Sunshine Away

It was a fair to middling day in the Gulf of Mexico, s'posed to be rainy but by late morning was looking better, it had brightened and I wanted to enjoy the few hours of good weather on My last day at the beach. My father wanted to go to the Naval Air Museum... again. This time the pretext was to show My aunt a specific plane he used to fly, not that she cared. He wanted her to see it, he wanted her to Understand. I’ve come down four winters now and have been compelled maybe 8 times or more to this museum, which is excellent for its kind of course, but I’ve had a lifetime with My father’s love affair with large machinery. It’s his passion, not Mine and I didn’t want to spend the day that way and I resisted. Neither mom nor aunt wanted to go either but they were not saying so. Our family remains more patriarchal than most and by Day Five dad was just chomping at the bit.

MasterMe protested that we wanted to go to the beach and get the last sun and play puttputt, there was a coded negotiation with Father, and in the end, we agreed to go for “just a little while” even as I ribbed dad that he was gonna owe Me $5 if he kept us there til closing. I did My best through all possible good-sport tactics to make clear I did not want to go, but the message was clear: this is the price you are expected to pay when you come to visit. He said that out loud. I observed that material terms to an agreement are supposed to be disclosed before the deal is sealed not after. He said I should know that already. It was a jesting kind of conversation but a serious one, the kind that seems to be the best of bad options.

I wanted a shower but no, no time! Had to get going! After arriving at noon it was beyond 4pm when we left. We made it to the curb once, at 2:15 and mom inquired about lunch. In a flash dad was back inside, and texting that yes, QubiClub was still serving, meet him there. *sigh* So close. So close. I’ve never managed a jail break from this museum successfully; that’s the closest I’ve come.

By time we finally left, with me driving the elders, it was starting to mist and fog. Mom was increasingly anxious in the back seat, fearing an accident. So much for going to the beach. So much for mini golf.  So much for what I wanted.

So much for what Princess wanted.

Master drove us home in the fog and tried to be sanguine about it. I was annoyed but keeping it under the surface, trying to make the best of family Quality Time. Hoping the weather would break open again as we drove. It didn’t. Master was focused on driving safely in poor conditions with mom in the back getting more and more anxious. Just like Grandma used to be. My aunt bought me a Starbucks at the end of the trip, which felt like she was trying to make something up to me, and I appreciated it, but in our family way, nothing was said about the deal not holding even though everyone knew about dad getting what he wanted, and being the only one. So we returned home, sat down, and it took about 10 minutes to notice I was irritable and to admit to Myself why.

I didn’t quite realize it yet but Princess was MAD. I mean H-E double toothpicks FURIOUS. Master had promised her, and Master and our FAther didn’t deliver, and now her trip is OVER and she missed her last of only a few short opportunities to get sun on the beach. She instead spent that time inside because her FAther wanted to show her aunt stupid airplanes, and it was GONE. And she was MAD. And that’s a LOT how she feels about the stupid museum: it takes away her sun on these trips.  Her very valuable, limited supply, hard to get, never-know-when-it-might-happen-again-if-at-all SUN.

Master can appreciate the technology and that dad got to pursue his dream of flying and that dad has survivor guilt about VietNam and that the Navy was the best time of his life, and he feels ill treated by what the Navy did to him, and all that. That’s dad’s story. Mom’s story is that she married a Navy officer, and maybe it wasn’t what she expected but it’s the deal she chose.

But neither is Princess’s story.

The Princess story is that those airplanes took her daddy aWAY. Today the museum took her beachy sunshine aWAY. The stupid Navy and stupid airplanes have done nothing but take her sunshine away her whole LIFE. And today, she just had E-NUFF. Even on her vacation at FIFTY years old, those stupid airplanes KEEP taking her daddy away, and she is SICK of it.

One of the interesting things about today is Unkey said this museum sounds like fun to him, and Princess immediately thought she would LOVE to have Unkey with her at the museum. That would be FUN and it even sounded kinda sexy. That helped Master realize: ah, this is a lot about feeling alone and unsupported in the Princess feelings TODAY. Not 50 years ago... TODAY.

