The Yay Family Bullshit Dinner
Every now and then my extended family (my father's family) manages to rear its ugly head and I'm roped in and find myself unable to avoid contact with the odious lot of them. Ten years ago (to the day, actually) my grandfather (Clyde Ensor) and two of his sons broke ground for the Anna Ashcraft Ensor Library at Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY. His third son, my father, was neither invited nor informed of the event, and learned of it only when asked by a family friend why he wasn't there. It broke my Dad's heart. They've always treated him as less of a person because of his deafness (his mother, the woman for whom the library is named, used to hold a knife to his throat when he was a child and pray for the strength to not kill him... but she was certifiable) and, regardless of my Dad's abject love for his own father, nothing changed through the years.
We were informed of this particular event (an evening dedicated to my grandfather and the ten year anniversary of his award winning library) by letter from Georgetown C requesting RSVP. I tossed mine and knew my mother wasn't planning on attending. At the eleventh hour (yesterday) my grandfather called my Dad into his office and stated he expected me to be there. To make a long story short, I decided the best way to support my father would be to make his life easier by attending this shameless bid for another donation to the college from the Ensor patriarch. What follows is what I typed during the portion of the evening immediately following dinner, a.k.a. Ass Kisstravaganza!
A warning: there is some foul language, a lot of anger and frustration, and at least one use of "n-word", and I don't mean "neanderthal".
---
The music was provided by the world's first Disney Scholar. I'm not kidding. What did he play all night? Well, we walked in to the theme from "Beauty & the Beast". It went a bit like that.
Dinner was good, but as soon as it ended the night turned into a self-congratulatory orgy. They referenced the groundbreaking of this library named after my grandmother (to which my father was not invited and it utterly broke his heart, something his family has done all his life) and talked about how great and Christian Georgetown College is. It was a, "Life changed here when you built this library, Mr. Ensor!" kind of evening.
The provost spoke, and though she's supposed to have been an english major, she listed one terrible clich after another: the library is like gravity; no it's like the heart; but english professors would scold me for speaking like this, so I'll call it a crossroads!
Now there's a board of trustees member talking now about honoring the Ensor family, so I want to take this opportunity to say this: my grandmother, Anna Ashcraft Ensor, thought secondary education was a waste of both time and money. She didn't actually graduate from high school and told me on a regular basis that colleges were a scam.
Oh! Oh! The Anna Ashcraft Ensor Scholar is speaking. This is a truly beautiful thing. My grandfather gave this scholarship to this lovely girl as a Christmas gift. I remember my grandmother talking about her and saying that even though this first girl was white, the scholarship was to help "little nigger children" because "that looks better." This year's recipient of the scholarship would live up, in her eyes, to her requirements. God, I hate this family. (The scholarship recipient is crying about the kindness of my grandmother. This is a phenomenon I encountered at her funeral: people talked about how sweet and kind she was, about how she would send flowers for no reason. I remember wishing I'd had a chance to know that woman instead of the woman I'd grown up fearing. Tonight I find myself not wanting to take from this girl I've never met the thing I never had from someone who was my flesh and blood.)
Now my Dad's younger brother is up there sobbing through how godly and perfect his mother was, and how she just loved everyone. Granted, I never heard a nice word come out of his mouth about her while she was alive, but she (and my grandfather, apparently) "became interested in children" when he was in college. She talked regularly about beating her children, and she certainly wasn't interested in any of her grandkids other than those of her first son. She was the monster under my bed, the scary thing in my closet, and they're talking about her like she was a saint. The dissonance is nauseating.
Speaking of dissonance: it's now time for a musical interlude. There was a lot of grand talk about operettas and classical performances. "So we will be performing for you........ the epilogue from LES MISERABLES." What? That's not an operetta! What the hell? And the quality of the singing? Well, the girls were ok. The boys warbled very badly. It was really funny in an uncomfortable and bad way. Perfect.
Hey, they stuck the last note!
And now, a gift to Clyde. It's a book. There's a dedication from the president of the University (which he read to us). And he turned. Through each. Page of. The book. Reading each. Page. It was a photo album with pictures of students holding signs saying things like, "Thank you, Mr. Ensor, for your wonderful gift!" He read each of these out loud, for fifteen minutes. Night. Mare.
