Visit with Family

No Bikram today.

Drove six hours round-trip to visit with family. My sister flew in with the kids and we met at my brother's house. Mom and dad came. Got some video and photos. Mom and dad aren't doing very well and you never know if these might end up being the last photos of all of us together.

My dad has really declined since Christmas. He seemed very tired. There was puffiness under his eyes. He was so stooped over. Amazing though, that he still has the capacity for intensity despite physical frailty. Truly a situation where the spirit is willing but the flesh just can't sustain the rage. Just as well since none of his children will even listen to it. His M.O. is to ask you a question. But he really isn't interested in what you think, feel or have to say. The question is just a set-up. He's just framing the topic that he wants to discuss. No, not discuss. Discussion implies a two-way conversation. He wants to pontificate on some subject that he has thought about in his world. Unfortunately, for him, this was not how anyone else wants to spend a family visit.

We pretty much end up laughing, talking and playing while he sat in his chair. Of course, that was after I told him "No, you asked me a question and I AM GOING TO ANSWER IT unless you weren't really asking a question". He had asked me what I knew about Barack Obama. What he might not have counted on was that I knew a way more than he suspected. Maybe most people didn't know which meant that he only had to wait a couple of minutes before launching into his speech. I wonder if he was surprised or stunned to find that I had plenty of information about Obama. And when he tried to interrupt, I told him so.

He physically wasn't strong enough to express the full intensity of his emotions. I was stronger. After letting him talk a little about how blacks don't like whites. Oh, wait. He likes to ask questions "Do YOU THINK THAT BLACKS LIKE WHITES?" Questions that he has already worked out all the answers for. He basically got from me that like Obama, I'm mixed race and I understand what it's like to live between both worlds and not truly being a part of either one. Of him identifying with the part that the world connects him to when they look at him and at his skin. That I, just like him, have had to listen to my white father and white friends and white family express their racism and then looking down at my own arms, brown and half-white, half-yellow, knowing that I was different. Yeah, I said, I think I do know Obama. He's like me. I'm not half black, but I'm half white, just like him. And with that, I got up and grabbed my niece and tickled her and she laughed fully and happily and lovingly in my arms. The discussion was over. He never got his full say. He may have been disappointed at having been robbed of his podium, but he had had that stage for too many years. It was time to give us all a break.