That connected some dots. Cuz we do like SOME things about this museum, it has cool STUFF, we just have such mixed FEELings we have trouble enJOYing it much. There is a sculpture at the museum that makes Me nearly burst into tears every damned time. I hate that fucking sculpture. It tears off the same scab every time. There’s nothing in My life that so predictably makes Me break inside, and it’s fucking annoying. My father has never been present in that moment with Me on any of those trips. He sees the sculpture, he understands it logically, but he is never THERE emotionally with i and with Me. He is looking at the fucking airplanes, he is looking at absolutely everything – anything - else.    There are some important skills he lacks.

Master only dimly foresaw Princess reaction to this reasonably foreseeable progression of events; Princess thinks Master should be a bit BETTER at that kind of thing by now. But it snuck up on Master. The trip to the museum was just the latest in this series of events that Master has done before, and knows how to handle in Master space -- but which is happening for the first time with Princess directly engaged.

And then we were back at the rental unit and FAther was sitting in the front room telling our aunt about his side of his family property feud, that crosses three, no four, generations. Going on and on about his beef.

And Princess could not bear it that she was so upset about being made to go to the museum and NOT getting what she was PROMISED and NOBODY NOTICED !

Princess was INVISIBLE and she HATES being invisible, and she was FURIOUS about it, in a very real, acute and possibly new way. So Master took her into the bedroom and laid down in the dark, cuddled in a blanket, tried to calm her, tried to tell her it was ok and Just Breathe. But we could still hear our FAther comPLAINing to our aunt, wanting her approval for his role in the stupid conflict, and then Princess got even more upset cuz she realized no one had noticed she had disappeared. Princess was really losing it. She felt so alone she just could not STAND IT anyMORE!!  She just wanted to break EVERYthing!!

So Master did something new. Master dressed her - didn’t try to make noise, didn’t try to be quiet - and put on shoes and a coat and got a bottle of water in the open-concept living space, and walked out the big heavy front door. And no one noticed.

We walked out the door in the dark and fog and we went to the BEACH, like we wanted to this MORNing and we walked the beach at the water’s edge in the weird darkness like being in The Shining movie. Alone. And this is what I thought:

I cannot bear his pain, there’s so much pain in him. He has pain about everything.  I cannot bear his pain and I cannot bear his joy, because his joy for those damned airplanes is Princess’s pain for his absence. And there doesn’t seem to be any space in the middle for connection that feels real, that doesn’t feel like being trapped in a glass bubble. And it seems impossible for Princess’ pain to be seen and heard and comforted.

So Princess ran away from home for the first time tonight and she ran away to the ocean. In the fog and drizzley misty dark. And even though it’s maybe not so safe, Master let her. Because Princess has needed to run away many times before and never did and that’s why she feels so STUCK. Master decided she needed to be allowed to run away.

We are a little afraid we might be raped or murdered out here on the beach, or hit by the beach cleaning truck, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or carried away by a rogue wave and a rip tide. And we are trying hard to not think too much about the last scene of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening book, in which the woman decides her only real option is to walk fully clothed into the Gulf of Mexico, and let the water take her.

We are in a very dark place tonight, we have felt very bad like this before, many times. Princess is despondent, despairing, and alone. Master hopes choosing something new will make a difference. So Master got us to the beach and then turned around and took a picture of our building in the weird dark fog so we could recognize its unique pattern of colored lights to get home - smart Master, good Master, wise Master.  And then Master let Princess go.

Princess, do you wanna stay in Alabama or walk to Florida?

FLORIDA!

And it was not a little bit genuinely scary. I’ve never walked on a beach in the dark like that. I have spent very little time on beaches. It seemed unsafe and unwise. We walked along the edge til we got to the place it gets a little steep and sand-suctiony, and after a while we couldn’t see our building for a long time and it really was kinda scary being alone out there. And then we sat down on a pile of sand and stared at the ocean waves in the dark wondering if a tsunami would come. And MasterMe started writing what became this blog post, just because there was no one we could talk to and we just couldn’t find anything else.

Eventually Princess’s BUTT got sore. 

That sand was not soft and fluffy like it LOOKED. It was packed from the wind and waves and it was HARD.  And it SUCKED.  She didn’t mind being on the beach, but she wanted a comfy CHAIR or a SOFA.

