Gosh.

I feel like it's been a lifetime since I've written but it's only been a few days. Sorry about the password protection. I think that's over now. It's too much, you know, to have to hide like that here. I hated it.

I'm home now. In the place where I grew up, but I hardly know anyone anymore. It wasn't so long ago, that I ruled the roost here. I paraded around town in my Catholic School girl uniform, causing all sorts of trouble. Wherever I went - the grocery store, the video store, even for frozen yogurt, people knew me. Sometimes, they knew of me and they would stare as my nasty teenage friends I threw open shopkeepers doors with the abandon of teenagers who thought the earth revolved around the sun and the sun, revolved around them.

Funny thing about teenagers, you pretty much all think like that. Every situation is the most embarrassing or the most fun. But those of us beyond our teenage years should let you in on a secret - it ain't no thing, honey. And you ain't no Miss Thang either.

Nobody told me that back then, when I was making other teenagers miserable and carrying on with my bad self. But now I know. And I laugh when I see those who are mere reflections of myself.

So I am here, anonymous. I walk around town, unrecognized. No one stares, no one whispers, no one shouts "hello!" Everything looks the same and completely different. It's bittersweet coming back here.

I think about calling one or two of those friends that I thought I could never live without in high school. But my next thought asks me what I have to say to them? What's new with me? I'm not married. I'm not dating anyone. I'm not serious, frankly, about anything in my life.

The only thing in my life that I own is...I own nothing. No car, no house. God that's a depressing thought. Let's move on.

Here's what would happen. I would go over to one of their houses. They would ask me about New York and the famous people I meet. I would tell stories. They would laugh and look at me with admiration, because I am the one who got out of here. They would try to imagine what my life is like. They would fill me in on everyone else we hung out with back in the day. We would have a good time and I would go home and they would shut the door and they would return their comfortable lives with their new families, and I would be...a memory.

A night of entertainment for them. A performing seal. No thanks.

Choosing the road less traveled is only hard, when you return to the well traveled one. The one everyone else stayed on. And you go back there and you remember all of the landmarks and you envision what you would have been like if you had stayed on that road. Married, two kids. Homeowner. Secure. In a routine. Fulfilling the prophecy that parents expect for their kids.

Except, you see, that could never have been my prophecy. I believe, that it wasn't either of parents prophecies either. But the times were different back then, and that's what you did. You went with the plan.

I listen to the stories of my grandmother and my aunts and my parents. And I understand, that they understand. They were all like me, you see. High-spirited, adventurers, wild. But the times and the circumstances limited them.

And then came me. I am no more wild than they - possibly less. But I was the first one born in a time where this lifestyle was acceptable. Society says it's okay for the girl to be single longer now. It's okay to move to a big city and to travel alone. Women can work like men and dress like women.

I came from a line of headstrong, beautiful women. Those before me, were much more beautiful than I. They took off in a huff. They left their men and took off and expected their men to come after them and collect them - and they did. I like those stories.

My grandmother, in the 30's and forties was a model for a big fashion house. When her father pissed her off, she'd pack a bag and take a train to NYC - shack up with one of the other models and work. Unfortunately, she spent more than she made, so when the money was done and the men bored her, she called home and told them to pick her up. And so someone would be sent to fetch her in a car. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

My aunt, when she got married, was annoyed when she couldn't find her father in the next room. He'd had a couple of drinks and was entertaining a group. So rather than wait or send someone to fetch him, she walked herself up the isle to be married. Now that's tuff.

Her sister married a man her father didn't like. So rather than break the news, she printed the news of the engagement of the local paper. My grandfather found out after all his friends had bought him "congratulatory" rounds at the corner bar. It was only after he was drunk that he found out what they were celebrating. He came home, after the bar had closed, enraged, but the girls had all locked and barricaded themselves into a room upstairs, anticipating the confrontation. They laughed when he tried to kick the door down. This, I would imagine, pissed the man off even more. But my grandmother waited up to go head to head with him, and I imagine quite a row ensued. They next day, all was calm. My aunt and uncle have been married for more than 55 years now.

Their mother, my grandmother, had a bunch of sisters. They all caroused until late in their twenties (spinsters in those days!) and their father thought they'd never marry off. Finally they did, and my grandmother married a man much younger than she. Drinkers. They all married drinkers.

Anyway, one of the girls married a bad drinker. One who liked to talk with his fists when he came home from work. She didn't stand for that shit and she gave him fists right back. But she wasn't a match for him. So one day, all the sisters were over for coffee. And they saw what he'd done to her. And they good and pissed. And they got plenty drunk. My father was maybe 7 years old then. He was sitting and playing as they stewed and stewed. Well, this louse picked the wrong time to come home that day, because he walked into that kitchen and the sisters all pounced on him. According to my Dad, the sisters beat the living daylights out of the guy. And even after they knocked him out on the floor they continued to kick the shit of him. My Dad said he ran and hid under a table in the living room and that the guy finally was able to break away and drag himself out of the house, and the sisters were screaming "Make sure you tell everyone who did that to you" and laughing like the heathens they were. He never laid a hand on her again.

Graveyard love, they call that now. That's the fuel of my family tree. They loved and hated with great passion. They fought each other but more importantly, they stuck together to fight the outsiders.

I come from tough stock. I like that. Because I know that if they survived, I will too. I'm just a modern day evolution of those women, all of whom found love late in life. When they choose to let their men in.

I would defend anyone of them in any way I had to. And I know they would do the same for me. Whether it was a louse of a man or a bitch of a woman or a nasty business associate.

That's what family is about to me. And there's no one I'd rather spend Christmas with than them.

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