8.04.2004
Goodbye Patricide
So I said goodbye to my Aunt Ula last night. She's the oldest sister of my mothers family. We had a Maine feast - my cousin cooked lobster, mussels, deep fried cod, salmon with dill, and we ate with our hands and cracked open the lobster claws with a chefs knife and dipped it in cups of melted butter. Yum.
My aunt said a little thankyou and grace in Samoan in the beginning of the meal, and we called my mother and the oldest son of the older generation after dinner. Harry is a schemer and sketchy, like my grandad. He always sounds tired and irritated while he says sweet things, and he makes lots of promises. He told me he'd send a CD of photos and video from our last family reunion, when we disinterred my grandfather from his resting place in the living room floor of the old Lee house, and reburied him in a homemade concrete tomb in the backyard. I told Harry I was lookforward to getting the photos. Shades of Abu Ghraib; I have pictures of Harry giving a thumbs up sign and grinning over a box containing his fathers remains.
It was great seeing Ula. She is turning into the kalofai older generation; the sweet, emotional, wise elder who helps the young folks take care of their first child, and resolves family quarrels in a way that reminds me of a grand master shifting a rook in on the back row, reinforcing the pawns dying in the center. Her oldest son, Peter, eloped with my cousin Nettie in 2000. The way Ula handled her son's incestuous relationship was to buy a new house; create a new space that was clean of memories, and then slowly pressure the 2 children to come back from the outside and move back to the new house. Strange, but it worked. There were a lot of fistfights etc. involved as everyone in the extended clan took sides. Ula resisted a lot of pressure to ostracise the two of them. I don't know what Grandma, the true matriarch, did; perhaps she was shielded from this bad news. Anyways, Peter and Nettie are no longer, though they still sneak off to the movies etc, and who knows what will happen. Peters working as a criminal defense lawyer in southern auckland, getting us Samoans out of scrapes with the law. He's still the old Peter though; when I took him out last week, he insisted that we both drink lots, then take a cab back to my place. He kept conversation up late into the night, until at one point he mumbled that if he was going to do something stupid, he should have done it with me. What a family.
Anyhow, seeing Auntie Ula was great, and I felt terrible for being such a palagi and not doing more of the Fa'a Samoa - sending a suitcase of cheap gifts with her back to NZ. Her son in law is a joy to be around, but I am a little worried that he is a serial killer or something. He told me last night that his stepfather killed himself and framed him for it; and hes currently enmeshed in a lawsuit over the money he inherited from a man he calls 'Dads'. I don't know too much about dads, except that he is Vincents adopted dad, and that the man was wealthy. Dads's bio-kids are fighting his will, and accusing Vincent of murdering him. Seems strange to me that a man would have two false accusations of patricide in his past... does that seem strange to you?
Anyhow, Vincents ingratiating himself with the family just fine. Doesn't hurt that he is white, and that his shares his christian name with my grandfather, who is the spiritual guide of the family. My grandmother Toilalo actually spoke to Vincent in English, which I don't believe has ever happened before. Toilalo likes to pretend that she doesn't speak English so she can mysteriously know everything that is going on. In dire circumstances, like when she was staying with me after her eye surgery, she will bust out with a few phrases. Toilalo is kind of like queen Elizabeth; she runs the show with the baby boomers. She's beat up every single one of her son-in-laws except my dad. So Vincents got her blessing, and I guess he's here to stay. He can swap patricidal fantasies with Uncle Harry, I suppose.
Long blog, I'll stop. I love my family and they are sweet sweet people, very human. But the kinds of pathologies they are willing to let drop; well.. its the stuff that only comes out in dreams this side of the pacific.
My aunt said a little thankyou and grace in Samoan in the beginning of the meal, and we called my mother and the oldest son of the older generation after dinner. Harry is a schemer and sketchy, like my grandad. He always sounds tired and irritated while he says sweet things, and he makes lots of promises. He told me he'd send a CD of photos and video from our last family reunion, when we disinterred my grandfather from his resting place in the living room floor of the old Lee house, and reburied him in a homemade concrete tomb in the backyard. I told Harry I was lookforward to getting the photos. Shades of Abu Ghraib; I have pictures of Harry giving a thumbs up sign and grinning over a box containing his fathers remains.
It was great seeing Ula. She is turning into the kalofai older generation; the sweet, emotional, wise elder who helps the young folks take care of their first child, and resolves family quarrels in a way that reminds me of a grand master shifting a rook in on the back row, reinforcing the pawns dying in the center. Her oldest son, Peter, eloped with my cousin Nettie in 2000. The way Ula handled her son's incestuous relationship was to buy a new house; create a new space that was clean of memories, and then slowly pressure the 2 children to come back from the outside and move back to the new house. Strange, but it worked. There were a lot of fistfights etc. involved as everyone in the extended clan took sides. Ula resisted a lot of pressure to ostracise the two of them. I don't know what Grandma, the true matriarch, did; perhaps she was shielded from this bad news. Anyways, Peter and Nettie are no longer, though they still sneak off to the movies etc, and who knows what will happen. Peters working as a criminal defense lawyer in southern auckland, getting us Samoans out of scrapes with the law. He's still the old Peter though; when I took him out last week, he insisted that we both drink lots, then take a cab back to my place. He kept conversation up late into the night, until at one point he mumbled that if he was going to do something stupid, he should have done it with me. What a family.
Anyhow, seeing Auntie Ula was great, and I felt terrible for being such a palagi and not doing more of the Fa'a Samoa - sending a suitcase of cheap gifts with her back to NZ. Her son in law is a joy to be around, but I am a little worried that he is a serial killer or something. He told me last night that his stepfather killed himself and framed him for it; and hes currently enmeshed in a lawsuit over the money he inherited from a man he calls 'Dads'. I don't know too much about dads, except that he is Vincents adopted dad, and that the man was wealthy. Dads's bio-kids are fighting his will, and accusing Vincent of murdering him. Seems strange to me that a man would have two false accusations of patricide in his past... does that seem strange to you?
Anyhow, Vincents ingratiating himself with the family just fine. Doesn't hurt that he is white, and that his shares his christian name with my grandfather, who is the spiritual guide of the family. My grandmother Toilalo actually spoke to Vincent in English, which I don't believe has ever happened before. Toilalo likes to pretend that she doesn't speak English so she can mysteriously know everything that is going on. In dire circumstances, like when she was staying with me after her eye surgery, she will bust out with a few phrases. Toilalo is kind of like queen Elizabeth; she runs the show with the baby boomers. She's beat up every single one of her son-in-laws except my dad. So Vincents got her blessing, and I guess he's here to stay. He can swap patricidal fantasies with Uncle Harry, I suppose.
Long blog, I'll stop. I love my family and they are sweet sweet people, very human. But the kinds of pathologies they are willing to let drop; well.. its the stuff that only comes out in dreams this side of the pacific.
