Taking Time for Myself

I was supposed to run another OCSL tournament this weekend since Sal, the president who got me my job at Godinez and position as OCSL vice president was out of town for the second tournament of the season, but I called Steve on Thursday, my co-vice president and begged for a half-day reprieve so I could go with Mom to visit Jon at his halfway home in Southeast Los Angeles.

I almost surrendered the time for myself and my family (after all, I woke up feeling more nervous than I expected about the prospect of visiting Jon) when Jeanna shoved me in the judges' room and seemed to indicate I was running it on my own. At first I started to call to cancel with Mom, but after I got the first round of ballots off, I realized that there was someone there capable of running it and decided to insist on taking the day that Steve had promised me.

I'm so glad I did. When Jon seemed unwilling to leave with us and uncommunicative, I started to worry as I watched him get understandably edgy when my mom started to tut at him, hoping to guilt him out for not spending time with us after we drove so far to be with him. I sensed he just needed some time to himself (I found out right before we left that my dad came out yesterday to take him to a car show all day long in Los Angeles), so I cut through Mom's stifling to calmly ask him without a sign of pressure in my voice if he thought he'd want to go out for dinner and/or a movie later on if my mom and I first went to kill some time together downtown Los Angeles.

I really needed to get home to grade, but in a split second, I decided my mom would enjoy time with me in town and I needed a break, too, plus I'd still get the brother time I had set out to get, without crowding him out. After getting a half-commitment from Jon, I talked my mom down from being practical and boring (she wanted to go home to get Grandma her groceries and didn't want to waste my gas, thinking Jon wouldn't ever end up wanting to spend time with us anyway). We headed to Westwood after a brief driving tour to satiate our long-held curiosity about the fashion district (somehow didn't seem worth the hassle of parking in the end). Refreshed by the morning victory weighing of -26 pounds, I stayed strong while drooling as I watched Mom eat a cookie ice cream sandwich from Diddy Reese's, compensating with a sugarless green iced tea. Then I lumped my previous reservations and swiped the debit card at Urban Outfitter's for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I want to set up for the delight of myself and my students in my classroom before walking my mom to the Borders so she could use my teacher discount to buy a friend a Christmas gift...where I caved and finally bought Stephen Colbert's latest literary gem. I pulled out an old Fairmont Christmas present gift certificate and was surprised to find $15 still on it.

We finally made our way back to Jon around 3 and he was eager to come, apologizing and regretful when he found out what we had done without him. We consoled his self-recriminations by promising to drive him to the garment district in the coming weeks, and then headed to the El Monte outdoor shopping mall, which was a perfect example of these little neighborhoods in Southern California that sometimes feel like instant transports to different countries. We soaked up the discount shopping at La Casa Barata (which I at first translated for them as "Cheap House" before agreeing with Mom when she suggested "Discount Store" was a better translation) and other Latino swapmart-type clothing stores before heading to eat dinner, where I treated Mom and Jon since Mom and I both didn't have our cell phones and couldn't call to activate the credit card she had just received in the mail after losing her old one (yes, I blame HER for my absent-mindedness, though she is MUCH less willing to admit that she suffers from the malady).

Everything felt good, even though I have to admit I'm a little too tired today to appreciate how perfectly everything seemed to click. It's starting to dawn on me now, though still fuzzily, as I struggle to keep my eyes open after grading 10 essays while watching a bad movie with Katherine: I'm starting to learn how to draw appropriate boundaries with my work so it doesn't consume me altogether and so I can genuinely enjoy my family, which I am better appreciating in spite of, even because of, our many dysfunctions and differences. Seeing Jonny's new digs finally set my heart at rest, too, which before was relying too much on my sometimes defeatist mother's depictions: yes, the neighborhood doesn't feel as safe as the Stepford tract housing air of Murrieta and his apartment, shared with four other people, isn't as impeccably-designed as my Mom's house, but he's in an environment that has the structure he needs right now, where he can take classes and be with people who aren't going to make him feel so much like a burden or outsider. And Mom is so much more happy now that she isn't dealing with the unreasonable stress of trying to sleep through Jon's midnight rants and dismantling of the house; she doesn't snap when we confront our differences about religion and the role of love as we individually see it. Which brings me to my last source of gratitude tonight: I'm grateful for the love I can show through my teaching and coaching and through trying to help friends when they need it, but I was reminded tonight that my own life and blood needs me probably more than those other people and things...and I actually know how to help them probably better than I know how to teach or befriend, because I have known them since I breathed my first breath... I miss romantic love sometimes, but somehow tonight I'm feeling how much more important is my family's love.