this brings back memories

 

For many years, my daughter and I took my great aunt Effie, my maternal grandmother's baby sister out to grocery shop and to have lunch. We also took Effie on outings, going to Como Park year round. Effie loved every inch of Como Park. She had lived a couple blocks off the park for sixty years. In winter, we would to to the Como Park Conservatory, shown in this photo here. The photo was taken by my friend Lana, who visited Como park today with her granddaughters.  Hat tip, Lana.

Effie loved the Como Park Zoo, which had many buildings we could tour even in winter. She loved walking along the lake, although she was no longer up to walking all around the lake. She loved it when we caught a concert on the lake. Most of all, she loved the Conservatory.

Our weekly visits were not a lot of fun for Rosie and me. I faithfully kept up visiting Effie because she came to rely on me to take her for weekly groceries, because my grandmother had asked me to help her baby sister and I had dearly loved my grandma and because, and this is a stinging joke now, I hoped that by caring for an elderly relative, I was showing my daughter to respect her elders. I thought that was an important life lesson.

It appears to be a lesson that my brainiac kid flunked.

Rosie moved to Chicago about ten years ago, with my mother still alive and three of my brothers living in Chicago, plus her cousins. She never once visited her grandmother, who made Waldorf possible for Rosie, among many generous gifts to Rosie from my mother. She has never, in all these years, reached out to her uncle, who doted on her as a child and spent far more time with Rosie than her father ever did.

I didn't imagine it. Rosie loved my brother Dave.  I am no longer sure that she ever loved me. I seriously wonder if she loved her mother. As I write it, I am incredulous over what I wrote but I do seirously wonder if my daughter ever loved the only parent who raised her.

I feel bitterness when I let myself reflect on my futile attempt to teach my child that humans have a duty to older generations. I never thought she needed to be taught to respect me as I aged, never thought i had to 'teach' her that I would still have some value, like love, for her as I age.  Nope. Rosie missed that lesson.

I can no longer write about my shared past with Rosie and make any claims about her experience. I know, now, that I never knew her. The child I had, the love I thought we shared, and my belief that she and I had an unbreakable bond, all these things are figments.

Heck, maybe my having a daughter was one long, hellish psychotic episode, maybe I imagined I had a daughter and that she loved me.

I didn't imagine Como Park. Here is is in the photo.