Uncle Paul Memorial Picnic

If only I could tell you how badly I wanted to post this to my socials yesterday: If my family gatherings have taught me anything, it's that there is no age limit to showing up without your teeth in. Insensitive? Definitely. Mean spirited? Maybe. Funny? Your mileage may vary. It cracked me up, anyway. But—the person it directly references is someone I am actually Facebook friends with. He's also actually a genuinely nice guy. And crucially, there could very well be a health reason for it that he has no control over. I did notice he seems to have lost quite a bit of weight (as has his wife, one of my cousins), and I find myself just hoping that it's been done via healthy means. Jennifer noted that he's posted on Facebook about getting what he calls "Gogo Juice," and believe me, he's not an exotic dancer. He may be on dialysis or something similar. In any case, it's a good lesson on not just being careful what you say about people online, but judging people on their appearance at all. As I just demonstrated, I don't have any idea what this guy's entire circumstances are that may have necessitated him showing up without any teeth. Or, maybe he's just weirdly casual about it. That's the point, though: I don't know! I will say this, though: my family seems to have quite the history with missing teeth. And I'm talking both sides—Mom and Bill, as well as my dad's side. Whether it was Mom and Bill, or Grandma McQuilkin back when she was alive, they had a tendency to leave their false teeth out just because they found it more comfortable. I can tell you, it was less comfortable for me. Watching a person eat food without their teeth in is not a pleasant experience. It sort of looks like their mouth is caving in on their face. Aunt Penny was kind of the worst. To her credit, I haven't seen her do this in a few years. But she used to delight in freaking me out by pushing her upper teeth quickly in and out of her mouth with her tongue. It was truly heinous. Now, the worst Aunt Penny can manage is . . . just being an old lady, kind of broadly speaking. She walked around at Uncle Paul's memorial picnic at Mason Lake on Saturday, taking her own digital photos because she said no one ever sends her pictures of these things, so she has to take some of herself. But what was she taking pictures with? I kid you not, a flip phone. I didn't even realize they still make them. I suppose if pressed I would assume they do, but I never think about them. It still felt like she had stepped out of 2002 to take all our pictures. We're all so used to people getting photos with the signature rectangular-shape of a smartphone, it was slightly jarring to be facing the open half of a flip phone. Are the photo capabilities on those phones any better now? Back when I had one, photos were incredibly grainy and poor quality. There was another thing with Aunt Penny. She came up to me and asked, "Did you replace the cologne?" At first I was thinking, What the hell is she talking about? Then she mentioned my breaking Shobhit's men's perfume, although she tripped over how to refer to him as my spouse: "Your wife? Your husband? Wife?" Sherri interjected for me: "Husband." I finally realized she was referring to the bottle of cologne I broke after Shobhit brought it back from India in April, but I remained confused, because Aunt Penny is not on Facebook. I was like, "How the hell do you know about that?" She said, "Tammy told me about it! It's the only way I get any news about this family." So, apparently Tammy and Erin were so amused by this story, they had to pass it on to Aunt Penny. Then Aunt Penny brought it up casually to me as though I would naturally know she'd heard about it. Moving on. I probably shouldn't share this bit, but I want a record of it and have nowhere else to store the memory. I guess I won't say who said this, although people who know us will probably be able to figure it out. I had just finished taking a video clip walking around Dad and his three remaining siblings (see the clip at the bottom of this post), and walked back into the small picnic shelter at Mason Lake Recreation Area. I approached a certain someone, and they said, "I was about to say something insensitive." Oh come on, don't tease me like that! "Well you have to tell me now!" I said. Glancing toward Uncle Paul's remaining siblings still standing out on the grass in a group, this person whispered, "Who's next?" Maybe it doesn't seem that funny to you here. But oh my god, I found it hilarious. We both laughed so hard, trying to stifle it a bit so as not to be too blatantly distracting to anyone even remotely near us, we just about hurt ourselves. I said, "This is clear proof that you and I are related," and it only made us both laugh even harder. This person's, let's say, significant other was sitting on the other side of them, completely stone faced and deeply unamused. That only made it funnier to us. I'm literally giggling even as I write this. I am going to hell. So I said, "Well, if I had to make a bet . . ." and then I said who I