What I’ve not yet figured out is why Bev drives Roseanne and Jackie so crazy. Yes, I see the issues. But Bev isn’t malicious.

And, as I crossed into Middle Age the same sort of relationship seems to be playing out with my own parents. I feel like I’m 15 again and these two older people are the most embarrassing things around. It’s become rather a joke that I don’t get to see them any more: any plan we make to see each other falls through for one reason or another.

A recent attempt at a visit fell apart because they only wanted one schedule (that wouldn’t work for me at all) with no flexibility. When I thought we’d finally negotiated something that worked for all parties, they “suddenly remembered” a reason to throw out all the negotiations and go back to the one weekend that wasn’t working for me at all.

And, although they are generous and loving to a fault, the end result is always not seeing them.

At all.

This is part of a recent sermon on “Abandonment Issues.”

You have to watch the entire series of Roseanne before she gets to have a good connection with her mother. The parents’ marriage falls apart, the adult children become friends, the family reforms around different values. Bev comes out as a lesbian…

Dad and I have connected twice as adults over deaths in the family and, most recently, over his heart attack. Mom came and met Brodie in Asheville this last weekend. It was a very different experience for me than “meeting the folks” in the past. There was one slam, one moment of feeling 15 again. But that’s different than feeling that way for the entire weekend. So I’m trying to figure out what that difference was. In me? In them? In Brodie?

AD Had another pulmonary issue today – a blood-level reaction to the medication he was on. Mom called at 2:19 and I tweeted it and facebooked it.

You know, when people talk about “feeling supported” by prayer, I’ve never actually had an understanding of what they were talking about until now. Even my otherwise non-religious friends were throwing good-thoughts in Dad’s direction (and mine). Buoyed up is the way I’d describe it.

There was a book called “Space Time and Beyond” that had in it a lot of cool cartoony illustrations around the topic of particle physics (as it was then understood) and the mystical implications of same. I remember one of a young woman held aloft by white holes in an explanation of a possible anti-gravity device.

That was the image that came to my mind today as, for the second time, I tweeted and facebooked asking for prayers – and got them. From a Monastery in France, and wiccans in Canada and California, from Anglicans around the western world, and persons of various and no traditions came little bubbles that were palpable, tangible, sustaining. It was rather like being lifted up. And I don’t think they were praying for me at all. But I felt as if my own cry of “Kyrie Eleison!” was suddenly joined in a choir. And it was a comforting joy to be in the choir!

Thank you.

Much love.

AD’S Heart Attack was one of those wake-up calls for the whole family. Providence saw fit that my Grandmother was vacationing in Alabama as well: the family was summoned together but it was an easier summoning than it could have been. Several impromptu reunions were scheduled. Dad’s not yet able to receive phone calls, etc. But Mom continues to keep us all informed now that the initial gathering has dispersed.

The emergency also created a reunion, of sorts, online: I wanna thank everyone (on my blog, on Twitter and on Facebook) for your expressions of support. While things after a heart attack nearly never get back to 100%, we’re trying to return to focus now.

Please keep Walter and Diane (and all of us) in your good prayers.