My natural dynamic with the men of today is kinda weird. It has nothing to do with size, contrary to popular opinion lol. I have 4’9″, 4’11 & 5’1″ violent lil asian enforcer women blood churning through these veins {tho those motherfuckers do tend to be lethal themselves in defiant outrage due to compactness } too , matrilineally.

It has to do with my granddads and our sparse yet potent relationships. Their girls were no less than their boys, if that makes sense. & they both were strong dudes who married their equals who gave as hard and soft as they got. & my Uncles followed suit, with their first wives, at least.

So I never learned to do that feigning pantomime.

Those two men are the only ones I checked on before they crossed.

I came back for both. Went back to Cleveland. Just to hang out with one final time, instinctively, & respectively.

& with both, regardless of what had been whirling around madness-wise in my absence prior to my short, blunt returns…both were just…calm with me when I came. Home. Both sides of the blood knew I was only back for them. In hindsight, it was like ….I gave them their papers or something, said bashfully.

In hindsight, I see the weirdness on the outskirts of the meetups, because I went and had alone time with each, in houses fulla scurrying kids and cousins bemoaning the end was nigh. There was never any question of me sitting up in a clutch with the rest of the fam, looking all sorry-faced. Was never wedged in like that, with either side.

But in both situations…both granddads, I just recall them…with me, suddenly relaxed. No signs of the sicknesses harbingering them towards their so-called “ends.”

My mom’s dad… had dementia as he rounded the bend. & it had freaked all of them out badly. But I took it differently. interacted with him in it differently. Because I remembered. They’d tried to treat that man like shit my entire life. His wife & kids. & he’d done some shit to deserve it in a sense…but by the time I got there…he was a stranger in his own home. Iced out by a virgo wife he’d wronged to the point of no return, but ambivalent to it, doing his own things in his Vulcan lair. I got the ‘memo’ but said memo was coming from the same folks who were assholes to me as even a little kid, so it was mostly waved off. I’d go hang out in his Cadillac tinkering lair while he was rebuilding shit for sport well into his 70s & 80s and have peace, picking the different varietals of grapes he grew beyond it (and was flipping into wine unbeknownst to me my entire life).

He almost killed my mom. The Princess. When she’d shamefully shown up pregnant from her first time with the -this was homecoming king & queen level stuff-four years of high school love of lives stuff…changing the course of life for …who he’d raised her[his last daughter] to be. I mean got his gun level shit. She was leaping fences running away from his bullets level shit. They made up. Of course. When my brother came.

Hindsight? I’m laughing whilst writing this…because she was an utter bitch to me for so fucking long out of jealousy…But I do see that’s probably where she splintered the fuck out. & it’d explain her harsh reaction to having birthed a princess, if all that leaping and dodging buckshot had made her disengage from her princess core in the realest way. She had a son. My big brother. But when I look back in this way, at the nature of her psychosis, I can see her as having tried to angrily make me a boy as keyed to feeling usurped by my presence. Especially due to my being the firstborn on my dad’s side having had the hallelujah chorus erupt. The chaos she kicked off was masterminded in league with the last born daughter of that line. Another scorned princess of sorts, whose kingdom had already sorely failed her. The recipe for disaster was in place long before I touched down, low-key branded as a royal usurper.

I got a flash of the last convo I had with her father, the one that forever changed how I even view dementia and Alzheimers . His Minihim took over [his version of Minime. His innerchild]. He became him in my face and told me all the tales of him being a kid- He was one of the Aboriginal Americans that were listed as colored at birth in 1909 trying to effectively eradicate them from the matrilineal land rights of their[ generally, and specifically his] mother(s), and was always an outsider…but a stylish one lol. He was entrusting me with those tales. Knew I’d use them before I had any real Idea I’d be doing what I do now. I was 19, in design school at UC-DAAP. I can still see every frame of what he told me, too. That world he lived in.

It changed how I saw dementia because he was playing back a mental tape.

Vividly. Full recollection. HD, if you will.

But because of the only angle I had ever been given into this man, had ever really bothered to ask for… there was an understanding of who he lived with and how they treated him. And please understand he was not cucked by it, there was silent, throbbing, oddly terrified hostility between them all- my take was just “Of course he’s hanging out back in that section of his tape. It’s gobsmackingly, stunningly beautiful. Why would he want to spend his last days here, where he’s angrily trudged through a hell he helped make for a good 25 yrs?”

But the weird flash I got….was that…not only was him telling me the tale he did giving me my inheritance in a sense…Like from where he stood he could see what I was going to do, and wanted me outfitted with all the plumage he could muster to make use of it…but that, in a wholly different way… he forgave himself…for trying to kill my mother. Even though she’d done the things she went on to do trying to snuff my light out… my getting through any fucking way, as vibrant and as headstrong as I have always defiantly and comically been…registered somehow to him.

Purely…in that inheritance session.

His story is Such a delicious portion of pending chronic.

---

He and my dad’s Dad are the ones who check on me the most often from the other side. Makes sense. The ESP amplification came from both of their bloodlines.