genuinely think will likely be next. I could be completely wrong, though. Thinking about it now, about the only thing I feel I could likely be right about is that Dad will probably be last. Sure, he's gained some weight, but all the others have either comorbidities, some level of (albeit slight) mental decline, or seriously unhealthy habits that Dad does not have. He's easily the healthiest of all of them, probably by a mile. Maybe part of this is wishful thinking just because he's my dad, but I still think I'm right. He's also the youngest, something I can well attest to being a convenient position for a multitude of reasons. Uncle Paul was the second-oldest. It doesn't necessarily surprise me that he went first, also for a multitude of reasons. Aunt Raenae was the oldest and born in 1948. So, she'll be 74 this summer. When Uncle Paul passed, he was 71. I don't remember which years precisely Uncle Garth or Aunt Penny were born, only that they were next in line, in that order, so Uncle Garth would have to have been between 1951 and 1953, and Aunt Penny between 1952 and 1954. Dad was born in 1955. Uncle Paul is also, to put it diplomatically, the one the rest of the family had the most dubious feelings about. I was told at one point yesterday, "He was better earlier," as in, earlier in life. The general consensus seems to be that he was more tolerable prior to marrying Sarah, in the weirdest wedding I ever attended, in 2003. The fact that Uncle Paul and Sarah handcuffed themselves to each other before walking back down the aisle after their wedding ceremony in the church Grandma and Grandpa McQuilkin had attended for years is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway, Sarah is, to put it mildly, unpopular. I learned something new about that wedding this weekend. Apparently Sarah said something stunning to Sherri that day. Dad and Sherri were separated at the time, but they both still came to the wedding. And Sarah actually leaned over to say to Sherri, "Don't worry, I won't let them kick you out of the family!" What the fuck? Not only that, but apparently Sarah said this when they greeted her right after the ceremony. Jesus Christ. This was after they walked back down the aisle, but then they came back to the front again, and worked their way out again and this time greeting and hugging people. Still the wrong thing to say to Sherri at the wrong time. I learned it's even visible—if not audible—on the home video of the wedding. You can see the moment in this clip, at about the 3:27 mark. Incredibly, that was 19 years ago. I actually don't know how old Sarah is, but Uncle Paul would have been 52. I'm pretty sure this was his third marriage, but it certainly would have been the longest-lasting. Ben and Andrew's mother passed away, I don't know how long after they got married, but I know it was when Ben and Andrew were little; this was a woman I never knew. He then married Caren, who was Jennifer and Heidi's mom. And I guess you could say that Uncle Paul raised six children, because after the state took their two eldest away from Andrew and Cassandra, Uncle Paul and Sarah wound up adopting them. They apparently always wanted Ben, Andrew, Jennifer and Heidi to think of the two younger kids as their siblings, but they were never comfortable with that. On paper, though, legally, that's what they were. In effect, those youngest two kids were simultaneously Uncle Paul's children and his grandchildren. To the kids, though, Uncle Paul was their dad. The youngest is trans, by the way, and/or nonbinary: his Facebook page "about" says "He/xe." (And I know many will look down on me for this, but I can't with the "xe" thing. I'm much more comfortable with "they," and even that takes some real getting used to.) To say that this element has been a shit show would be an understatement: this kid has never gotten the support he needs, not from his family, not from his school, not from his community. Even Jennifer continues to use "she/her" pronouns without thinking about it, but I don't judge her too harshly for it. It could definitely be argued that Jennifer could make more of an effort on this front, but she never had a close relationship with this kid, who is now 17, and the kid has never even had full access to the necessary vocabulary to fully articulate an identity that his parents in particular refused to acknowledge. (I have a feeling his dad was at least a little more accepting than his mom, but I don't know.) This makes anything even close to consistency among the rest of the family and how they regard him virtually impossible. That said, as I already noted, the pronouns are still right there on his Facebook page, in stark black and white. The flip side of that is an extended family of people who don't have a working understanding of these issues and will typically take their cues from the parents and not from the children. In short, it's a mess, and I deeply feel for that kid, who will almost certainly grow up fucked up for many reasons not even related to being trans. Anyway, the event overall was actually