Airports and October

I am currently sitting in the waiting area of the Asheville Regional Airport, where I have been since 6:30 this morning. My flight from here to Charlotte was cancelled, so I'm not leaving Asheville until 11:30, then I have a connection in Charlotte that doesn't leave for Little Rock until 2:30, so I won't land in Little Rock until around 4. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, because it means I will be traveling for almost twelve hours (I left my dorm at 6 o'clock this morning), but it's a good thing, because I discovered last night that Nate had gotten mixed up on my arrival time; I was originally going to arrive in Little Rock at 10:30, but he thought I wouldn't be getting there until close to 3, and he wouldn't have been able to get off base to come pick me up until almost 4, so I would have been hanging out in the Little Rock airport for almost six hours. So I guess things are really just better this way. I'm glad I never travel without at least two books.

So I am taking this opportunity to finally update on my crazy life. So let's rewind about a month and start with my Grandma's memorial:

It was awkward. That's the best way I can describe it. As I've already said, my dad's family doesn't express emotion, but all the tension was running close to the surface. The family burial was on Friday, so I missed it because I didn't arrive in New Haven until midnight, but Linda (my dad's girlfriend) told me that was where the disfunction was most apparent. She said Sally just seemed exhausted and hardly spoke and Ann was also very quiet, and both were very dry-eyed, which my dad interpreted as not caring. My uncle David didn't come. Saturday was the memorial, where more family friends came, as well as some of grandma's step children (by the time she remarried they were all very much grown ups, so they weren't really close). Everyone who wanted to took turns coming up and sharing their stories about Grandma, and it was very strange because they could have been describing a woman I had never met. Everyone spoke of her great strength and endurance, how she always made the best out of everything and ran such a wonderful home. I never noticed any of these things about my grandmother, but that could be because by the time I was born she was already very old and in a retirement home, so she was hardly enduring or running anything. The part about her being such a great homemaker struck me as very odd though, because of the attitudes her children seem to have towards her: Ann blatantly resents her and didn't speak during the service. She just sat there looking stiff. Sally doted on her, but has said in the past that Grandma clearly favored Ann and loved her more than Sally. During the service she didn't speak about her relationship with my grandmother or anything about her as a person; she talked about family history. David didn't even bother to come. He used to visit Grandma at Christmas sometimes, but he hasn't spoken to anyone in the family for a few years now, but we are pretty sure he got the message about Grandma's death and the date of the memorial. Dad was the only one who seemed openly upset at Grandma's death, but he didn't talk about his relationship with her either; he talked about Grandma as a person and her commitment to tradition and civilization. My dad seems to be the most emotionally healthy one of his siblings, which is both sad and surprising. I think it's because left home at age 15, so whatever it was that screwed them all up he got less of it. What struck me the most about the whole thing was that I'll never know what happened to my family. I'll never know what my grandma was really like, or what exactly it was that hurt all her children so badly. I'll never know why my dad is the way he is, why he can't reach out to me, and why I am left trying to guess at something that was obviously so pivotal for my family.

{This is the part where I had to go get on the plane. The rest was written after I got back, obviously.}

So that was about it for the memorial. It was just generally thoroughly exhausting. After that came fall break. It was nice being home for a week, but at the same time it was an overwhelmingly busy week. I had more homework than anyone else I know of, plus a multitude of friends to see who were home for their breaks as well. It was fun, but tiring. Consequently I spent Halloween weekend, which turns out to be one of the biggest party weekends at my school, in my room by myself reading, watching tv, and catching up on some well needed rest. It was awesome, though of course this is my life we're talking about here so after that things to busy again. After fall break I started getting ready to leave to go to Arkansas for the marine corps bday ball. The ball was on a Wednesday night, so I missed three days of class and work to go, and I spent the weeks after fall break working extra hours and getting ahead on my homework so I could leave for such a long time and not be behind when I got back. I worked nonstop, but it was totally worth it. I'll update about all that after I continue studying for my Spanish test. Blog posts make such good study breaks.