home? It is my mother's home. My mother's mother's home. My great grandmother's home. All of them born and raised in the same little house that fell in the flood that drowned my grandmother six years ago. Why does it hurt to come here? I failed Del Rio in the poems. The horror, the sorrow, the filth, the stench, the work, the dogs. I don't think I see it. Or I see it as I always do, arriving, driving in, the misery and what it has to do with me, my roots, and the shock of it shoves me into guilt and pity--because no this is not my life but my mother's--and more guilt for not being one who could live here and survive it. They drink? Of course they do. I drink with them in the evenings and begin to see myself within it and less saddened. I take pictures and think of writing Del Rio, really writing it this time, and it comforts me. But that's what I do to overcome everything. Write it so it doesn't hurt. But I don't get it right. It's too difficult, too painful, to get it right.
I am thinking of you, Darren, and your father. So many lost fathers now. Barbara's father died last Saturday. I am thinking of so many lost fathers while I am here with my mother. It is Christmas Eve. I am blessed.
Blessings to you, my darlings. I am thinking of all of you.
