8:32 a.m. - 2005-03-25
Still a baby after all these years
I'm about to have a spew - skip this if you don't want to hear a rant about how a 47 year old woman cannot deal with her mother...
More backstory than you could ever want: Most of my family is coming up for Andy's first communion in April. (We've gone to everyone else's - flying to Flora-dora, taking vacation time, etc. to be there.) When my parents made their flight arrangements they called to let me know that they would be flying into the city in which I worked, so I could pick them up at 11 at night, then the next day I could take them to my brother's for a week so they could spend time with him. This is the brother who doesn't make alot of time for them. When my brother found out they were coming up and sending the week, he suggested that since the kids were off of school for that week, that Andy could come and stay with them too. Sounded like a fun idea - Andy would get to see his grandparents and his cousins. I cleared it with my parents. I told Andy. He was delighted. I booked his school vacation program/daycare based on that. That was about a month ago.
So last night I was just dropping off to sleep when my mother had called. She asked me to call her last night at my sister's - she'd driven up to get my sister and her kids so my sister could go and pick up furniture she bought from my brother and his girlfriend, and so my mother could watch my sister's two kids next week while they have school break. So I called last night, but they weren't home. I left a message. She called back after I went to bed (that's not what I'm whining about) and told me what fun she had, buying furniture with my sister, going out to dinner, yada, yada. At the end of this 15 minute conversation I ask if she has heard from our travel agent who is helping to plan our summer vacation because I have to put in for Andy's day camp programs by early next week. She says - "Oh I've got to go now, but your father and I decided that we're just going to go to your brother's and come back for the communion. This way I'll have more time to spend with brother's boy child and brother's girl child."
It took a moment to register. "So you are uninviting Andy?" She doesn't have the ovaries to actually say that. She doesn't have the ovaries to bring it up at the beginning of the conversation. She doesn't have the ovaries to discuss it with me. She just pronounces. I'm mentally scrambling to think of what I can do now that the school vacation program registration has closed, and balancing that with what I am going to have to tell Andy.
She doesn't say anything. I don't say anything.
"Well, he's one of my favorites and it will be too hard to give everyone enough attention," is her lame-assed excuse. "I'll see him the next week."
I point out to her that he has school the next week.
"Well, I'll see him after school then."
I am fucking speechless.
We (spouse, Andy and I) are the ones who make sure we go to visit my parents, and see them regularly, and invite them to see us, and have real beds for them and give them their own room that their 70-year old asses can sleep in.
We are the ones that remember to call, and remember birthdays and anniversaries and send pictures and (Andy's) home-made cards.
My brother and his wife? Not so much. They make them sleep on a fold out sofa in the living room. They don't have time for my parents. They go see her family in Florida, but not always my parents. They can't decide which days will be best for my parents to visit when my parents are up visiting us, so we have to wait and wait and wait and not know what the hell is going on until they decide, because my mother makes all allowances for him. I cannot plan which vacation days to use. I cannot make any plans to do anything with my parents until my brother and his wife have made their choice.
And then, if I bring it up, or express my annoyance with this fifteen year fucking pattern - I am the difficult one. I am the one that makes everyone feel bad or uncomfortable. If I say that I do not think this is acceptable behavior - my mother tells me how much my siblings dislike me. She tells me this whenever I express an opinion that differs from hers. I am starting to recognize this tactic of hers. It makes me like her less and less.
And when she drinks and I absent myself from the situation or the room, she seeks me out until she can pick a fight. I have been working my alanon, and it seems to annoy her. I don't know if she realizes that I have gone to meetings. But it angers her more if I choose not to be pulled into a fight. Even though this is the same difficulty we have over and over and over.
So I replay the arguments again and again in my tiny brain: Be accomodating, be respectful, go out of your way to be with them = you are not valued. Ignore them, have no time for them and you are the favored one.
I think it is harder for me to deal with it now, because before it was just me, but now it is spilling over onto Andy and I have to protect him.
And I felt like I was just crawling out of the winter sick and depression hole and I am smacked back down into it courtesy of my mother. I have to figure a way to not let this happen to me - to not let it matter so much - to not be hurt by it when it is obviously something that they choose not to change about their behavilr, so I will have to change my behavior. I know this in my brain. I do not yet know it in my heart.
If you celebrate Easter - have a happy one! If you don't - happy Spring!
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