Another year, another Fourth

Last year I spent the Fourth of July in New Zealand, vacationing with Marie and parts of her family. The year before I spent it at my mother's house, where Brother and SIL were also visiting.

That's where I was this year, though the visit was a lot shorter. I spent about five hours there, plus about four hours total driving back and forth. (That's 2 1/2 hours going, but only about 1 1/2 hours coming back home. I got lucky with the traffic this evening.) It's funny because I left before we actually ate. But I think it was fine, and that I liked it better that way.

Apparently Brother and SIL have gotten together with my mother a few times since the outbreak of the pandemic. Of course they live a lot closer, and in normal times they certainly see her more often than I do. They say they have been scrupulous about social distancing. Certainly not long after I arrived, Brother gave all of us a stern little talk about how we should behave to reduce the risk of infection. He seemed particularly concerned by my cough, which I suppose is not surprising (even though I know it has nothing to do with COVID-19).

It was a hot day and we sat around outside and talked. Brother and SIL peeled homegrown apples to go into a pie. (My mother makes the best pies in the world, and I refuse to hear anyone say anything to the contrary.) They were also going to grill hot dogs for us all.

Nobody said anything about when we were supposed to eat, any more than I said anything about how long I was going to stay. I hadn't thought about it much. But I knew I wasn't going to stay the night, because how hard must it be to disinfect a whole house? Anyway, Brother and SIL spent a lot of time in their own little world, making cute faces back and forth and snapping pictures of each other on their phones. And some time after 5:00 they started fiddling with the grill. Around the same time I decided I'd leave about 6:00.

It was a propane grill that my dad had used for years before he died. I don't know if it has been used since. Everything they said was to the effect that once they turned it on, we'd eat within minutes. But they fiddled and fiddled some more and couldn't get it to start. Maybe it was out of fuel, or maybe it was something else. Anyway, by 6:00 they were starting to think about what else to use instead, and I figured it was a good time to hit the road. There was considerable surprise ("You're leaving? Before we eat?") but I was gracious and cheerful about it and then took off.

Do I wish we had eaten before I left? Maybe a little bit but not strongly. It really was hot. Eating hot grilled food on top of that would have made it feel even hotter. And I'd had a big breakfast, so I wasn't terribly hungry. Also my mother had put out little individual dishes of nuts, and I'd had some of those. And I'm pretty sure Brother will have felt more comfortable eating without listening to me cough: he had already expressed deep discomfort at my coughing (into my mask!) within a couple of feet of the table where the dishes of nuts sat.

Also ... how much do we have to talk about? Brother is a wannabe rock musician (even now, in his fifties) who does proofreading for ad agencies as a contractor. I work for a big company, in an office. (Or, well, I used to work in an office before the pandemic and lockdown, and I still do the kind of work that one associates with big companies and offices.) I suppose I could have talked about getting an article in print in the professional journal for people in my line of work -- the June issue, a mere 18 months after they accepted it! (Grin.) Or I could have talked about the time I've spent on the side during the pandemic, expanding that article (and some related topics) into a short book. (I have 92 pages now and I think it's basically done, but I have no idea what to do next.) But I hate self-promoting like that.

I don't know.

It's funny: I don't feel anything like this ambivalence about spending time with my uncle and aunt, or with my cousins (except for one first-cousin-one-removed, who looks to me like a demon of Pure Id -- Stan, of course, from this post). I enjoy time spent with them. But I don't seem to have anything to say to Brother or SIL.

I suppose that's too bad and I should regret it. But it's just how it is. I don't understand why it turned out that way. But it did. Shit happens, I guess.