My dad’s dad is a trip though. He’s my favorite trip. He never had an issue with my letting go of his familial name. Ever. Knew I dug that last name. His line. But God ensured he had no illusions about the release. He actually tried to kill the familial abuser too. Like… for real. My brother’s best friend died saving the abuser from him, in spite of how the abuser had all but destroyed my big brother leading up to it. Weird how the circles spin.

When I returned to visit my granddad for the last time he was on house arrest. For having almost stabbed her to death. For what she’d done to the grandkids. His grandkids. Even he knew she could only partially claim it was due to what had happened to her. Even he got that was no fucking excuse.

I was his first grandkid. That whole exchange where Graindaiddy sobers up and walks lil Anukai to school, sees that she inherited his sight and can see her lil friend was about us. Where he found out what she’d done and said “he’d kill her” for it.

He was also the man who, after I’d gotten fiscally emancipated and blocked my parents from profiting off my ass tax-wise at college whilst refusing to pay for shit and decided I was transferring to school up in nyc on my own fn dime, with time abroad in between[also on my own fn dime] , after my dad and his siblings tried to rally to block me[ I was technically 20 and there were nefarious ways]...shut ALL of them and their hijinks the fuck down. Snarled that I’d be safer in Europe with all those crazy white folks than I would ever be trapped [by them] in Cleveland[with them]. & he too… had an atmosphere of silent, oddly terrifying hostility throbbing around his territory too. But he loved me.

It’s realizing now…that That shit went down while he was on house arrest… for trying to kill the troll under the bridge for his grandkids. He still scared the utter shit out of all of them. & it’s getting that That was because of what they’d allowed on their watch. He’s the one who got slapped by a white woman he’d refused to Mandingo for… in Alabama…and slapped her back. In the street. & then had to be Forced to go fn North. Because he’s fucking… He’s my Grandad, was pissed, back from war shit…and literally would’ve wiped out whoever came trying to Lynch a motherfucker for that trollop’s sullied white honor. He was already married, too.

When he shows up in the spirit my first query is always whether my dad, his first son is about to cross or something. It never is. That man… in this life nor the next…is never worried about me. Ever. He knows how much of him I happily carry with me.

I am understanding that my mantle of being the only one to pop my vicious dad in the forehead (other than 1 sister) was his, passed on to me.

I absently knew he was “mean” to my dad. But today... what was revealed… wove the shit learned in the last few years together in a way I’d not ever seen before. He was “mean” to my dad…because my dad…was mean.

All the showing out my father has been up to with my absconding from the throne of wrangling nonsense…is him processing his Mom shit. It even explains him targeting my aunt, who lives next door to him. Who is who revealed how vicious he’d always been to her until I was born. He’s acting like their mom was to her. & She…was along the lines of how my mom was to me. Every place my dad fucked up when it came to what happened to the kids was always blamed on the chaos left when his mom died. When I found out the truth was he’d low-key married his Mom right before she did…it was like “for fuck’s sake, maaaan! No wonder!” It fucking explained all I’d needed to know to full let go.

& dude’s smart as fuck…my dad is the evil genius behind the throne, the embodiment of the oligarchy puppeteering the rulers -but oh, the seismic reverberations that are gonna come when that one registers. That may be the reason for the psychic whip-up. The showdown that’s been brewing for a decade before I touched down may be finally lining UP.

---

I’ve gone back for no funeral because I do not believe in them. For the record.

Never have.

Everybody has always had a tendency to wanna talk to me before they cross. To hash out if they’re really ready to go or not. I think that was even before I crossed and came back.

But it’s stilling to recognize that the two men I did go back to say goodbye to… eye to eye, conscious… were the two men who at least tried to stand up to the beasts that tried to eradicate my familial generation. They were the two men… that absently were fully men to me.

The idea of a silent, throbbing, oddly terrified hostility emanating from a man that lowkey keeps known nonsense in terrified check… has possibly been literal child’s play to me my entire life due to these two illustrious men and how they dealt with me in spite of all that.

It’s like…understanding why that flag…feels good to my psyche. My granddad is sizing up a dude I dig right now and absently was basically like “Nope, I get exactly why you like him.” Cracked all of this open for me. He hasn’t said how He sees dude. But it’s interesting feeling Him size him up. He has pointed out that for him to be the way I see him means

“… he probably is not Of the peace that you see him as, somehow.“

Paraphrase, but… in a weird way, maybe that makes it better.

& there was no lovebombing between me and my grandads.

By the way.

They did both raise narcs( with the help of their wives) but it was none of that when it came to me.

It was not favored nation shit when it came to me and them at all.

They just…knew I saw their…thems…and their ‘thems’ tickled me.

Their takes…on life…tickled me.

In hindsight, I think they were both different iterations of Dark Empaths.

---

I love that they both agreed to be my granddads.

Actually, I weirdly am happily bemused all my antecedents agreed to chip in on the creation of me. Even not being “in familia” with them anymore.

It often weirds others out when I sincerely say

“Nope…all things considering, I picked every single one of their crazy asses … to equip me for who I was going to need to be.”

But it is still the truth.

-AB