Family ties
The fall semester has begun, and so I have leapt back into the frying pan once more. I netted two more As from my Summer II courses, though it has earned me little more than the satisfaction of kicking ass–I only had a week and a half of the summer to do anything. I used that time to visit my family, all spread out across Maryland and Virginia. It felt more like work than vacation, but I remain energized from the love that I gave and received.
I had a grand old time with cousin Kathy and her children & mother up on Cape Charles, where one quarter of my family tree sprang from (the Whites). We visited the ruins of the old family wharf, where my great-great-grandfather ran his fishing business:
Abandoned in 1930-something after a hurricane. Irene took down the last of it in 2011.
Kathy atop the ruins. Tall cousin is tall.
Great aunt Joyce, with Magothy Bay in the background. The Atlantic is just beyond the barrier island.
As best as I can tell, my second cousins once-removed. Olivia is 5, Bryce 8. Cute kids!
After a delightful couple of days of tea, family history, intelligent banter & discussion, and lots of childish fun, I puttered on over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and headed south to visit my mom and her fiancé in La Plata. More good times, particularly wherein Bill & I got drunk and engaged in a passionate theological discussion. It came up as I told the story of how my mom came to Catholicism. He’s what I have heard called a “cradle Catholic,” and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around my atheism. So we went several rounds, mostly centered on the cosmological argument and Bill’s incredulity of my objections to it. But we still get on famously, in part because we’re both twinkly-eyed Irish fockers. We’ll paint yer house and steel yer ladder 
Last leg was up to the Baltimore area (Ellicott City, specifically), to visit my sister’s boyfriend, Jim. Jim’s minding the house while she’s in Afghanistan for the next year, and he’s doing a pretty good job of keeping it up. Gayle started something special when she swept into Ellicott City. She bought the original icehouse, which had been converted (pre-electricity) into a duplex that three generations had lived in. Since Gayle has lived there, she has knit the Ellicott City community into a growing body of people working together toward a more sustainable and environmentally-conscious society. The icehouse is a burgeoning co-op, and it gives me intense joy to see my sister’s work thrive even while she is away. Jim plays no small part in that.
I was able to visit my father as well, since he lives a stone’s throw away in Columbia. My friends Rob and Caitlin came down to join us, and we had a blast at trivia night at a local pub, drinking great beer, eating great food, and stinking up the joint at trivia. But it wasn’t at just any old pub. Time was, the location was called the Last Chance Saloon, a place many south Baltimore/Columbia folks (especially among the IT crowd) knew well. It shut down after its owners divorced, and the FireRock Grill sprang up in its place. But the new owner reached a little too hard, going for upscale Columbia clientele–fishtanks, surf & turf menu, and not far from obscene prices. (Not to mention the utter lack of good, craft beer!) The blue-collar Columbians voted with their dollars, and it went under again. But my dad told me about something amazing: a new owner had come in and resurrected the Last Chance, as the Second Chance! I am unable to adequately express my delight at such a poetic revival of a Columbia icon.
And after trivia, my dad was happy to join me and Jim back in Ellicott City for drinks at the Judge’s Bench. Gayle’s name is legend there, and I know a few of the regulars myself, so it was good company. Not hurt by the fact that my dad bought a round on him in Gayle’s honor 
That night, I had five amazing craft brews that I had never tasted before: Yards Brawler dark mild, Pyramid Hefeweizen, Widmer’s Pitch Black IPA, Unibroue Blanche de Chambly witbier, and Stoudt’s Achluophobia. That last, a black kolsch, was perhaps the most delicious beer I have ever drunk.
I cannot say that my trip ended precisely on a high note, however. Just as I was making plans to come up, my mother informed me that my uncle Al had been hospitalized in the ICU with a blood clot in one leg. I kept up with her throughout the trip, and by the time I had made it to La Plata, he had undergone an amputation at the knee, and his body was shutting down. I made a point of visiting him at UMAB last Tuesday, and I’m glad I did. I spent an hour and a half just talking to him, telling him stories. He was mostly unresponsive, only opening his eyes to look at the nurses who came by a couple times. But I do not doubt that he heard me. So I just kept talking, rather than sit and stare at him with all the machines around him keeping him going. I told him how I was doing, how my life had been going, how I got on with Bill, anything I had to share with him. I left, and had to swing by Mom’s to sign some paperwork related to his estate. By the time I got home to Raleigh, he had deteriorated rapidly, and on Thursday he suffered a massive aneurysm. My uncle Al, who gave me the first piece of constructive social skills advice when I was twelve (“Kid, anyone ever tell you that you have diarrhea of the mouth?”), and whom I never actually got to share a beer with, died on Thursday, August 16th, 2012.
I’ll be heading back up to Maryland tomorrow to help my mother deal with the viewing, funeral, and wake. The kicker is that now that Al’s gone, me and my half-brother are basically the only family she has left. Her father was murdered years and years ago. Her aunt shut her out of her life when Doris (my grandmother) was dying, because she disagreed with how my mom was handling her mother’s estate. And my sister–well, that’s another long and sordid story that I’ll not get into now. Suffice it to say, we cherish what we have, because that’s still a vast wealth.
But I step forward into the new semester with courage. Halfway done the MAT, and then into the rest of my life!