Windy Weekend

This past weekend was very windy and played havoc with the satellitle dish. Things aren't really back to normal yet since Hughes doesn't officially allow portable satellites so they've blamed us for overuse because of all the failed transmissions or something like that. Anyhow I used the weekend to call all my relatives since we have unlimited minutes on the cell phone. I actually had a conversation with my daughter with whom I've had limited contact with for many years. I called her and she did talk. And it wasn't as painful for me as the last time we had a long talk about nine years ago. I know after her father left she felt I neglected her and this time I said I had no excuse and I was very sorry. Nine years ago I guess I gave excuses. She said she learned to cope by being mean and apologized for hurting me. It's funny how her father got off the hook. Well, he had a disease - alcoholism (which she inherited but is a recovering alcoholic thanks to AA). I wrote to my sons after the conversation and got a wonderful reply from my son who lives in Budapest and spoke to my other son with whom I am very close. She's mean to them too. But maybe it's an opening. Afterall she did talk to me instead of saying she didn't have time. And as Eliot says it's water under the bridge. I'm just afraid that if she doesn't let it go she's only going to hurt herself. She has Crohn's disease and arthritis and from what I hear from relatives is that she is putting on weight. If I ask her how she is, she says she is fine. She recently got an RN degree but isn't working. I don't know what more I can do but I have to stop beating myself up.
I also spoke to my sister who is in an assisted living place in Jackson, WY where her daughter lives. She is 3 years older than me and has fought MS since she was 24, actually having a child when she was 40. I was "yuck another girl" in the opinion of my paternal grandmother
and then when I was four years old my twin brothers were born and I learned that taking care of precious baby boys made me useful. Another boy was born four years later. My mother said we were all mistakes, that is, we weren't planned. My father was a compulsive gambler but died when he was 53, leaving my mother who was 49 penniless. She then made a life for herself, starting selling in a Sears store in Florida and ended up as their top decorator. When she retired from Sears at 65, she moved to Rochester, NY where my brother had just opened a Fabrics store and she started his "shop at home" business decorating many fancy homes. When I sold my house to Brian and bought my RV I took her in the RV to Tucson where my sister had just moved and my youngest brother had lived for years. She found a retirement home there and then I drove her in the RV to Florida where my brother for whom she had worked now lived and then after she sold her house in Rochester I took her in the RV back to Tucson by way of Sheridan, WY where the other brother now lived with his second wife. My mother loved traveling in the RV. This is beginning to sound like an autobiography. Write, write, write but should I be doing this on my blog. What is a blog anyhow? It started out as a windy weekend when I called all my relatives, I also spoke to all 3 brothers. My Mother died on Thanksgiving Day in 2002. I and all my siblings were there. We had come to celebrate Thanksgiving with her because she had turned 90 that July. She was in ICU by the time we all got there. So we pulled the plug on Granny. She had septicemia by then and the machine was doing 100% of her breathing. Every Thanksgiving now I feel I should light a Yarhzeit candle instead of eating turkey. Maybe this year I will.
Why am I writing all this. When I was around my daughter's age sometime in my 40's my brother (who had become the patriarch) sent me and my mother to my nephew's bar mitzvah in Tucson and my mother and I started talking about "our disagreements" especially over my sister-in-law and ended up crying into each others arms. So that's why I called my daughter.