Homesick

Home is the place you miss even when you hate being there.  Anyone want to put that on a plaque and see if it will sell?

I was homesick nearly the entire time I was in Florida for my work conference.  So ironic, since the majority of the time I am in my house, I restrict myself to my bedroom, reluctant to spend time in any of the community spaces where the kids and I passed so many good times together.  It is just too hard.

Being in Florida was a weird trip in time, as I saw so many families, so many parents with their children, and was helpless but to see my daughter at all ages of her life, but especially at 13, the age she was when we took the family trip to Disneyworld.  She had an adorable bob haircut, full braces and colored rubber bands, and had just begun wearing bras full time, which completely mortified her.  Her legs were long and spindly, much like a baby giraffe's, as we trudged through the crowds. 

These moments of complete recall laughed in the face of my progress this past year, and ruthlessly bludgeoned me in the heart. 

In the middle of a Disney souvenir shop in Downtown Disney, I saw little girls clamoring over Princess trinkets. "Oooh, please, please, please!"

 As I watched, the dozens of tourists, buzzing around, desperately picking up armful after armful of goodies to lug home slowly disappeared.  The crowd's volume gradually went down like someone had simply turned a knob.

Instead, I saw Cory, four, and Mommy, twenty three, cuddled in mommy's bed watching Beauty and the Beast, laughing at our favorite characters over and over again.  "Cory, Mommy loves you more than anything in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD!"  I said into her tiny upturned face, those eyes so big that looked to me for everything...love, safety, comfort.  She smiled, her teeth tiny and gleaming in the glow of the tv in the darkened bedroom of Miller Avenue.  We'd just moved into a bigger house.  We were going to be ok.  I would find a way to take good care of her, by myself or not.

The next evening, in the bathroom of Fulton Crab House, I noticed a young girl, maybe 10, who'd had her hair wrapped in multi colors with beads.  "I love your hair!"  I said to her with a smile. 
"Thank you!" she said with a definitive Australian accent, smiling to be noticed.  "She has one, too."  she said, jerking her head in the direction of her little sister who came out of a stall still pulling her leggings up.  I complimented her, as well, and walked away lost in my head:

Tim and I had gotten into a huge argument while in Disney when Cory wanted her hair wrapped like that.  He thought it was a waste of money.  Did I intend to buy her every souvenir we passed?

Umm, hello, have we met??  Yes, yes, I did, and he could get on board or suffer the consequences.  Tim and Cory had been extremely jealous of each other from the very beginning, each seeing the other as the only competition for my coveted affections.  One year into our marriage, Tim had realized, Cory would always come first.  He didn't like it one bit, and this fact combined with his untreated bipolar symptoms meant he gave Cory a hard time pretty much every chance he got, taking it on like a sick sort of second job.  This would not stop until we had separated and he got on medication.

The next evening, I wandered around the Trend store in Downtown Disney picking up bracelets and pretty much everything with Beauty and the Beast on it.  I watched other parents with their teenagers, and just ached.  Slowly, I realized I wanted these things to give to Cory, and I could no longer do that.  Reluctant to admit this, I put them down silently, one item at a time.  My face long, I found Angie, and readied to leave.  On the way out, a table with Alice in Wonderland things caught my eye.  Cory had had an affair with that movie for at least a year around age sixteen.  I stopped look at a special edition book with gorgeous artwork, and had to drag myself out of that blasted store.  Does it ever stop?

As I walked away, I could see Cory in Macy's back home, her eyes fairly eating up every piece of Alice in Wonderland jewelry on display.  She seemed close enough to reach out and touch.  How crazy is that?  The pain literally bowed me over.  I turned to Angie and told her I could see how people became alcoholics and drug addicts following a loss like this...you would do nearly anything to stop feeling this way.  Anything.

And finally, while drawing in the hotel lobby, people watching without even thinking about it, I witnessed an emotional meeting between older parents and their daughter's family.  It became obvious from the way grandma went dramatically to her knees, and fanned open her arms with hands that trembled in excitement that this was a special meeting.  She had never seen her granddaughter before in person.  The little girl was perhaps two, perhaps three- the very petite sort of toddler my Cory Girl had been.  She held her granddaughter's sturdy little body to her heart, just breathing her in.  She kept pulling back just to be able to see her face once more, and I tried to imagine what it would have been like to someday see Cory's face on a small child again.  Imagining is now all I can do.

When grandma stood, grandpa stepped close and swung the toddler up into her arms, which she did not enjoy.  He was too tall.  His voice boomed.  His eyebrows were frighteningly hairy.  It was all a little too much for a first meeting.  She refused to give kisses to this strange man that Mommy kept insisting was a daddy- Mommy's daddy.  As they prepared to walk away and finalize their dinner plans, I compared the faces of grandma and mother- same noses, same eyes, same wide and generous smile.  One sandy blonde head and one sandy blonde streaked with stylish silver.  As I watched, the grandmother took her wrinkled hand, and passed it lovingly through her middle aged daughter's hair, just as she must have when her daughter was a small child.  Her hand trembled just the same.  I doubted this to be a tremor, but more likely because they lived far from each other, she had been physically aching for the chance to touch her daughter once more, that biggest part of her heart.  I knew how she felt...and then some.

As she stroked her daughter's hair, the daughter laughed up into herhandsome husband's face, and smiled at her father, who was balding, but a hale and hearty gentleman.  It was such a happy and healthy scene.

How some people get to have this scene, while others will only ever fantasize about it is a mystery to me.  I cannot help but wonder, where did I go wrong?

With tears in my eyes, I blindly stuffed my crap into my art bag, and stumbled away.

If I were the drinking sort, I would've ran into the nearest bar.