This past Thursday, I woke Polina as usual for her online class. That day it was a European-based all girl comics class taught in Russian.  Most of Polina’s classes are taught this way. Each week the teacher presents a theme and the girls use software to illustrate the theme in a comic strip, which they read to the group at the end of class. The other two girls in the class live in Europe. For them, it’s an after school activity. Since their afternoon is our morning, as a homeschooling family, that arrangement works well for us.

I recently completed a car trip across the US and back.  I drove from western Washington to Philadelphia to see my grandmother, who wasn’t doing well health-wise.  My trip turned into a period of goodbyes.  It was about saying goodbye to my grandmother, who passed away five days after I returned home.  It was about saying goodbye to my aunt, whose interaction brought home to me all the harmful subtleties of our relationship, and our family dynamics, throughout my life that I simply ignored, but couldn’t any longer.  I said goodbye to my friend David, whom I’ve known since 2009, for similar reasons.  

During this trip, I said goodbye to my mother and the relationship I wish I had with her. That relationship will never happen.  We had an argument that laid on the table everything she thought about me.  It came from her heart, and it wasn’t pretty.  The end result is I will not allow myself to expect something from her which she is clearly incapable of providing.  My grandmother told me a long time ago that my mother couldn’t provide what I wanted.  She told me that once, on the phone, when I was a teenager, crying for what turned out to be a weekly occurrence, and it stuck with me.  I now realize that expecting more puts her in a torturous situation, and so I say goodbye and with maturity, mourn that loss.