I got restless last winter, and started carving heads out of scrap basswood I couldn't use for guitars because if flaws in the wood.These are the last two I carved. It's fun, but damn, it makes my fingers and wrists hurt. Ibuprofen is your best pal some days.
Yesterday I went to Milwaukee and picked up my mother at my sister's house, and drove her north to my brother's house two hours away in the Fox Valley, a place I hate with great unreasonable passion, and then drove home.
I think I understand my uncle Bud, the family curmudgeon who croaked off a decade or more ago. He'd only see the family on his terms for an hour or two, and held a lot of us in disregard.
When my sister and my mother both tell me I'm full of shit when I say something they don't understand and don't want to think through, all I can think is, what the hell is family for?
One on one, Mom and I get along great, but damn, I'm starting to really hate being around my eldest siblings. It gets downright mean sometimes, and fifty fucking years of being dismissed for thinking different has gotten old. Or maybe I got old.
Either way, I think my tribe here in town is where real family is found.
Even the ones I don't get or that bug me with personality quirks don't dismiss me as being "full of shit".
I must cogitate upon this further as I go prep the first two gallons of this summer's canned salsa.
One thing I know for sure, El Rey's Mexican grocery stores in Milwaukee are pretty damn amazing.
And when you buy a five gallon jug of beer malt extract at the Frugal Homebrewer in Waukesha, it's damn heavy and damn cheap.
1 comment:
I find family mostly frustrating and disappointing. I've vowed never to go home (Houston, TX) again. Unfortunately, MY tribe here turns out to be equally frustrating and disappointing often.
Pretty much all you can rely on in life is yourself...and not even that unless you're lucky.
Post a Comment