Ultimately my shit family really has made life and learning better for countless numbers of people. This is an award winning library and it's a wonderful gift. It even has a T3 center for complete Internet capabilities. That doesn't change the fact that my father is going to cry when he gets into his car for the drive home (he's barely holding it in). He wasn't included yet again, and had it rubbed in his face for everyone in his life an his family's life to see. My mother and I are done with them, but it's always a fresh wound for Dad. When he finds out his father or his brothers are in the hospital from a random employee at the family business... I hate these people. And now I have shared this hate with you.
Our final prayer was lead by Robert Long, the former pastor of the family church Walnut Street Baptist Church. Robert Long is under investigation for the treatment of the elderly in the retirement homes he owns. I fancied walking up to him and saying, "Hey! I thought you were in prison!" but at that point it all seemed so empty, so ugly. My father had tears in his eyes and avoided his father and brother (the other brother was absent in protest over the patriarch's marrying of their mother's nurse after she died) on the way out. My mother said he was quiet on the way home, taking lots of shaky deep breaths.
My heart aches for him. There's no salve for this. Hallmark doesn't make a card, and "I'm sorry," only goes so far. He's had to swallow more pain than anyone I've ever known, and we all just watched him do it again. And through it all, impossibly, he still idolizes his dad. He still wants to be like him, wants to earn praise from him, receive a little respect. It's only natural, of course, but after more than sixty years of being treated like a burden from God (and I'm speaking literally here... it's not just the knife-at-the-throat thing), my Dad just wishes he could connect with his dad. And it's so awful to watch. I want to hold him and tell him I love him and it will be ok, but that's not who he is. He stamps the emotions down, ignoring them until they explode in other ways.
He wasn't talking to Mom, so I sent him a couple of texts as I got home, telling him we should have gone to White Castle instead (a regular joke of his), that the food would have been better and we would have had a better time. Then I said he should get Mom to stop at White Castle for a dozen burgers for dessert. That made him laugh and text me back, saying, "Mmmmm. Now I'm hungry. Thanks. Love always, Dad."
It's a start.
Every now and then my extended family (my father's family) manages to rear its ugly head and I'm roped in and find myself unable to avoid contact with the odious lot of them. Ten years ago (to the day, actually) my grandfather (Clyde Ensor) and two of his sons broke ground for the Anna Ashcraft Ensor Library at Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY. His third son, my father, was neither invited nor informed of the event, and learned of it only when asked by a family friend why he wasn't there. It broke my Dad's heart. They've always treated him as less of a person because of his deafness (his mother, the woman for whom the library is named, used to hold a knife to his throat when he was a child and pray for the strength to not kill him... but she was certifiable) and, regardless of my Dad's abject love for his own father, nothing changed through the years.
We were informed of this particular event (an evening dedicated to my grandfather and the ten year anniversary of his award winning library) by letter from Georgetown C requesting RSVP. I tossed mine and knew my mother wasn't planning on attending. At the eleventh hour (yesterday) my grandfather called my Dad into his office and stated he expected me to be there. To make a long story short, I decided the best way to support my father would be to make his life easier by attending this shameless bid for another donation to the college from the Ensor patriarch. What follows is what I typed during the portion of the evening immediately following dinner, a.k.a. Ass Kisstravaganza!
A warning: there is some foul language, a lot of anger and frustration, and at least one use of "n-word", and I don't mean "neanderthal".
---
The music was provided by the world's first Disney Scholar. I'm not kidding. What did he play all night? Well, we walked in to the theme from "Beauty & the Beast". It went a bit like that.
Dinner was good, but as soon as it ended the night turned into a self-congratulatory orgy. They referenced the groundbreaking of this library named after my grandmother (to which my father was not invited and it utterly broke his heart, something his family has done all his life) and talked about how great and Christian Georgetown College is. It was a, "Life changed here when you built this library, Mr. Ensor!" kind of evening.
The provost spoke, and though she's supposed to have been an english major, she listed one terrible clich after another: the library is like gravity; no it's like the heart; but english professors would scold me for speaking like this, so I'll call it a crossroads!
