la familia

The Reunion
..............................................
a play in  acts.
act one.
or a short story.

Marianne had always questioned her own sanity but by the time she was almost 60 she was pretty sure she was sane and everybody else was nuts. Nonetheless, she carried on despite having been widowed, had one of her sons pass on, and she muddled through the whole mess with a sense of duty befitting the matriarch of a huge family that resided in Indiana, and other states she avoided merely because she didn''t want to visit any of her relatives.
She considered any state south of Michigan to be the Deep South and with that in mind she convinced herself she was set to stay in Michigan, unless god told her otherwise. Her ideas of god changed daily, most of the time she called it 'that motherfucker', but she also knew she was just screaming at herself most of the time, because, really, she thought...what isn't god? read theoretical physics.

Nonetheless she made the best of it, or tried to, as she assumed her son would want her to continue inhabiting 3 dimensions and sometimes he would come to her in dreams or visions and laugh at her and remind her that this was one. short. comedy.

Her only companions were 2 dogs, 3 cats, and 2 parrots, all who she acquired through one person or another and she quit at that number before she would allow herself to be labelled an animal hoarder.

Christmas was never a good time for her, all the jolly people made her think of the last scene in Scarface and she wanted to destroy entire shopping malls with her little friend, "MEET MY LITTLE FRIEND!" she would imagine as she wandered through Menards or WalMart as the Holly Jolly music rang over the heads of the bedraggled cashiers. She knew she shouldn't have preferences, but she was not enlightened, and considered her fantasy of blasting away  waving Santa Clauses as one that she deserved after 60 yrs of inhabiting this dimension.

As  matter of fact, she ignored all the holidays as much as possible. The swaggering drunks of St Patricks Day, the holy holy holies of Easter, the Patriotic fervor of July 4th, and especially Thanksgiving when she had found her youngest son had passed over from an accidental overdose in 2006.

No, she didn't do holidays, but she was a good actress and could fake anything, which she did, because she had 2 other sons and most importantly, a grandson whose light lit up her dreary days with the boundless joy exhibited only by 6 yr olds who didn't give a shite about anything but having fun.

Marianne was 60, and now had reached the age where having fun was all she had left to accomplish, so anytime she could spend with a 6 yr old was a grand time indeed. He was why she still chose to exist.

So she dedicated herself to his little innocent eyes, as he stumbled through a world of adults . Adults whose business was to be busy, something she watched in horror, all is vanity, she kept reminding herself, as she cleaned the cat litter.

Her biological family thought her strange, they didn't quite know what to think of her, but she accomadated them anyway. There were five of them younger than her, all of them brothers and sisters from the same parents, although Marianne wondered why she belonged to that particular group of people, because she considered them all crazed lunatics . She took the majestic leap of faith by believing what the ancient sages kept saying..' you choose your destiny before you are born, you chose this family to learn from'.

Marianne wanted her diploma, but it never came, despite the lessons she learned from all of her brothers and sisters.

She was pretty sure her mother and father had hoped for a lovingly Catholic family, filled with scenes from Bells of St Marys, Bernadette of Lourdes, and she watched her mother pray unceasingly that at least one of the sons become a priest. Mother would have liked a nun in the family, also, but Marianne discovered , in art school, at the age of 19, that men were really fun so she took a different path.

Sometimes Marianne, alone now with her dogs, cats, and birds, would suddenly have an epiphany, a bright idea, or so she thought, and since she knew she was getting old and closing in on her own demise, she wanted a decent resume', just in case she had to encounter a life review when that massive stroke took her out, or the truck hit her as she crossed the street.

She called her sister, her sister who was one year younger than her. Her sister Colleen , named by her father in honour of what he thought was their Irish heritage.

Colleen was a go getter, always had been, a mighty woman set upon a career from day one, someone who wore jangles and bangles , knock off Chanel suits and had the most fabulous breasts since the age of nine..Colleen didn;t hold back when she had her mind set upon an issue, much to Marianne's dismay, because Colleen was always pretty cocksure of herself, and let Marianne know it. Marianne humoured this behaviour, merely to keep peace between herself and her sister, but she often wondered if Colleen could hear Marianne roll her eyes as they spoke on the phone.

"I have a great idea!" Marianne told Colleen that day. You know, the day of the epiphany.
Colleen was eager to hear.

to be cont.......................