The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

people are surprising creatures

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People are surprising creatures, sometimes. Maybe it’s my cynical side which makes me think that people can’t change, that they are habits in flesh, routine fueled by blood. I am surrounded by cynics, I’ve been infected by them and as such, I don’t believe most people when they tell me that they’ll change. I just haven‘t seen it happen.

Or, maybe I have.

My uncle Peter, once a widely known and self-described lunatic, spent a little time locked away after assaulting a police officer while in his teens (kicked out his eye with a pointy-toed boot), and then years later attempting to kill his wife’s lover (found them together, lost his nut). Somehow, though, he transformed himself while thinking long and hard about his life while locked away in a cell. He discovered he had artistic talent, that he could write with a flourish that rivalled the Book of Kells, and of course, he found God. He developed a keen sense of humour that didn’t seem to have an ignition point, able to laugh at himself for the first time in life. He was actually a pleasure to be around, instead of behaving like a hooligan with a tendency toward psychotic rage. Of course, no one believed in this new, pious Peter, at first. He’d always been a ‘crafty git’ according to my dad, but these many years on, he has travelled the globe peacefully, spending time in countries he had only dreamed of before and has been finding beauty in every corner. Maybe a small jail cell can transform a person, bring them closer to divinity, bringing on miracles. I can’t say, and I haven’t personally spent time with him since I was a teenager, but I am happy that he’s happy, that he’s in China or Portugal or Italy or wherever his spiritual quest has taken him, and that he’s been looking skyward, smiling at God, breathing deeply and forgiving himself for the man he‘d once been.

My sister has surprised me. Once a woman with a very specific death wish, with a handful of half-hearted suicide attempts and one very serious one, she has come away from it all with a brand new perspective about life. She used to spend every waking moment wrapped in a blanket, staring catatonically at the television, or listening to music in her room. Looking back at old video footage now, it is clear that she was in trouble from about the age of twelve until twenty-four. That’s a long time to hate living. But then, it came to a halt, all that sadness. She blossomed, almost overnight, without the help of anyone around her, without supportive words or an encouraging pat on the back. For the first time in her life, she took charge. She went to school for dental assisting, finished first in her class, got a well-paying job, met her now-husband on a double date, moved in with him, had a huge wedding, had the children. She lives in a big house and doesn’t need to work anymore as the husband makes incredible money, but she will go back to her own job when she feels like it. She is finally in control of things, as much as anyone can be. She does continue to nurse some residual anger about the past, and it causes major friction between the two of us because I’m not interested in her holier-than-thou approach when she berates me for not being stronger than I am (not realizing that she stole my strength, that I gave it to her the moment she almost left me). She seems to have left her compassion back with her sadness, at times. All that aside, though, I am genuinely pleased that she’s where she is now. We refer to her troubled times as ’the salad years’. Most of the time, she laughs at this.

My daughter surprises me every day with her ravenous curiosity and swift wit. She is so funny, so completely herself that I nearly cry every time she says something I find profound, and there a lot of those moments. She tells me I’m beautiful nearly every day, and I am always red when she does so because I am not accustomed to that kind of appreciation, that sort of attention. She means it, I think. I can’t believe how much I love this little person, how completely I’ve transformed from being someone who basically tolerated children and who planned on becoming a mother ‘someday’ without any real ache to do so, into someone who thinks about my child constantly, who looks forward to seeing her in the morning and reading to her at night. Becoming a parent changes you, makes you understand what love really is. It’s perfect.

My dad has grown into sentimentality like one would a sweater, and he is embracing it rather than being embarrassed by it. He gives me a kiss and hug every time I leave his house, or when he leaves this one, and I am always a little awkward with it because this never was the case growing up. Always a tough guy when I was a child, not against hugs and kisses really, but rarely did so through his own initiative. He helps around the house now, something I never saw him do when I lived at home. A couple weeks ago, he hung all the laundry on the line and watched it through the window until he was satisfied that it was dry, at which time he collected it, folded it and put it away. My mother is not impressed by this, which is not surprising.

My friend A. seemed to be pushing her life into the dirt some years back, trying to balance a seemingly normal life with a sordid one, and the sordid version seemed to be consuming every good point about her. So many people let themselves become the sad story, losing everything through poor judgment and selfishness, but not A. She came away from it with lessons under her belt, with a deeper understanding about what makes real happiness, and she did it on her own terms. She did not lose her grip on the life which ultimately brought the most happiness, and she has become a softer version of herself because of her refusal to surrender. I’m proud of her for not becoming a cliché, and I would have to admit that I’m also surprised.

I have been knocked over by my own humanity in the past, how I was able to find reason in lies and virtue in deception. Hindsight affords a clear view of things, and I learned that being judgmental about things you’ve never experienced is not smart. I understand the lower levels of hope in people when they feel unvalued, unloved. I understand what motivates them to go looking for what will feed them. No, I don’t condone it, necessarily, but I can say that I have an appreciation for each personal experience, and that every kind of pain is unique and whole in the person who feels it. That said, I don’t think people talk enough, or try hard enough, and a lot of times deceptions in relationships are the result of immaturity, lack of respect and basic laziness. I’ll own two out of three of those. I am surprised that I’ve been humbled by my own misdeeds.

I wish, though, that I was surprised in a good way more often. How many times have I raised my hopes about someone only to have my stomach fall when they reveal them self to be everything they’d always been? They don’t owe it to me, though. It’s just that it would be a wonderful thing to look at someone with an expression of electric delight rather than with the kind of disappointment one feels when the cake falls onto the floor. When my best friend K. didn’t call on my birthday (and still hasn’t, incidentally), I was a little shocked by the snub. When my other friend V. didn’t show up for our picnic which she suggested we have, I was a little floored by her inconsideration. When my mother tells me that none of the horror of my childhood actually happened, I am frustrated and beyond words.

If only all the surprises came along with balloons and kisses, cake with chocolate frosting, happy tears…