Cafe Hitch-hike

2023-08-26

The afternoon and time after

Emotions were all over the place after the hearing. We retreated to our AirBnbs with ocean views just over an hour away; we were in the same building. The units were cheap cos that strip of land/ water got battered by Hurricane Ian last year and were still undergoing some repairs (beaches being reclaimed, pools and other amenities being fixed, etc, but the buildings were very habitable).

I can’t describe what happened. We had some fun and laughs, but I can definitely say I was the grown-up in the room. I didn’t get involved too much, but I could tell I was another version of the cops in the courthouse which perhaps was what they needed for that time.

Thank God we were at the ocean. The day after, we spent a few hours on the beach. Afterward, everyone was too knackered by the emotions and intense summer Florida sun (I have to laugh, Michigan people never use sun protection when they come down here despite warnings about that and the heat, but at least they were warned). My nephew and a young lady created a sand sculpture (he is really good at it) and it looked like an angel-mermaid. We figured out how to make hair. My nephew J and I riffed off each other and it was pretty cool.

I think this is gonna…. be a psychic wound for so many, a wound that just can’t fully go away. My niece has a younger brother who is taking this the worse but it’s because he’s got other heavy matters to deal with. I really hope he’s not next, whether we lose him to one thing (crime / drugs) or another.

My sisters are a mess. It’s like with the nephew, there’s a lot of other serious problems happening where they live and also crap that happened long ago. I cannot fix it. Just send my love, prayers, and listening ears. Maybe some advice here and there, but I don’t have all the answers and they have as my courses describe as wicked problems.

This reminds me of 1994, when we had another family-wide disaster because of someone’s crime (and their horrible attitude that was a part of them anyway and perhaps led them to the crime, and yes, they were guilty as sin). I sure hope it doesn’t go in this direction. I could say more, but I’m reminded of places that faced disaster and eventual abandonment cos they were uninhabitable. With time, nature reclaimed the places. Animals came back, things grew again and slowly covered over what was the domain of humans. It can recover and without our hands on its own time.

People are different. We carry it in us wherever we go. I now can see I keep to myself because I don’t want to expose my version of a radioactive element that I acquired (like we all do thx to live experience) in a new place. Now I see how we carry on with our lives almost silently and to tiny circles of people (if we even have them at all), try to deal with it the best we can (or we don’t).

I’ve died and been reborn so many times in my own life and even without my all of my family’s version of their wicked problems. I’ve died and been reborn so many times that I can only hope that those are able to… reach a rebirth or at least regenerate somehow. That they are somehow able to let life grow over ruins and destruction, and somehow start again though with the heaviness of past scars.

I’m crying inside, with life’s joys and pains and for my family.

downwind | upstream