Today was Ricky Day, which we've celebrated more or less annually since 2001. As with every year, I meet it with a mix of warmth and resentment. I like seeing Ricky doing well, and I like to contribute to his well-being. But it nevertheless has the weight of Family Obligation on it, and it writes the whole weekend out from under me.
This year's different because of my cohabitation situation.
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classicaljunkie has met Ricky before, though (in fact we visited his apartment in Bangor in the fall of 2007), and is usually the first one to read the postcards that he has, since then, been addressing to the two of us together. She's been an excellent and patient co-host, helped by the fact that she can (in fact, must) frequently slip away to the upstairs office to work on her strict-deadline studies. I've been doing a little of that myself (observe my writing of these very words), and Ricky, for his part, has been a fine guest.
I think that he's less prone to "trouble" lately - his term for getting stuck in awkward social situations with strangers due to his communication problems. Which is to say: He's overcoming these problems, little by little. It's been a long and hard road for him, to recover this far. Go Ricky. Before his visit, I was recounting to Amy the many truly awful years directly following his head injury, when he was random, frustrating, often outrageous and sometimes violent and scary. In the more than 20 years since then, I can squint and see that as being a weird and broken kind of forced infancy, and maybe it took him the length of a second childhood and adolescence to learn to be an adult again...
Anyway, I was able to use the different living situation to negotiate a reduction in the length of his visit, so he's hanging around for about 48 hours this year, instead of the traditional Friday-to-Monday stay. So I'll be seeing him off tomorrow evening, back to South Station.
