Dinner at my Aunts

I feel blurry with food. Rice has expanded in my stomach and is inching its way up my torso. The curry has made me ache with thirst but there is no room left for water. A handful of other people spill over comfortably tattered armchairs and dog haired couches echoing my feelings. Rugs and thick magazines and pottery clutter the space.  I burble something about the movies I saw over the weekend and there is a smattering of generic responses. My conversation attempt dissipates into a wisp of smoke melding with the steam from the fire place.  I try again true to form perpetually uncomfortable with silence even with these people who I have grown up with, some with whom I share blood.

"I am auditing a class"

 My Aunt shifts and the moment settles on her. I am my mothers daughter and she is my mothers sisters. She too is itched by the need for the comfort of something verbal.

"Wow, why don't you take it as a normal class? Who teaches it? Did you buy the textbook? Suzanne might have the textbook? You probably don't even need the textbook? What other classes do you have?

Feeling mentally at ease with the sea of questions I answer as my mother does . I tell her where I think of living next year and whom with. The words don't matter so much as the audibility. The lack of I imidiate family is strongest here, with my aunt and uncle. The Goshen Students from my Lancaster Church congregation invited over for Indian food. My aunt tattles about her sons son, their first grandchild.

" I just got a photo she took with a Polaroid camera. Can you imagine she has a Polaroid. She bought it at a flea market they have tons of those in the area around her house. They have gorgeous handmade crafts..."

I am content with my stomach full of rice and my ears full of words.