Rings in the Water

If you throw a big enough rock into the pond, can you make it become a tsunami?  I guess it would have to depend completely on the size of the pond and the size of the rock.  Even a tiny pebble in a little puddle will make rings.

I'm afraid I am starting a personal trend in my life.  I've got all my psychoactive meds regulated so I don't have to keep running to the shrink.  My GP is fine with maintenance.  So I don't think I can blame this on  a change in medical protocol as it so obviously was last year. But I just dissolved another lifelong relationship.  And this one is a family member.  And I don't think it is repairable.  I don't think I want it to be repairable.  I am just wondering if it is because of my stage in life.  (Y'all know I mean "age".) I am kind of relieved there is one less person in my life whose bullshit I have to put up with.  Wow.  I should personally diagram that sentence. I do know the 'with' hanging on the end there is totally wrong.  But, I digress.

My two daughters are poles apart in age and attitude and life style.  I think you would have to go with the most detailed kind of DNA test to find any similarities.  And they are so lucky. My older daughter had mirror  twin girls, and this is going to be a classic case of a family dynamic run completely amok.  We see signs of it every day.   Someone I worked with once said, "You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family.  You are just stuck with them." (I worded that carefully, probably paraphrasing a bit so we wouldn't have to go into the you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose schtick.)

My mom died about six years ago and I still cannot forgive her for leaving my father behind.  It is so painful to deal with, and it causes the most terrible friction in families. Today it boiled over big time.  No, that is not a mixed metaphor if you understood the physics of heating water and the interaction of the molecules that produce the heat.  But let me try to swing back to the rings in the water thing that I wanted to use as the thread to run through this rambling blog.  Everything that has happened to us comes back into our lives in some way.  I am pretty sure someone took this idea and ran with it and came up with the whole "Karma" thing.  I am between two brothers and they have been pulling at my loyalties, perhaps not deliberately.  In one case, perhaps deliberately. But the connection with one of them gave way tonight.  I spoke at length with the other brother and we tried to analyze the cause of this rift.  At one point I brought up the fact that my mother never made any bones about saying that the recently disconnected brother was a "surprise" and that they had only planned on two kids.  I am sure that must have had an effect on so many things in his life. And there is a pretty big age gap.  But through his childhood, and basically until he got married, we were such good friends. We had a hot car and we let him take it on dates and he never wrecked it.  He would come and stay at our house just for a break.  I thought it was very brotherly.  Instead it seems that  he feels he now is unfairly  burdened with all these life changing decisions for everyone.  In fact he has never been asked or designated to bear these burdens or make these decisions, and, geographically, in truth, I am the one that performs most of the actual physical involvement.  And I have a spouse who is unusually kind about dealing with this situation which concerns my aging and alone father.  It is perhaps a burden, and my father recently mentioned that he was sorry for all he put my husband and I through, and I replied that we did these things because we love him.  (Tears.  Irishmen.)  I think maybe there is a distinction in doing something because you are burdened with it or doing something for love. Every family has its weird dynamics and undertows, but it seems that this time, every single pebble that was ever thrown into that pond chose today to send its rings out and deluge me with sadness and mistrust and complete confusion.  What is done can sometimes not be undone.  I do know that the path of action that I have been following is sturdy enough to not be washed out by this flood and I can keep on trucking along.  I have that  tee shirt.  

Today's CTA:  who's gonna push your wheelchair?