A post in which I deal with family drama

I woke up feeling better than I have in about a month. Tired, but not hurting. By the time I finished the morning routine I was tired, but I figured I could handle that. Alan was back today. I had intended to talk to him and explain that I wasn’t sure I could stay all day, but he was so busy I decided to wait and see how things went.

As I was getting in to the groove of the day, Dad called. After the general trashing of Cindy and Paul, he told me he wanted me to call Cindy and tell her to call Eve. “If ever she has needed a friend in her life,” he said with dramatic portent, “she needs one now. She needs for Cindy to be her friend.” Of course I asked him what was going on, but he would reveal no detail. He told me mysteriously that what I didn’t know I couldn’t discuss, and that he would sit down with me at some point in the future when he would talk to me face-to-face about the situation, which would “have to stay strictly between the two… but then I can tell you all this later.”

OK, my dad is more than a bit of a drama queen. He is prone to sweeping portents of doom, and brilliant dramatizations of the mundane or trivial. All the men in our family are larger than life in one way or another, and I get my flair for the dramatic from him. It’s a blessing and a curse.

So while it could be a complete tempest in a teapot, there could also be something serious going on. The problem is that you just never know. But the fact that it was important enough for him to make contact with Cindy (through an intermediary or not) – and to confess he was asking me to act on his behalf because he felt I could be more diplomatic – tipped the balance to credibility.

Since I had told him I would call, and since I had intended to call Cindy anyway (her birthday was yesterday), I called her.

Cindy and I don’t talk that often any more. We had some bad blood when she took BB’s dishes, which had been promised to me, and haven’t spoken that often since. But I have laid down any anger about that, and I’ve tried to be good to my nephew Brenden. I talk to Paul, my brother-in-law, pretty regularly, and we get along pretty well. I’ve been kind of acting as buffer/diplomat between them and my parents for the last couple of years with limited success. It’s a job that I would really love to be able to quit, but they keep casting me in the role whether I want it or not. But I digress.

At any rate, Cindy seemed pleasantly surprised to hear from me. I talked to her about her birthday, which was apparently nice. She had a quite celebration this year without a party or friends. We agreed that at this stage of life, getting through the day with quiet dignity is the way if you can manage it. We compared rueful notes on getting older, and I gave her the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of my recent health contretemps. She and Paul are doing quite well. They’ve started running, have apparently lost a lot of weight, and are feeling great, I was glad to hear.

Eventually, of course, I had to deliver my message. She was pretty diplomatic about it, all things considered. I hadn’t been sure what to expect. She was much less blunt than she reportedly was when Lisa called her about BB’s death.

We talked about them; of course Dick and Eve are a fascinating case study if nothing else, and she actually seemed to be mulling over calling. Either way, I had done what I said I would do by calling her, and I did my best to get her to call Eve.

Work went fine, but it was a long day.

I ran by the grocery store, and then home.

I re-did my whole farm tonight on FarmVille. I got to the level I could by a farm house this week. Yep folks, it’s life in the big city.

When I went to bed tonight the phone buzzed. It was Chip from Columbia. His grandfather is dying of cancer. He’s coming to spend the weekend in Union and had thought about me. I know it’s hard. I told him some anecdotes about Granny and Grandma Shumate from my last visit to try to cheer him up, but tried not to talk so much that it was all about me. We talked about the challenges of caring for the elderly, and of course that led to talking about when we get old. Of course I won’t have any family to take care of me. He’s a sweet guy, and I hope I helped.

Reflecting ruefully that if things keep going the way they are I won’t have to worry about elder-care for myself, I turned off the light and went to sleep, Jinx under my left hand, and Crooner having some kind of sneeze-fest in the other room.