I can't forget the possum.
I hadn't realized that I'd never seen a possum before.
I thought it was a raccoon at first, picking at a wayward remnant on our street, and as we drew closer it was too white, too pale, the nose too pointy... The tail too slim. It looked...
It was a possum, playing with a crumpled brown paper wrapper in front of our house.
I'd never seen a possum before, and we edged carefully around it as I craned my neck to wonder at the little white vision.
It was gone when I turned around again, and we wondered where it had come from, I wondered if it was a pet or escapee or simply a vision.
I've been looking up possum spirits since, finding australian native legends here and there, yet they conflict so much. One tells of the craftiness of the possum, the other tells of his good will yet inability to think his way to the end of the story. One tells that the possum has been much abused by his brother raccoon, the other speaks of his coyote-murdering ways.
Somehow I've convinced myself that my/our vision of last night reminded me of the conflicts of last weekend and how they are not over yet.
The weekend was difficult, my very strength of character and conviction was put to the test and by the ringing of one o'clock Sunday morning I was tired and drained and more unhappy than I've been in a very long time.
But I stood my ground as hard as I could and when I collapsed Dave was there wrapped around me. Dave was there dragging me into the darkened garage to eke out my confused thoughts. He listened to every one, the conflicting ones, the frightened ones, the hypocritical with the true-to-self ones.
He held me while I cried and reminded me of the thing I'd almost forgotten -- that I worked so hard to be who I am and how proud I am to have gotten this far.
Sunday morning I didn't have the courage to face my mother, and so we ran forth and fro and by the evening I was barely walking straight enough to make it through our front door.
The bed had never been so welcoming, the press of our bodies.
In conclusion I am in a possum story, on the one hand my father who hugged me and wished me happinness for the first time in my life, demanding grandchildren as soon as possible is a contradiction that I am no longer willing to resist.
Maybe he's changed. Maybe he's had an epiphany. Maybe the meds that he's on are the right ones. Maybe all and more and maybe the promise of grandchildren and his own mortality are teaching him to say such things. I will no longer question this, and will try to take his instructions to Dave to beat his new wife three times a day to keep me in line as the rotten humour it is. I will try. I will try to forgive because he is trying so hard.
My mother is also trying, but there are years of demands and expectations and prejudices built into towers that hide the very sun.
There are years of her waiting for me to become a good daughter again, to make up for the horriffying marriage she stayed in for our good, and years of my own philosophies and beliefs that I needed to deal with my own obstacles that are completely foreign to her realm of experience.
We spoke last night on the long drive home from the doctor's.
I told her that her demands made me unhappy, that I spend Saturday night crying from the pressure and guilt.
What she said didn't make so much sense, but what she didn't insist on saying meant the world.
We spoke and it was difficult for both her and I and she's asked me to give her a couple of days before asking her again if she will attend our wedding.
She very much wants to be there, but she very much can not handle the circumstances.
I very much want to believe that my children may have grandparents.
I am very frightened of the ongoing struggle that this will entail, but for some reason it is becoming important.
My mother and I are both changing so swiftly, healing, facing our fears with the same sort of courage but from opposing directions.
I respect her for it. For the first time in a long time I respect my mother for everything she's done and been through.
Now we just have to figure out how to... Not agree, but at least accept.
She's trying, and so am I.
And in the meantime, new doc is sending me to a cardiologist. My heart and blood isn't right at all for a twenty-six year old.
I'm not ready to be scared about that. Anxious, perhaps, and anticipating the work that I will have to do to become superhuman in that aspect as well -- but I'm not frightened. Not yet.