perfectly pleasant, with the minor exception of the presence of Andrew, whose horrible history is well known to some and, to some others, completely unknown. We're talking confirmed physical abuse of his own children (hence their being adopted) and sexual abuse of other children, many of them in the extended family, at least a couple of whom made the specific choice not to come to this memorial because they knew he would be there. I even debated whether to come myself when I found out he would be there. This guy has sent me multiple Facebook friend requests over the years and I have always ignored them. Being a victim of sexual molestation as a child myself (not by him), I never know what might be a trigger, and I find it best just avoided. But, I made the choice to be there for Jennifer's sake. Andrew was not there for very long, and although there was at least one moment when I thought I might risk accidentally looking him in the eye, I never had to interact with him—I successfully stayed away from him. Even Jennifer avoided him all day, partly because her boyfriend Matthew made sure to stick by her to help ward him off, which seemed to have worked. There was just one moment when I was walking to the bathrooms and I thought it might be him walking back. Instead of passing him, I turned toward the small bridge that goes over the nearby creek instead, and then doubled back after he passed. Jennifer had kind of gone off on Ben when he said Andrew would be coming, because she knew some people would not come if he were there. She even messaged me to ask if I would come if he did, and I said I didn’t know. And the thing is, no matter what horrible things Andrew has done in his past (or even his present, fuck if I know), I would never insist that he could not come to his own father's memorial. It's still his dad; the guy is just my uncle, and I wasn't even overly fond of him. We're talking about a man I un-friended on Facebook for his casual use of the N-word. If I came, it would be for Jennifer. And that's what I did. Jennifer had suggested she and Ben and Andrew just do something the three of them only (Heidi died unexpectedly in 2018, at the age of 40), outside of the memorial picnic, so Andrew could honor their dad but the rest of us could experience the memorial without his awkward presence. This seemed reasonable to me, but in the end Andrew insisted he was coming. Jennifer was "feeling triggered" by Andrew the day of the memorial and avoided him herself, as I said, and at first couldn't explain why that was the case but she would have been comfortable getting together with just him and Ben. We were messaging over Facebook yesterday and she told me she figured it out: If it was [just us three] getting together for dad it was about dad. I felt like Andrew being there Saturday was about Andrew. That distinction made total sense to me, and she's right: having been presented with a reasonable alternative, Andrew still insisted on coming, and thereby made it about him. Which really indicates to me he's really learned nothing. As I said to Jennifer, if there had been any indication Andrew had learned anything then I might have been able to grant him some measure of grace . . . but, nope. Now, there's also the fact that people don't always act rationally when in the process of grieving. I'll concede that much. But, there was still clearly a correct choice here, and it was not the choice he made. This also means I will likely never even be faced with the possibility of having to see him again, and I'm cool with that. Andrew chatted with a few people during the short amount of time he was there, many of them maybe not fully aware of his history. Valerie politely talked to him for a minute, I saw from a distance. I guess he stayed in his car for a while right after arriving. Apparently he lives in Texas now, which is a huge state so it's not especially narrowed down; I don't know exactly where. No matter where, though, it does mean Ben was mistaken when he stood to say a few words and declared that his family, having come from Southern California, traveled from farthest away. Apparently Jennifer knew immediately what I figured out later, and immediately whispered to Uncle Garth, who came from Cheyenne, Wyoming, "You came from further away." But when Jennifer and I were discussing it yesterday, we realized Andrew had come from the farthest, having come from Texas. That means Andrew won that contest. Dammit! Anyway, before I forget, I want to do an Uncle Paul Memorial Picnic Roundup! 1. Sara (Uncle Paul's widow)
2. Sara and Paul's youngest [name redacted; their oldest was left at home, having declared he wasn't coming]
3. Katherine, Sara's friend
4. Ben (Uncle Paul's oldest)
5. Sandra (Ben's wife)
6. Tyler (Ben and Sandra's oldest)
7. Blake (Ben and Sandra's youngest)
8. Andrew (Uncle Paul's 2nd)
9. Jennifer (Uncle Paul's 3rd)
10. Matthew (Jennifer's boyfriend)
11. Hope (Jennifer's oldest)
12. Chase (Jennifer's middle child)
13. Ian (Jennifer's youngest)
14. Aunt Raenae (Dad's oldest sibling)
15. Uncle Garth (Grandma and Grandpa's 3rd)
