Ikush: our puppy bongo swallowed a sock last night
Ikush: he is the stupidest dog i have ever seen  ¶ 23:31

  its amazing how one event can set everything in motion, but in hyperspeed.. for good and for bad.
getting into wesleyan is definitely a good thing. but suddenly, rather than interview for a summer job as i had planned for this week, my mom has purchased plane tickets for tomorrow... from san jose to vegas, vegas to chicago, chicago to connecicut. im going to look at an idea - a peepshow of my future... a future that really, truly would change what i do with my life. i have options. i can pursue passions. i feel like i might get a fair deal there.
so this is one of the good things that came from this package in my mailbox - a chance to go somewhere else, do something, and truly be happy. i showed my mom photographs taken during the school year, and she says that i look so different than i do right this moment... there i look so sad, so tired, so defeated, despite my grin... but she says that in the week ive been home, ive found "it" again, i finally look proud again.
im incredibly excited about visiting - new england has always contained some sort of romanticized mistique in my mind - mostly because of the visits we made there when i was little... and its strange, because up until last week, my mom had neglected to tell me that her half of the family tree lives within 20 minutes of the campus where i might be living for the next 3 years...
see, my mom's entire family lives in connecticut. her parents, her sisters, their families - all live within an hour from one another. my dad's family lives in a similar situation - and so, my parents are the only two from their respective families that ventured beyond their respective boundaries - first to florida, where they met, and then to california, where they drove, without any idea as to where they were truly going. throughout my early childhood, my parents would take me, and a few years after i was born, my brother, to connecticut, and indiana, so see where i came from, see my family - 10 days of each year, i would be surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins, wrapped in an embrace of generations... its was overwhelming, and i loved it. however, i always had to wonder, as my 8 year old legs stretched to step up the stairs to the airplane bound for home, what "they" thought of "us." my parents' families spend all their holidays together - my cousins visit my grandparents on a daily basis. i couldnt do any of that. holidays at my house consisted of me, my brother, my mom... and my dad, if we were lucky, so long as he wasnt called in to work, which nearly always happened around the time we were about to sit down to thanksgiving dinner.
you should understand that my nuclear family does have a great relationship with my dad's parents - i love them so much, i talk to them on the phone every month or so, they keep tabs on me through letters and photos - but my mom's family is less enthusiastic. theyre upset that my mom left all of them behind.
for example, my moms parents forgot my moms birthday a few years ago.
my mom has a twin sister who lives 10 minutes from their parents.
so, there is a lot of tension. my mom really didnt expect to go back east until there was a funeral. i wasnt even expecting to back in that circumstance.
but now, my mom and i are going to visit, no burial expected. were going to stay with her sisters. and we might even resort to staying at her parents house (i cant call them my grandparents... it just doesnt feel honest) because my cousin mike is graduating from college and his girlfriend is staying over, so there wont be enough room there for a few days. ...unbelievable, since the last time i saw mike was when he was called "mikey" and still wet the bed...
thus, this trip is about peeking into new doors, freshly opened for me, while simultaneously picking the locks of doors long ago closed on my mom.
my mom is scared. its the first time she has admitted feeling fear, to me.
and so, im scared too.  ¶ 19:24