I somehow missed the fact that the Olympic games were happening in Canada. And the train runs all the way to Vancouver now? What an innovation – and how annoying!
Nearly all seats for all trains were sold out, and I paid an extortionate price for a seriously bad seat that would get me to Seattle hours after my parents were asleep for the night.
This meant that I missed a chance to see my grandmother, perhaps for the last time. My mother consoled with the observation that Grandma no longer recognizes anyone, but somehow, that does not make me feel any better.
The true consequences of immigration are found in these stories – how many family members have died, how many funerals have I missed, how profoundly have I failed my blood kin?
One small immature part of my brain retorts that if Grandma had wanted my allegiance she would not have disowned me when I became a teen parent. If the paternal side of the family had offered assistance with college tuition, housing, health insurance, or anything at all I would probably still be living in Kitsap County, stopping by every week to visit, taking care of them as they took care of me.
But they didn’t. And the compromises I made to survive and prosper flung me across the world.
I do not feel vengeful; if anything, understanding what divides us just makes me care more.
The Lavender ethos is self-sufficiency, autonomy, hard work, the cliched and bullshit bootstrap rugged individualism of a cowboy movie. Everything I have accomplished is an illustration of those values but at the same time a rebuke, because I think that material success is a sham. The only thing that matters is taking care of people. Being kind.
If the Lavender grandparents were alive and sentient they would be proud of me because I own property, travel, have children who ace standardized tests. They would be impressed that my photograph shows up in the papers. None of which matters to me – but somehow I still did it.
I did everything right, but I am still ashamed because there is an old woman dying in a nursing home, and I am not there to hold her hand. I can’t be with her, I’m not there to tell her that everything is fine.