2002-02-19 - 6:01 p.m.

Of course I took immediate control of the situation. If that's what you call running backwards, holding my hands up in front of me, shrieking, "NO! NO, FREAKSHOW! DROP IT, DROP IT!" Which she did. But oh, I was horrified. We ran back home and told the boyfriend, who shocked me by not wanting to rush right out and see it. "What do you MEAN? Don't you want to SEE it? It was a LEG! Or something! It could be anything!" We didn't go back until the next morning, and by then it was gone. I spent the rest of the weekend instructing the boyfriend not to let the dog kiss him. Nasty.

Then I went to my parents last night, and we took my grandmother shopping for wallpaper. My grandmother hates everything these days. Nothing is good enough. She'll go shopping for clothes, and the next day she'll call and tell my mother she has to return everything. She had her house painted, and she picked the color, and she complains it looks "dirty." But I think she found one she likes, and my uncle will go get it and then put it up for her. While I was at my Mom's, I started looking through her photo albums, and I found pictures from my grandmother's 80th birthday party. I had that party at the house I loved so much, 50 people at 2pm. We moved furniture out of the dining room and living room, and the big formal entryway. The caterer set up round tables all around the rooms, with white tablecloths and flowers. We had appetizers in the yard, where all my Italian relatives set up chairs in their customary horseshoe shape, so everyone can see everyone else. My dad calls it "the circular." As in, "There they go, setting up the circular in the yard."

There are pictures of all my cousins, and all the kids, and my grandmothers sisters and brothers and their families. Their next-door neighbors. And my girlfriends, the ones who had grown up with my grandmother. There are pictures of my grandmother with her kids, with her grandkids, and with her great grandkids. And her sisters and brothers. Standing on the wide front steps of my beautiful brick house, with the flowers my mother and I planted in the background, especially for the occasion. Pictures of my uncle with two of his granddaughters, in identical flowered sundresses, one on each knee. My cousin, pre-graduation, with his hair in a ponytail. My niece, holding a stuffed cat in one hand and my real cat in the other. I really miss all that. I haven't yet figured how to incorporate those family rituals into my new life. I still go home and do Christmas Eve with my mother and grandmother, and I've established a little brunch and coffee routine with my Mom and Aunt and cousins. And my niece and I have our city time, which I love. But it's not the same. It's been bothering me a little lately.

But I can't think about it now, because I'm going out to meet P for a drink.

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