Reversal Of Fortune

We don’t often notice when an annoyance goes away. Nobody ever woke up thinking, “Hooray! The paper-cut is healed!”

Still, when a car alarm up the street stops making noise, it’s a relief. When the kid behind me in line at Starbucks turned down his iPod so I couldn’t hear it anymore, I was ready to clap for joy. Moving along that spectrum, what does one do when a decades-long whine suddenly stops?

Those of you who know me in real life know my family situation. I’ve been pretty much estranged from my extended family since my father died in 1993. My mother was too, but not as dramatically. Yes, I tried to start dialogues over the years, but now I just send cards in December and gifts for occasions if I find out about them. All that changed last night.

My cousin (my father’s sister’s oldest son)’s wife called to invite me, Robert and Melva to Thanksgiving dinner. We can’t go, but that’s beside the point. We were asked, and in a sincerely welcoming way. This is huge. For seventeen years I felt that none of them liked me, which they’re perfectly entitled not to do. It still rankled. That rankling has gone. Like with the car alarm up the street, where there was a problem, now there is calm.

I’ll stop before I start to sound like a Hallmark card, or before I look it in the mouth and wonder why, and why now. But I really am thankful for this.