Crushed Lotus, With Lorelai Petals
Almost anything can be a yoga position nowadays. Standing with your knees slightly bent (Mountain pose), sitting with your legs crossed (Half Lotus pose), sitting in a chair (Chair/Thunderbolt Pose). I wonder if there's a yoga position for being curled into yourself on your bed. And if so, what it would be called. Perhaps Crushed Lotus. Crushed Lotus, With Lorelai Petals. I'm sure the blonde pretzel would know what it's called. I'm sure the blonde pretzel never needed to know what its called. I'm sure the blonde pretzel would've gotten married on the day she set aside for getting married.
June third.
A good day to get married, no?
No.
Not in my case.
And lying as I am in the position now known as Crushed Lotus, With Lorelai Petals, I find myself wondering. Not just about the life, the universe and everything else, as dear Douglas Adams have already provided us with the answer to that particular riddle. I'm wondering about June third, about my perfect fairy-tale dress, about the bouquets toasting us with their scent ... then I remember that Sookie and I never got to the pick the flowers, that we cancelled June third before it could get that far.
Of course I understand why we had to cancel it. Of course I understand why I have to play second fiddle to an adolescent with braces, a position I never held even when I was an adolescent with braces. Luke wants to be a father to his daughter; how can I object to that? It's not the kind of thing you can moan about with your girlfriends without sounding like Paris Hilton, now is it? Just imagine this:
(Scene in Casey's)
SOOKIE: After I went through all the trouble of making Jackson a chocolate praline Creedence Clearwater Revival Cake, he forgot our anniversary!
BABETTE: Morrie's parents refer to me as a gnome-obsessed midget and even though Morrie says it's not cool, he doesn't tell them to stop.
MISS PATTY: I haven't been in a loving relationship for so long that I've forgotten what it felt like.
ME: Well, that's nothing, girls! Forgetting anniversaries and slightly offensive name-calling and loneliness? Bah! I have me a man, a wonderful and caring man, who always wants to be there for his family and take care of those he loves. Now he expects me to understand that, just for this once, the world doesn't revolve around me and my perfectly shaped heinie, but that he wants to make sure that he can be a good father for his daughter! And I'm just supposed to be okay with that! I don't get to wear a dress and walk in heels with everybody awing at me and eat cake, because he wants to provide a healthy, stable father-daughter relationship for his daughter so that she doesn't grow up to be April 'Bubbles' Nardini and dance away her daddy issues in front of strange men! Now, how's that for being in an abusive relationship?
See? It just can't be done. It can't be said, not without making me sound like a whiny brat. Not even a particularly clever brat at that. And it fills me with a feeling that Dr Phil describes as 'self-loathing', because it's hard to see why anybody would want to marry a person like that.
Why would someone want to marry me? What are Lorelai Victoria Gilmore's redeeming qualities?
Luke's qualities are self-evident. The chuppah he made to apologise for the mean things he said about marriages and Max. He could've just offered a quick 'hey, I didn't mean it'. But he did mean it and I knew he meant it and he knew that I knew and therefore, a quick 'hey' wouldn't have made it any less painful. The chuppah, now, with flowers and grapes and Gilbert the goat ... that was an apology. And he made Rory a coffee cake for her birthday and he made her endless bowls of mashed potato when she was sick with the chicken pox and he came to the caterpillar's funeral and he arranged a funeral for his uncle Louis and he took care of Jess when Jess was nothing but a train smash in a leather jacket and ... the list is, literally, endless. If all the people in China lined up and walked past, you could but a name for Luke's redeeming qualities on every head and still have more than enough to go around.
Now, we get to the tricky question. Lorelai Victoria Gilmore's redeeming qualities.
We all know she's quick with a quip, especially after a sip of coffee. (I haven't been able to get out of bed to go to Luke's for my java jolt yet; hence my rant is a little flat. Like a car battery that just won't start, because it's still too cold.) And there's the heinie, as already referred to, and the smile and the hair. Apart from that – what? I suppose I've always tried to be a good mom to Rory. Then again, she turned out being sixteen and unable to say 'I love you' to the boy she loved and then she turned out twenty and stealing a yacht with the boy she loved, so how much of an example was I setting? She would've said 'I love you' and 'No, let's just go with your boat' if she had been raised with a more sober, more sensible mother. Not somebody who buys alarm clocks because they pur and have underwear with pandas and propellers on them. Let's face it – Rory grew up the way she did because of Rory. I couldn't even manage to keep the hamster or the turtle or the rabbit alive; if I can't be trusted with rodents and amphibians, then how can I think I should be trusted with a kid? Let alone a kid like Rory? Or a kid like April.
No wonder Luke doesn't want me near April; he watched me feed Rory nothing but coffee and hamburgers and chocolate in various forms and he listened to me drone on and on about all sorts of non-FDA approved mother-daughter conversations. No wonder he doesn't want this panda-wearing, hamster-abandoning freak with an obsession about men and shoes near his kid. He doesn't want me setting a bad example for her and I can't blame him.
So if being a good mother is all there is to me and if that is taken away from me, what is left?
Crushed Lotus. With Lorelai Petals.