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| We're looking for Tuttle so he can wrap this thing up, but honestly, he hasn't been around much. Now that Free knows and recognizes his ideal form, his avatar if you will, his presence is stronger and the captain might just have been a figment of Hawkeye's imagination. | | |
| The social worker is finally calling for my brother to make an appointment. Resume scramble to clean up mom's house (backstory here). The timing is perfect for closing up the Tuttle blog, because Step 1 was to get all of my old stuff from bro's storage and get it out of his way. A good chunk of that stuff hasn't been seen since I left for D.C., and the rest hasn't been seen since as far back as Junior year in high school. I've already started pouring over. Because what would a summer vacation be without a thorough reminiscence and some belated spring cleaning... well, okay, MY summer vacations always included them... anyway, this situation has afforded me a chance to say goodbye to a lot of memories... some I'll keep, but not very close... some I'll toss, but not before I take a photo or write down the reminder... Somewhere in all the boxes I brought back today, somewhere are my love-letters from Penelope. I think they deserve a final read before I lock them away for a very long time. I won't read to regret, or even to mourn, but to celebrate and say goodbye. To her. To everything that came before and since... To everything and everyone that I no longer need to believe will be there tomorrow.
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| I'd been planning for several weeks to post a summary of this blog around the first of the month, talking about how "Tuttle emerged on April 1st; we always knew he'd be an April Fool..." That was the date that I had set for the last stage, when I would sum up this online journal and transition to a more casual, less free-therapy model. Of course the death of my grandmother shook those plans, but it also has offered a gentle nudge that while Tuttle has emerged, Free is and always will be a work in progress. I feel my age at last, but that doesn't mean I won't grow older. I have faced the past, but that doesn't mean there won't be other confessions, revisions, and reflections somewhere down the road. I think I know what I want out of life, but that doesn't mean I will necessarily get it.
A lot of the work of self-definition and -articulation feels a little shaky right now, because I'm in such a new and vulnerable spot. But such losses are a part of life, and there's probably a lesson here about not assuming I've got everything figured out just because I had a fraction of a second where I felt whole again. It doesn't mean I won't ever lose my temper again, nor that I'll never hurt the ones I love, perhaps even intentionally (though I hope not), but it does mean that I can face those instances as they come and not crumble under their weight because I'm so overloaded dealing with lost loves from 8 years ago or lies I told myself as a child. Anyway, there's probably a summary left, but I wanted to let my friends (and you are all my friends--now that I have met most of you in person, it feels most appropriate to call you that) know that this space will be closing soon and I have already started the move back to FreeNotFurry. I'll probably blog back and forth for a while (closing of one, starting of the other), but by May 1st, I intend to shut down Tuttle's Emersion and blog only from Free Not Furry. So please update your subscriptions and your protected lists soon, and let me know if there are any lingering questions you'd like answered before I close this site down. Thank you all again for taking yet another journey with me. I couldn't have done this without you. P.S. I mentioned in the last entry that I'd been watching I Heart Huckabee's, which really is a quirky movie like nothing I've seen. I might love it, but I need to see it a bit more to be sure. Like American Beauty, it was so hyped with, "This movie is so up your alley!" that I felt pressured to love it and couldn't just sit down and take it in.
But I do know of one HUGE flaw in the movie that is sure to polarize audiences... the viewer absolutely, positively must believe in love at first sight, of a complete and overwhelming resonance of two people who belong together, for this film to hold any credibility. I think only a few months ago (even and especially around the time that everyone was recommending the film so much), I was probably so cynical about love that, despite having had such an experience myself, I would have dismissed the film immediately and scorned it forevermore.
Luckily, I'm not so cynical about love right now, and I think I might come to embrace this movie as a result. | | |
| The neighbors knew as soon as we all pulled up. There was the sudden caravan to give it away: the large pickups of my brother and my best friend, my mom's sedan, and I was driving my grandfather in his stylized hatchback. We two were the last to arrive and everyone was standing around until I clicked the garage remote in the center console. The others gathered behind us and helped me bring in the luggage from my aborted trip to D.C. Several hours later, I would remove my shoes and realize it was the first time I had done so since my security screening at the DC airport nearly 24 hours prior. I had gotten one of those special screenings because I had bought my ticket at the last minute. Surprisingly, they didn't particularly smell.
Each of us had our preoccupation in those first few hours home. My brother worried about his children and how they would deal. His daughter had lost a great-grandmother last year and was old enough to understand, but his son was not yet four and still struggled to separate the identities of both grandparents in his mind. Mom and I tried to be available to my grandfather. He and I would later get into a tiff after almost everyone else had left--over nothing, really, though my huffing and puffing was good for finishing a couple of chores done and earning me an apology. Phil sat back and filled in where he could, until my grandfather asked him to speak at the gravesite. The at-home nurse came by with her two kids in a red SUV; she and her daughter were quiet with grief ("Did Miss Marie die?" "Yes, baby."), while the boy was quiet with something closer to boredom. I would later occupy the kids with acorn-throwing in the yard until it was time for them to go. The phone rang off the hook as word spread amongst the family. I still don't know whether anyone will be flying in for the funeral, but when the appointment was set up to make arrangements, something was said about the availability of discounted flights. I keep having this profound realization that she has ceased to be. I've never been through this with someone who was very close to me. It's like halfway through the summer after you have graduated high school when you try to imagine what the new normal will look like and then you realize you can't, because the new normal will be missing too significant a portion of the familiar. Gone will be the friends and loved ones you've grown up with, and likely there are none who can take their places in your daily life. How deficient is that analogy? How much am I going to have to learn through this?
In Memorium: M.T.H.
"E"
19?5 ~ 2006 | | |
| I'm spending the next two weeks in DC? If I still have any DC friends reading this site, expect a call from me soon. :) | | |
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