Diamonds in the Trailer Park

So I was taking a delightful Saturday afternoon nap when my mother called. Now, before I go into this story, please just know I was raised better than this. Mama didn’t move to the trailer park in whichever Carolina it is until I was in my 30s. She has always been crazy; she just had higher standards when I was a kid.

So my mother… she called because her boyfriend had called her and broken up with her while he was at Taco Bell, after he got out of the hospital because his blood sugar was 500 and he was running around the trailer park with a gun, naked, screaming about the Korean Ninjas being after him. You know: typical fucking Thursday night.

He told her he was done with her being crazy and drunk and her mouth. Then he told her not to go off and do anything crazy because he might change his mind. So now she is talking about leaving again.

Her excuse recently has been the drive. Well, she has a friend who is willing to drive out to Colorado with her, to my sister’s house. They had this plan before, but the guy’s wife left him for another man and he was so distraught that he had a breakdown at the tent revival and refused to leave and got arrested at the tent revival. Then he was in jail for a month, but it’s okay because he became an ordained minister while he was in jail. She really wants him and my sister to get together because he is a really nice guy. I swear to the sweet motherfucking baby Jesus, I couldn’t even begin to imagine making any of this up.

But she is afraid to move in with my sister because my sister is occasionally delusional and just a generally horrible human being. But it’s better than being beaten and having some guy threaten to blow your head off and calling everyone about it drunk on Christmas, no? My sister is actually that bad sometimes.

Then Mom was bitching about how everyone is up her ass about moving and she is over 70 now and we need to understand how hard it is. Except we have been discussing this since she was in her 60s, and she has all the help in the fucking world if she will just fucking leave.

Then we had to talk about her dog. Now, if you’ve been reading for a while, you know I have issues about the dog—and dogs in general—being more important than I am to anyone. She is worried about the dog, who has dementia and that a normal human would euthanize to put out of his suffering. Perry the Platypug is still hanging on and she can’t leave him. No one told her to leave the dog.

The mention of her dog pisses me off. Not faulting Perry. I remember driving to Philly in the snow to go get him as a puppy. It’s just… I needed her (or someone) when everything happened, and she refused to leave her dog to come take care of me for a week. That really fucking hurt. I’ve basically stopped talking to her. She calls; I listen for as long as I can put up with it.

This call ended talking about my great-grandmother’s engagement ring. It had been given to me. There is a lot of family jewelry that is very meaningful to me and my children, who used to play with it when they were little. I grew up with my grandma having diamond rings—lots and lots of huge diamond rings—and they were in a silk pouch. She would pour them out on the bed and we would play with them. The tradition continued with my kids, who would sit and play with them and wear them. {LP}’s first complete sentence was, “Don’t touch the stone.” He would admonish you for getting oil on the stone of the ring when he was less than two years old.

I was supposed to get the 3.01 ct pear shape set in platinum when she died. My mother kept it instead. Along with the rest of the jewelry.

I did have my great-grandmother’s ring, but my mom took it and gave it to {Z}, who proposed to her high school girlfriend with it. There is a whole other story there. They broke up, but they moved to Portland together with {Z}’s boyfriend, so I don’t actually know what is happening with that. I’m out of the loop on that one.

So why did my mother take the ring from me? I tried to kill myself in 2015 and I tried the car-in-the-garage thing. I took off all my jewelry so they wouldn’t have to cut it off my body. That ring was actually cut in the back already because they cut it off my great-grandmother’s body when she died in childbirth with my grandmother. So my mom decided that this meant I obviously didn’t want it, and she gave it to {Z} while I was involuntarily hospitalized.

So my mom brought up that {Z} had asked her if she wanted it back, and I was like, yes, I want it back. It was mine. Like, I never bitched about it. It’s my kid and I would never ask for it back. Like, it was going to her eventually; I just didn’t appreciate the way my mother did that.

And Mother tonight was like, “Well, you didn’t want it.” And I’m like, I was trying to kill myself, you psychotic narcissistic fucking whore.

So that ended badly.

Here’s to the trailer park! I need a fucking drink.