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Oct. 7th, 2006 07:47 amI have had a truly bizarre week. Whenever I talk to my Mum on the phone to discuss the most recent family crisis she adds another to the list. Deaths, seizures, heart operations, urgent overseas travel, dispersal of household effects, prodigal sons returning to the fold in the nick of time - we've had 'em all. All this has been handled with smoothness and many phonecalls.
The key people in each crisis have dealt supremely well, and the rest of us get to exchange sentences explaining. "The operation is going to be a bypass rather than an angioplasty" is now one of those sentences that one takes with equanimity as befits a member of such stoic family, even though until that moment one was not aware of a heart condition existing in that particular loved one.
One piece of news was impossible to take with equanimity: my nephew has a moustache. He is so proud of his new moustache. We (as a family coming to terms with many life issues) think we're pleased with it. I think I'm not sure that a nephew who used to come hunting for me *specifically* to sit on my foot should be over six foot and smugly sporting a moustache. And Mum won't relay cheeky comments to him from me, because she says it's not appropriate in our current state of high seriousness.
The emergencies have all been real and all been close to home, but I have reached the stage where high seriousness is quite beyond me: I have fallen into flippancy.
I care. I care very deeply about all my relatives (but especially the sick and dying and moustachioed) and about five friends who seem to have also entered an odd zone of life not going right. I care, but I can't stop making jokes. I rather suspect it's a hold on sanity. Besides, good things are happening as well as bad.
I ought to list everything that happened this week and record it for posterity. I listed a mere 40% of it in an email to friends and they thought I was making it up. I think they thought I was making it up. They've been very quiet about it anyhow. Or it might be the friend who was caught up in the rather newsworthy catastrophe drew all attention away from my smaller woes.
Give me the rest of the year to sort out if this Jewish year is good or bad: I already know it's exciting. Tonight my only aims are to watch Dr Who and then to curl up in bed with three books. One book is classy high fantasy and will take me to glorious worlds unknown, one is chick lit and will make my life feel rosy and comfortable, and one is whatever else I grab from a supine position when these two run out. You'll know what the third book is by my mood tomorrow, because that's the one I will fall asleep with.
The key people in each crisis have dealt supremely well, and the rest of us get to exchange sentences explaining. "The operation is going to be a bypass rather than an angioplasty" is now one of those sentences that one takes with equanimity as befits a member of such stoic family, even though until that moment one was not aware of a heart condition existing in that particular loved one.
One piece of news was impossible to take with equanimity: my nephew has a moustache. He is so proud of his new moustache. We (as a family coming to terms with many life issues) think we're pleased with it. I think I'm not sure that a nephew who used to come hunting for me *specifically* to sit on my foot should be over six foot and smugly sporting a moustache. And Mum won't relay cheeky comments to him from me, because she says it's not appropriate in our current state of high seriousness.
The emergencies have all been real and all been close to home, but I have reached the stage where high seriousness is quite beyond me: I have fallen into flippancy.
I care. I care very deeply about all my relatives (but especially the sick and dying and moustachioed) and about five friends who seem to have also entered an odd zone of life not going right. I care, but I can't stop making jokes. I rather suspect it's a hold on sanity. Besides, good things are happening as well as bad.
I ought to list everything that happened this week and record it for posterity. I listed a mere 40% of it in an email to friends and they thought I was making it up. I think they thought I was making it up. They've been very quiet about it anyhow. Or it might be the friend who was caught up in the rather newsworthy catastrophe drew all attention away from my smaller woes.
Give me the rest of the year to sort out if this Jewish year is good or bad: I already know it's exciting. Tonight my only aims are to watch Dr Who and then to curl up in bed with three books. One book is classy high fantasy and will take me to glorious worlds unknown, one is chick lit and will make my life feel rosy and comfortable, and one is whatever else I grab from a supine position when these two run out. You'll know what the third book is by my mood tomorrow, because that's the one I will fall asleep with.