My Mama's Mustache & Other Inherited Stuff  

In the meantime, here is the post I would have posted, would have talked about and couldn't stay on line long enough to post even.

My powerful pc should be ready this week. I got everything but my eyes crossed.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find how you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela

I vowed to me before entering New York State in June 2006 that I would not knuckle under to family pressure, or the intimidation that was sure to come.

I underestimated the meanness of the family of my birth. Perhaps I overestimated my own strength.

Before I set off for the land of my childhood I joked to my children that I would be the one with binoculars up on the cliffs at Letchworth State Park checking out the DeGolier Family Reunion to see if it was safe to proceed.

I ought to have taken me serious.

It is three and a half years later, and I did not knuckle under, nor did I run. I bent and twisted like a funnel cake at the fair, as did two of my sisters who stood by me, but I did not break.

In total I have four sisters now, four more than I had before 2006.

But back to changing me.

A portrait has been painted, more like a police sketch, and handed out, tacked up, and an all-points bulletin broadcast.

She must be devalued, discredited, patronized, medicated, re-educated, disabled, silenced, sent back where "she belongs."

One thing is sure. Had I the character, personality, selfishness, and viciousness of the labels attached to their rendition of me, I would hardly seek to change myself. It would still be everybody else who needs to change.

Point made. They label me with their own cr and expect me to fix it.

But it is all about changing me. The family will have to deal with their own stuff, or not. I do not care anymore.