My entire life, the tradition was that we went to the lakehouse on Thanksgiving, period. That's the way things were. Unless someone was sick, then we met at my aunts. Two grandparents, eight adults, and eight more children, sometimes 10 if my aunts step children came. We had to rent "the big house" on the corner because there was so many of us. But if you got to stay in the big house you were one of the special ones. Because you had to pay the folks who owned it. Let's just say that several times in my life my family didn't get to stay in the big house.

That didn't matter though. Because my grandparents' house smelled like good. It just smelled like good. Good food, women laughing and washing the dishes, men snoring and my grandfather lying and saying he was just resting his eyes.

I haven't been since '95, the year my folks split. That part stank. My mother drove here and picked me up, then we turned around and went. But she couldn't add that 5 hours back onto her trip home, which was already 16 hours. So my father had to come pick me up. She had only taken off 6 months ago. Everyone was scared of him then but me. I hated them when the day came for him to show up.

My father was taken totally by suprise when my mother left. Then I had to tell him to his face that I helped her. I'm going straight to hell for that. He waited on the porch for her to come until the sun came up, then he cam to my job and waited outside for 2 hours until I got there. He thought he was telling me something I didn't know and I had to tell him I helped.

I'm having a very hard time with this still. Although I was the only link he had and I devoted my life to my father that year, I betrayed him so completely. The look on his face was enough to make me cry right now. After that I wasn't an innocent player in the drama. I just sit an imagine what it must have been like for him to come home at 3am from the blues bar. Finding half of the house emptied and totally devoid of people. She was already on the road. I was at home beating the wall. I imagine the sinking pit in his stomach as he walked down the hall. The yelling and crying when he found her letter.

The next morning we went back to the house and I held him on the bed while he yelled and cried that he wanted "his Laura". He had no idea.

He stopped eating and couldn't work. My life was his life and vice versa.

I have to talk to him about this. I have to make sure that he knows that I know was wrong. But I'm scared that he is still angry about my betrayal. That's what he called it himself.

Why did I allow her to leave that way? I could've changed the way things went down.

So, I'm going to go to the lakehouse and try to rediscover my mother in a few days. That means I have to cancel with Katie and Jill who were coming to have thanksgiving with Katie's grandmother here. I haven't been returning all of their calls, and now I'm canceling with them. Guilty guilty guilty.