16. Glorya (Garth's wife)
17. Aunt Penny (Grandma and Grandpa's 4th)
18. Tammy (Penny's only child)
19. Erin (Tammy's husband)
20. Dad (Grandma and Grandpa's 5th)
21. Sherri (Dad's wife)
22. Me
23. Aunt Arliss (Grandpa McQuilkin's youngest sibling, 18 years his junior!, one of only two in that generation let)
24. Cindy (the late great-Uncle Lynn's daughter, thus Dad and his siblings' paternal cousin)
25. Kelley (Cindy's daughter)
26. Rachael (Cindy's daughter)
27. Lesley (great-Aunt Roxanne's son, though raised by the late great-Uncle Lynn, if I have that correct—either way Dad and his siblings' paternal cousin, though he's only two or three years from my age)
28. Valerie (Auntie Rose's daughter, thus Dad and his siblings' maternal cousin) I'm pretty sure that's all that attended. Twenty-seven is actually a larger number than I might have guessed; it's a good sized group—albeit a far cry from the 62 people who attended the scattering of Grandma and Grandpa's ashes in 2016. That had been at Twanoh State Park though, and when Jennifer hosed another picnic in this same small shelter at Mason Lake the very next day, there were 18. In fact, yesterday I created a collection of all my photo albums of family gatherings out at Mason Lake since 2000, now numbering 7—five of those just since 2016, starting with that next-day event after the scattering of Grandma and Grandpa's ashes. Attendance since 2016 has ranged from 18 to 33; Jennifer reserved the smaller shelter in 2016, 2017 and this year (2022) but had the larger one in 2018 and 2019. It seems unlikely we'll do the larger one again, if she does indeed do another one of these. I was telling Jennifer about my "Second Biannual Family Vacation" for just Dad and Sherri & descendants this September, and she noted that her immediate family doesn’t have anything like that and it makes her sad. Even these more-extended family events at Mason Lake are dwindling in attendance numbers, largely because of time passing and older generations largely dying out (literally). I kind of hope there's still a few more of these Mason lake events left in us, even if they are smaller, which is fine if it means some of the less popular people won't be around. I suppose there was at least one upside to Sarah's attendance at this event: she didn't wear her stupid MAGA hat. Back when she and I were still Facebook friends, more than once she posted comments on my posts criticizing Donald Trump where she would say "I'm glad he's the president." Ugh. (Interactions with Uncle Paul weren't much better; he had a tendency to post directly, personally insulting comments on my posts, clearly thinking he was "joking" but just causing bile to raise in my throat; it was his use of the N-word that finally pushed me over the edge to wash my hands of any connection to him on socials.) Sarah did walk up to say hi to me, and I actually felt bad for her—she was clearly still having a tough time of it, and no matter who she is, she still deserves empathy as a grieving widow. Sara apparently did bring Uncle Paul's ashes with her to the picnic. I don't know why. Jennifer wondered if she planned to scatter them there, but I think she took them home with her again when she left, not very long after she arrived. I had asked her how she was holding up, and she just raised her hand to give the "so-so" signal. She was quite visibly very, very sad. It reminded me of when I saw Bill for the first time after Mom's death, back in the summer of 2020. There was something you could just see in his face, like his soul had been crushed. The same was the case with Sarah. Backing up a bit, I drove Shobhit to drop him off at work before 9 a.m. on Saturday, and then I drove the short bit to the north to the Ballard PCC so I could get a few things from the Deli there to bring with me, just to be absolutely sure I'd have something I could eat at the picnic, as a vegetarian. I got a half-pint each of crispy tofu and smoked mozzarella pasta; and a quart container of vegetarian Caesar salad so I'd have at least something green. Almost no one else took from any of them; I think the only ones who did were Dad and Sherri, who each did go ahead and at least try the smoked mozzarella pasta. Anyway, I then drove straight down to Olympia first, as I wanted to stop by the house and try to find photos of the two trips Dad and Sherri took Christopher and me on to Victoria, and take photos of them with my phone for my own records. Apparently after Dad had seen my first text about this, he had turned to Sherri and said, "Good luck with that!"