soundtrack: a.c. newman

yesterday i drove to olympia after school to see my mother. i hadn't been to their house in months and my father was out of town and sunday was mother's day... i arrived about 8pm and she was already 2 glasses into a bottle of wine. i helped her finish the bottle and she eagerly opened another. i drank a total of 3 small glasses over 4.5 hrs and was pretty sober by the time i left; she had consumed, at that point, six glasses in my presence and was probably going to have more.
this is fucking hard on multiple levels.
-my mother is a gross but FUN drunk. she gets very loquacious (more so than usual) and animated and affectionate. i feel like a passive spectator to her one-woman show. quite early in the visit, it was apparent that conversation was going to be, as usual, fairly imbalanced. but her behavior also makes me feel ickily good. i feel like i can amuse her. i can keep her company. we are girlfriends, and i need friends.
-her fun-ness can turn nasty in an instant. she has never switched on me, ever, but she always acts hateful to my father. he, in turn (he usually starts the cycle, actually) treats her poorly, and it creates a horribly fucked-up dynamic that i dread being witness to. i vowed that i would never put myself in that situation, sandwiched between their malice, ever again. i grew up with that shit. i can leave it behind now. i know that she wouldn't have drank nearly so much if he was in town; she even said as much. there was something both giddy and pathetic about how excited she was about this. and i was a fucking enabler, just by being there. and part of me still thinks, "she's a goddamn adult. let her do what she wants. she gets a night off from being judged, she's in a happy mood? fuck it. good for her."
-i brought her an orchid and a... bottle of sake. it was a small novelty bottle of coconut lemongrass sake, on sale at fred meyer, that sounded both repulsive and intriguing. i always bring liquor when i visit my parents. once again, i enable. my weak justification: i know they'll use it. and it's easy. and i am a fucking asshole.
i love my parents to death. and she and i did have some good talks. but, as always, i felt sad and rather worried as i drove away.