Mostly benign, and also sad

I just realized that all of the "clocks" are different. My phone is on Michigan time, my blackberry is on Illinois time, and my work computer is just on completely the wrong time - it's hard to imagine exactly how that happened and how I just now noticed - it doesn't even correspond with the changing of the clocks (the wrong computer time) - it's just wrong, not by a little but by an hour and 16 minutes. Anyway...

We went to dinner at my mom's today. It was mostly benign, and also sad. I can't really think of any other way to describe it. Nothing happened really. For the first time ever I'm hesitating to say very much about her here - she doesn't know about this blog - but with the quick click of a button she could find it because my brother and I link to each other's blogs. My mom isn't really Internet savvy enough to find it - I mean, you would think after almost a year and a half of reading my brother's blog and not finding it, she wouldn't suddenly go clicking on the links - but if she did, I can tell you that it wouldn't be good. She would probably say that I've embarrassed us all by posting the truth here, by talking about her and our childhood, by admitting the truth about the things that I feel, by telling the truth about me - because I've said the things that you aren't supposed to talk about. We are all supposed to pretend, remember? I've tried to only talk about her to the extent it is part of my story. She has her own story. But I have talked about her, and sometimes I feel bad about it. But why? I've only been telling the truth.

Like I said, the visit was mostly benign. Nothing really happened. There wasn't any inappropriate conversation, nothing weird was said and nothing really weird happened. She wasn't drunk and she hadn't obviously been drinking. I think she knows better than to drink before spending time with us, or at least me - because I can tell, even when she's only had a small amount - I guarantee, the next time that happens - will be the last time. For me to go there at all is crossing a line that I might rather not cross. It's been a very long time since I've been in my mother's house actually. I've only been there a couple of times since the time many years ago when I said I wasn't setting foot in her house again after she was drunk at a picnic that she hosted and embarrassed us in front of everyone there.

The house was weird - not very clean. She has 7 cats. Or is it 6 these days? It just didn't feel cozy and warm, it had another character. The house next door to her house is the house I grew up in by the way - and it was a dump. The whole yard, driveway, everything - full of garbage. I don't really have a connection to that house - but it was kind of sad and disgusting. The experience was fine - better than expected I would say. But it was sad - I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry that she made such a mess out of her life and that it all went so wrong. I feel sorry for her because it didn't have to be that way. My mom has this picture of her parents on the table in the living room. Her mother - the woman who started it all, in a way. The legacy of alcoholism and dysfunction and terrible childhoods. Actually, maybe she didn't start it all - maybe it goes back much farther than my mother's mother, I don't know anything about her or her family. Only that she was an alcoholic and a terrible mother and drank herself to death basically. My mother is 28 years into doing the same.