way. My mom was totally anti-sugar when I was a kid, but my dad and I shared a raging sweet tooth, and he would slip Three Musketeers bars under my pillow so I would find them before bed. He used to pat the “shave and a haircut” part on my leg so I’d pat “two bits” back on his. He was a quiet man, but personified the saying that still waters run deep.<\/p>\n
I used to have horrible guilt about the way Mom and I left off. I know now that no matter how we had left off I would feel guilty, and that it was just a coincidence that we were bitching at each other. Well not precisely a coincidence, since I was a horrible nasty teenager at the time, but you get my drift.<\/p>\n
Anyway, if you’re going to have your parents die, I highly recommend that you not do it as a kid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Insane. I hit the century mark today – 115 visitors. My older daughter keeps doing bad things to my younger daughter, then getting this evil smile on her face. I call it “The Damien Smile”. Hub and I talked about it the other night just before falling asleep, and I had to reassure him that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/addlepated.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}