I am going to my husband’s mother’s unveiling (which actually will happen 10 days from now). I end up arriving with my brother and niece, and the entrance is through an unmarked door off a major shopping street, then down a stone pathway, into a large building on an estate (I’ve been here before, but this time the “museum exhibits” are all chapels of a sort, a cross between Baroque and Greek Revival). We find the right chapel, which is sort of like a stadium, but we leave to go find the rest of my brother’s family who are lost. I think we find them and do some shopping (in a mall/store I’ve been to before) and return to the unmarked door (you have to ring a bell to be admitted) and then down the stone path, which is leading in a different direction, to where the unveiling has already taken place, and all my husband’s relatives are sitting on top of bookshelves, on one of the top tiers of the seating, looking down at us like cats. One Aunt is wearing big sixty’s style sunglasses so you can’t see her eyes. They are not happy with us. Not only is my brother and his family there, but also one or two friends of mine, and I know my sister in law is pissed, because we didn’t RSVP for lunch, and I’ve thrown her count way off. But because we are late, I never got instructions to the place, and I didn’t think my family was going anyway. At any rate, they were there to support me, and not for the food.
Both the aunts from my mother-in-law’s and father-in-law’s side are there. They don’t generally get along, but they are united in the fact that they are mad at me. My sister-in-laws are mad at me, and I never get a chance to see my brother-in-law, who has flown in cross-continent to be there. By the time all this sinks in, and I’m figuring out ways to approach them, they all have left. And I’m in the wrong chapel, and this tall male docent with a very deep funereal voice is showing me different chapels, and none of them are quite the right one. Some of them are outdoors, but my sister-in-law did not get a full pass and so we cannot go exploring the lake, or the late condition cross country ski trails, or the factory next door (I’ve been here before). We finally get back to the “right chapel” and I can see that my relatives were not perched on top of bookshelves. That was just an optical illusion. The bookshelves were behind the seating.
We end up in a chapel with a service going on, and end up singing dueling hymns at the end of the service (not an unveiling, just a regular service, and yes, I’ve been here before too). I end up leading on of the versions of one of the hymns from my seat, and get the people to follow me, even though I mess it up at the end, but save the ending. Someone who I just met in the congregation points this out to me, she knows that I know that she knows, but it’s OK.
Somehow my family and friends end up going to lunch, and I offer to pay, having missed the directions to the formal luncheon. Somehow we end up in the same place as my in-laws. My brother-in-law has already left, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. My sister-in-laws and the aunts each have a color aura around them, like a gelled spotlight, which matches and intensifies the color of their clothes. There is also one cousin, who I don’t know, but know that she is a cousin because she has a pink color aura around her. My one sister-in-law (blue aura) is sitting at the bar, and when I approach her, she is too upset to talk about it, but gives me the impression that she will be able to talk about it at another time. The aunts and other sister-in-law are unapproachable. I just want to explain why I was late, and sincerely apologize, but no one wants to listen. I think this is where I wake up, and say to myself, hey, that qualifies as a nightmare.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The Art of the Day is: the Art of wrangling nightmares
posted by the other Joan @ 8:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home