—because they probably have forty or more old photo albums and they are in no way organized. Well, I knew what hallway closet they were in, and I walked straight to it within minutes of my arrival. I flipped through about half of them before I actually found the photos of the 1991 trip, and thankfully when I did that I had decided to work my way from the far right of the shelf and back instead of from the left: they were in the first album I pulled from that shelf! Had I gone from the left, it would have taken me far longer to find them. And then, I found the 1985 trip within another two albums or so. Once I finally found them, Dad and Sherri had already left to meet up with Aunt Raenae who needed gas money; Uncle Garth and Glorya, who are staying with them for an ungodly amount of time (about two weeks—they couldn't even tell Jennifer exactly when they'll be leaving beyond "next week," just whenever they feel like it I guess), had also headed out. So when I was finally able to start pulling photos out to set on the living room carpet and snap pictures of them (which, amazingly, seems to work even better than literally scanning photos in a scanner), I was left in the house alone. I found even more than I had even hoped for, 16 shots each for both 1991 and 1985. So now, and this was what I was aiming for and what makes me very happy, my Victoria collection of photo albums on Flickr is complete, with all seven of my lifetime trips to Victoria, spanning 37 years, from 1985 to 2022. Although I found and took my copies of the photos in reverse order, the 1985 photo album can now be found here, and the 1991 trip here. There's a few great photos in there, my favorites from 1985 being this shot of Christopher at age 12, wearing a VICTORIA hoodie—I don't think I have any other photo of him from that age—and this shot of Dad and Sherri, at probably ages 29 and 33, looking exhausted on the Black Ball Ferry; and my favorites from 1991 being this shot of Dad and me on a bench (ages 35 and 14) and this shot of Christopher and me on a footbridge (ages 17 and 14), both at Crystal Gardens. Eleven of the 16 shots from 1991 were taken at Crystal Garden, the building for which still stands as I discovered last weekend, but which has not been open to the public with its exotic animals for many years, according to Dad. Dad had said I might have wanted to come back and go through the photos when I "had more time," but who knows when that would be? I wanted to get this done soon after my last trip to Victoria, and I don't have a clue when I will next be down to the house in Olympia—it could be sometime this summer; it could be not until Christmas, for all I know. I know I was still kind of pressed for time; it was close to 11 a.m. when I got to the house, and the picnic was officially to start at 1:00. I took my final photo of the old Victoria pictures at about a quarter till noon, and had nearly an hour to drive from Olympia to Mason Lake. It all worked out fine in the end and I arrived shortly before 1:00. I opted to take the ferry from Bremerton home, even though it made the entire trip slightly longer than driving across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, but it cut out a good hour of actual driving, as I could just take a lovely ride on the ferry. The Bremerton terminal is just a roughly 45-minute drive from Mason Lake, and then the terminal on the Seattle waterfront is right downtown, so just a 10-minute drive home from there. I did leave a lot earlier than necessary, though. After Shobhit and I had barely missed the 11 a.m. ferry from Tsawwassen to Victoria last weekend because the boat had sold out, I did not want to miss the 6:40 p.m. ferry out of Bremerton for the same reason, with the next ferry not until 9:00. So, I left Mason Lake at 5:30, shortly after Ben stood up to make his speech about his dad (clearly illustrating how different people had wildly different experiences with that man), so that I would get to the Bremerton terminal shortly after 6:00 and be sure I got on. Well, I needn't have worried; I could have stayed another good half an hour, because this ferry didn't even sell out the bottom deck! I took a photo of the completely empty upper deck, which was kind of fun. I really wish I'd have thought to bring my shoulder bag with me. If I'd been thinking, I would have: I already planned to take the ferry back, so I should have brought my library book for reading on the boat ride. Plus, I had made Dad a Father's Day card on Friday evening, and put it in the bag thinking that would ensure I wouldn't forget the card! But then when I drove Shobhit to work Saturday morning, I only grabbed my phone charger and my jacket, thinking in the moment that was all I needed. Duh. I was going to just leave the Father's Day card at Dad's on Saturday, but now I was going to have to mail it, and even wait until the day after Father's Day to do it! I texted him images of it yesterday. I still put it out in the mail today anyway. As for yesterday, aside from doing laundry and finishing up the captions on all the photos I took on Saturday (so that's finished up, at least), the highlight was Laney coming over, to watch the 1997 movie Scream 2, which, just like the first one, held up surprisingly well and was very entertaining, particularly for a nineties horror sequel. We'll watch Scream 3 next in a couple of weeks, and I remember finding that one to be the weakest of the three, and it probably still is, but maybe it will still exceed expectations after all this time like the first two did. [posted 12:21 pm]