Now there's a board of trustees member talking now about honoring the Ensor family, so I want to take this opportunity to say this: my grandmother, Anna Ashcraft Ensor, thought secondary education was a waste of both time and money. She didn't actually graduate from high school and told me on a regular basis that colleges were a scam.
Oh! Oh! The Anna Ashcraft Ensor Scholar is speaking. This is a truly beautiful thing. My grandfather gave this scholarship to this lovely girl as a Christmas gift. I remember my grandmother talking about her and saying that even though this first girl was white, the scholarship was to help "little nigger children" because "that looks better." This year's recipient of the scholarship would live up, in her eyes, to her requirements. God, I hate this family. (The scholarship recipient is crying about the kindness of my grandmother. This is a phenomenon I encountered at her funeral: people talked about how sweet and kind she was, about how she would send flowers for no reason. I remember wishing I'd had a chance to know that woman instead of the woman I'd grown up fearing. Tonight I find myself not wanting to take from this girl I've never met the thing I never had from someone who was my flesh and blood.)
Now my Dad's younger brother is up there sobbing through how godly and perfect his mother was, and how she just loved everyone. Granted, I never heard a nice word come out of his mouth about her while she was alive, but she (and my grandfather, apparently) "became interested in children" when he was in college. She talked regularly about beating her children, and she certainly wasn't interested in any of her grandkids other than those of her first son. She was the monster under my bed, the scary thing in my closet, and they're talking about her like she was a saint. The dissonance is nauseating.
Speaking of dissonance: it's now time for a musical interlude. There was a lot of grand talk about operettas and classical performances. "So we will be performing for you........ the epilogue from LES MISERABLES." What? That's not an operetta! What the hell? And the quality of the singing? Well, the girls were ok. The boys warbled very badly. It was really funny in an uncomfortable and bad way. Perfect.
Hey, they stuck the last note!
And now, a gift to Clyde. It's a book. There's a dedication from the president of the University (which he read to us). And he turned. Through each. Page of. The book. Reading each. Page. It was a photo album with pictures of students holding signs saying things like, "Thank you, Mr. Ensor, for your wonderful gift!" He read each of these out loud, for fifteen minutes. Night. Mare.
Ultimately my shit family really has made life and learning better for countless numbers of people. This is an award winning library and it's a wonderful gift. It even has a T3 center for complete Internet capabilities. That doesn't change the fact that my father is going to cry when he gets into his car for the drive home (he's barely holding it in). He wasn't included yet again, and had it rubbed in his face for everyone in his life an his family's life to see. My mother and I are done with them, but it's always a fresh wound for Dad. When he finds out his father or his brothers are in the hospital from a random employee at the family business... I hate these people. And now I have shared this hate with you.
Our final prayer was lead by Robert Long, the former pastor of the family church Walnut Street Baptist Church. Robert Long is under investigation for the treatment of the elderly in the retirement homes he owns. I fancied walking up to him and saying, "Hey! I thought you were in prison!" but at that point it all seemed so empty, so ugly. My father had tears in his eyes and avoided his father and brother (the other brother was absent in protest over the patriarch's marrying of their mother's nurse after she died) on the way out. My mother said he was quiet on the way home, taking lots of shaky deep breaths.
My heart aches for him. There's no salve for this. Hallmark doesn't make a card, and "I'm sorry," only goes so far. He's had to swallow more pain than anyone I've ever known, and we all just watched him do it again. And through it all, impossibly, he still idolizes his dad. He still wants to be like him, wants to earn praise from him, receive a little respect. It's only natural, of course, but after more than sixty years of being treated like a burden from God (and I'm speaking literally here... it's not just the knife-at-the-throat thing), my Dad just wishes he could connect with his dad. And it's so awful to watch. I want to hold him and tell him I love him and it will be ok, but that's not who he is. He stamps the emotions down, ignoring them until they explode in other ways.
He wasn't talking to Mom, so I sent him a couple of texts as I got home, telling him we should have gone to White Castle instead (a regular joke of his), that the food would have been better and we would have had a better time. Then I said he should get Mom to stop at White Castle for a dozen burgers for dessert. That made him laugh and text me back, saying, "Mmmmm. Now I'm hungry. Thanks. Love always, Dad."
It's a start.