Current mood:	disappointed
Current music:	Billy Dean - I Miss Billy The Kid

Mother
I really only seem to post here when really good/bad things happen to me. I guess I just like to use this as a way to vent some of my energy/frustration out of me and onto the rest of you. So, thanks, for taking some time out of your day to hear my highs/lows.

So far I have just plain not had time or energy to post much about my very long sojourn to Europe, but basically I have now been here for over 2 months, I have gone through a lot of different towns, stayed with a lot of very different, very wonderful people who I can now call friends. It has been a good time overall, and I really do like to travel, but now I really do want to come home. I am tired. Especially after last night.

My last two trip segments are Rome and Germany. I was going to go to Amsterdam with Jared and Carter, but we never quite made it up there and my mother decided to come over to Europe after all (she was planning on coming to France for a few weeks originally, but could not make it). My grandmother has never seen Rome, though she has been all over most of the rest of Europe, and my (not so) little brother James decided to come along as well. So I was to have my mother, brother, and grandmother come join me in Rome for 7 days. Sounds good. I really have not had a chance to spend much time with any of them in about 6 years, and I do miss them. In fact, I do not think I have been in the same place as any of them for more than 1 day at a time in the last 6 years, and no more then 2-3 times each year. My grandmother is getting pretty old, and my mother brought along a wheelchair for her, and my brother got his plane ticket paid for so that he could push her around and make sure that she could get to wherever we were going without much trouble.

So I showed up here from Germany last Thursday morning and met them at the airport when the got in. We took a cab downtown to a nice little hotel just outside of the Roman Forum (really old place with really old things that I really like). We spend the next 4 days touring around Rome, seeing St. Peters, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, etc. Grandma can get around ok with the wheelchair, and things go fairly well. My brother goes out and finds a nice little Irish Pub that he can get Guiness at, and he hangs out there in the evenings while I usually spend the evenings wandering around Rome.

Last night (Sunday) I head out to said Irish Pub to spend some time with my brother. It was about 5:30, James had just gotten there, and we both spend the next 5 hours or so drinking Guiness, playing pool, and just chatting about whatever. It was a really nice time and I learned a lot about my brother and his life. I already knew the physical details (live-in GF with daughter, construction worker, lives in my dad's old house, etc) but I had not really ever had a chance to talk to him about it all. He seems quite happy with his life, but he is terribly missing his GF and her daughter. I am impressed at the depth of his dedication and love for her. She is a very lucky lady.

I took off a bit earlier then he did and headed back for the hotel and fell asleep. I woke up to him crying (missing GF and her daughter horribly, remember?) and to my mother telling him to be quite (she was in a different room, but had decided to come in to comfort/get him to stop crying). She was not helping and her "shush"ing him was starting to go far past comforting into commands, as if his crying was embarassing her. So I sat up and said "Holly, please leave, you are not helping." (we have always called our mother by her name). She tells me to shut up. I say no, that she needs to leave. She tells me to go back to sleep. I repeat once more that she needs to leave and go back to her room. She tells me that I am an asshole.

I decided to wait and see what happens. Holly has stopped with her shushing and just sits there for mabey a minute and a half. Then she says (in her best commanding voice) "If you don't stop crying, I am going to call a doctor." I think and say "What the fuck?" I then tell her to get out, that she has no idea what she is doing, and that she is not helping things at all. She responds by telling me that I am a mean, angry, ungratful person that she does not want as a son. I tell her that this is not about me, it is about James, and that if she wants to discuss me that we can do that tomorrow, but tonight James is the only concern. She continues to rail on me, telling me that she does not want me in her life, and she slaps me across the face while my brother continues to cry. I continue to tell her to get out, which she finally does, but not before making a few more choice comments on her feelings to me. It was a little longer then this shows, but I cannot remember it perfectly. Those were the major events, and they might have been in a slightly different order.

My mother and I have always had a fairly good relationship, and while we have clashed, it has very rarely degenerated into any kind of name-calling (I think I can remember 2 other times in my life) and she has never said any of the things that she said last night. To say that it hurt like hell is an understatement. I am not sure why she said what she said, and I do not know what I did to bring it on. When she left, my brother just said "Thank you". I would do it again if I had it to do over again. My mother can be a mean lady when she wants to.

This morning we were going to go on a bus tour to Pompei, the small town south of Rome that was covered in ash in 73 AD by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. I was there 9 years ago, and I loved it. I was very much looking forward to going there again. Instead, I got up this morning and booked a flight to go back to Germany ASAP. My mother expects me to get over this and be back to the same place that we were before. I won't. I will not be talking to her unless necessary until she decides to offer me an apology. I do not think my mother has ever apologized to me for her actions. I am having a fairly hard time of this, because I do not know if she will apologize ever. I do not want to forever lose my mother, as I love her, but I will not walk away from the words that she threw at me last night.

I have to stay here one more night, as the earliest flight to Germany that I could get leaves tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. I am not sure what I will be doing tonight. I guess I will just wait and see how my day rolls out. I know that I want to see some more sights before I leave Rome, but I am not sure if I am emotionally up to it. I have not had a chance to let the tears that I am holding back fall, but I am sure it is only a matter of time.