Princess, are you ready to go home?  We’ve been gone a while.

NO !

Wanna walk a little further just to make a point?

Yah.

Just to prove you CAN?

*nods*

Ok.

So we walked a little further. And then eventually:

Princess are you getting tired?

Yeah.

Gotta pee?

Yeah.  

Are you ready to go home?

*sigh* 

*mumble*... i GUESS.

So Master took Princess home, it was a long walk, and we were nervous we lost the building but we didn’t, and at the end, we left the water’s edge, sat on a dune outside the condo building and grumbled that STILL nobody noticed. We wondered how long til somebody would TEXT and ask where we WERE. We were gone about 90 minutes all together, and it was definitely dinner time, and eventually our FAther came out to ask what we were doing Out There. Slowly Master and he had a talk, in which Master managed to say that we need him to understand that museum is NOT all fun for us, it makes us sad and it makes us angry.  He said me too, and he talked a little about what it was like back then, how hard it was to leave his family to go away to fly the airplanes, and it was nice he shared that cuz he doesn’t talk like that much, but still it was about his perspective, his pain.

It didn’t make Princess feel any better. She just sighed in her head about how it’s always Like This.

Master tried again, she said: when we go there and get upset we feel trapped; we want to be a Dutiful Daughter and we don’t want to be a wet blanket on Family Fun, but there does not seem to be a way to leave when it gets to be too much for me. Master did manage to say an important thing:  that we don't know how to be upset now for things that happened so long ago; we don't know to be upset with him and we don't *want* to be upset with him cuz we know it hurts him too, but that just leaves us upset and confused. And that's why we don't want to go to the museum. He said he wouldn’t make us go again unless we really want to. He knows he did that today, he MADE us go. He said he won’t do that again. He said that twice. So we know he Meant It and we know that means he was feeling Sorry he made us.

That’s a good start.

Master didn’t quite manage to say the big thing, the hard thing: that these museum trips are all about HIS experience, his joy, his pain, and there doesn’t seem to be room for Princess’ feelings anywhere among those airplanes. We don’t need him to feel guilty about the past, we need him to be present NOW, for the part of me who gets sad and angry. But Master says that’s a Big Ask cuz he does feel so terribly Guilty.

But it was Progress. So we got up and made a hug happen with our FAther, our deeply human FAther, and then we walked to dinner with mom, and the three of us had dinner on a covered porch at Flora-Bama Yacht Club, which is just a big beachy bar place. And we all shared a boozy milkshake that got us each a little tipsy and made us all FART a little, and we walked back feeling some better.

I don’t know what got said in the apartment while I was gone, I would like to know, but I think something got said. Maybe it’s just that they got scared when they realized I had disappeared and they had not noticed. Maybe my mom or aunt said something to dad. Maybe they were just startled by their Dutiful Daughter doing something she Doesn’t Do, and in the Dark no less.

Looking back, Master says this was all ok. We felt the feels and at first, Princess tried to stuff her feelings and pretend to be ok and when that didn’t work she tried to hide in her room. And it made her chest hurt. All of that is the freeze part of the fight-flight-freeze response to trauma; it’s the way we pretty much always have coped with the hardest problems, including the Parent Problems. 

But this time we did something different, we got outta Freeze and we did Flight. We fled. And when we ran away, we felt angry and we kicked some sand, and we Talked Loud And Annoyed on the beach. That’s Fight. We went from cold pain to hot pain and then it burned itself out and got extinguished and we were All Done, so we went back Home and while it wasn’t ideal, there was some amount of Support and Understanding when we got there.

That’s all ok. It’s never happened before like this. Maybe Princess has NEEDED to know how to run away, how to Flee and to Fight. Maybe that’s part of The Medicine.

It was deeply beautiful out there on the beach, at the water’s edge tonight. Alone in the fog and dark. It felt raw and wild and dangerous. It felt Real. It was the very antithesis of Sunshine but it was still Beautiful. It’s almost as if for the first time, I stopped fighting for the missing sunshine and allowed myself to be fully present, to sink in that beautiful Dark in a way that worked, in a way that let Me come back to Light better.

At first tonight felt like a Disaster but maybe Master did better tonight than it seemed. Much better.