Re: The Madness Continues...

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone!

Sorry I have been so scarce, but with the holidays,

and I'm off from work, and the kids are off from

school, we've been busy every day, and mostly out, so

I haven't been able to get to my computer as often as

I would like.

The continuing saga of my estrangement with mom

resulted in my having the best Christmas holidays I

ever had! I shared about it in my previous posts.

What was interesting however is that my older

daughters (9 1/2 and 8) really miss their grandmother,

so my sister (who is now split all good, and is either

BP herself, or has an awesome case of fleas) offered

to take them with her and her kids to visit.

My nieces spent the night at our house, before they

were to visit grandma. My sister asked me to have

them ready by 11:00 AM to leave. Interestingly

enough, my girls were ready, but hers weren't. My

sister sat there and begged and pleaded for them to

hurry up: " Please hurry up, let's go, if you're not

ready, I will leave without you; you know how grandma

gets when we are late, come on; let's go; hurry up;

get dressed; we have to leave; brush you hair; if

you're not ready in 5 minutes, I will leave; please

hurry, we don't want to upset grandma, etc. " All the

while, the frenzy and franticness was escalating.

I looked at my sister and I said, " Look at you. She

makes you crazy, and you in turn make your kids crazy.

Is it all worth it? You don't know how glad I am

that I don't have to deal with this madness anymore. "

She says to me, " What can I do, she will never

change. " All the while, she lets herself get walked

all over because of this madness. Needless to say, I

couldn't convince her that it doesn't have to be this

way. But I thanked my lucky stars that it isn't like

this anymore for me.

BTW, it was a surprise to my mother that my daughters

went. Would you believe that instead of being happy,

she was upset that she hadn't cooked enough? What a

sorry person.

Well, tomorrow, we will be going to my in-laws for New

Year's Eve. This should be interesting. Hope you all

have a great New Year's and I will log on again as

soon as I can.

Thanks for lending me your " ears " .

Patty

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[Guest guest]

--- Patty wrote:

> My nieces spent the night at our house, before they

> were to visit grandma. My sister asked me to have

> them ready by 11:00 AM to leave. Interestingly

> enough, my girls were ready, but hers weren't. My

> sister sat there and begged and pleaded for them to

> hurry up: " Please hurry up, let's go, if you're not

> ready, I will leave without you; you know how

> grandma

> gets when we are late, come on; let's go; hurry up;

> get dressed; we have to leave; brush you hair; if

> you're not ready in 5 minutes, I will leave; please

> hurry, we don't want to upset grandma, etc. " All

> the

> while, the frenzy and franticness was escalating.

>

> I looked at my sister and I said, " Look at you. She

> makes you crazy, and you in turn make your kids

> crazy.

> Is it all worth it?

You've just described a scenario out of my marriage!

Boy oh boy does that bring back memories! Ex had a

hair across his butt about being late for anything.

He'd sit there while I got the kids ready - I'd be

running around crazy and under the gun so that *Daddy

wouldn't get mad...*

You don't know how glad I am

> that I don't have to deal with this madness

> anymore. "

Amen! No more eggshells!

Cyndie

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[Guest guest]

> She says to me, " What can I do, she will never

> change. " All the while, she lets herself get walked

> all over because of this madness. Needless to say, I

> couldn't convince her that it doesn't have to be this

> way. But I thanked my lucky stars that it isn't like

> this anymore for me.

Wow. I've heard the same line from at least 4 of my siblings.

Regarding grandchildren, my kids don't like being around nada.

so I don't have that conflict. When I was having my hangups

about my inlaws (projection), they did love their nana and were

not happy about my dislike of visits. In those days I thought nada

was the good one and nana was the bad one. Ain't that a flea

bitten, flea ridden scenario.

It was when my sister died and they helped us buy the house

that I realized how they truly were as parents. I was looking at my

husband's face as he spoke to them about the house problem,

and I could see the relief come to his face as he unburdened

himself to his parents. He always told me that they would

support him in anything he needed bec. that is the way they are.

He never doubted them, and was very generous to me about

living with my fleas about them. They were totally professional

about all the house details and cheerful in execution. I really

appreciated that.

I still recognize that we have this cultural barrier, which used to

bug me. But I now accept the difference and expect them to be

New Englanders, and have given up the idea that I am going to

walk in on a Southern Barbeque, or fiesta. That is fine, and I am

now finding New England very picturesque. I actually loved it

here when we were newlyweds but picked up some fleas in CA,

finally got a first flea dip this summer.

The contrast between what we have in our own family is too

great to the endless controlling stuff that nada would do. Since

we have this value of respect in our own family (we respect the

kids, they respect each other, they respect us, we respect each

other), they would get caught in the middle of obeying nada's

requests, or staying away from her. They literally could not be in

a room reading a book without intrusion. Nada just used a

syrupy voice that fooled nada but it didn't fool the kids.

Certain events would reveal the inner witch. These would be the

baby's " messy " curls, the putting away of bags of groceries and

the front porch. She coudn't stand these things. The baby would

submit to having a ponytail put. I didn't care about her hair bec. I

thought it was pretty, as long as it was not tangled.

I don't control my kids or manipulate them, they are easy around

me and like to chat and talk about stuff. They also hold nada

responsible for all of her invalidation when they were in the

dreadful school. She didn't care if they were miserable and so

when they would complain she would minimize it. She would

never acknowledge that I had a brain or could homeschool, even

though as the years passed it was evident that homeschooling

was THE way for the kids to activate their inner geniuses.

Anyway, so by the time my sister died and we'd had a year all

alone, they were not happy about nada coming back.

So they stayed out of her way. It just happened naturally.

When the blowup happened, one of my brothers wrote to me,

" You MUST have told the kids something, because Mama says

they avoid her and they adored her until you told them

something. What did you tell them? "

I wrote back and said the kids were fed up with her because of

her controlling ways and it was not anything I told them about

acting around her, but they did know everything about the past.

EEWW. Hard to take that the kids knew about the rice kneeling.

He said it made nada look really bad, and that was unfair. I said

it was true and it was unfair that WE had to go through that and

cover it up. He wrote me that I was 'sick' and who did I think I

was, a therapist???. So what else was new?

To be totally honest, when my 3rd child was a baby, and we

moved in the group house with parents and 2 brothers, my

mother laid claim to that child. Whenever she had a day off, she

wanted the baby to be in her room all day. My daughter enjoyed it

then, but I resented my mother. She would put down my creative

mothering style and always tell me how I should do things like

cook for the baby etc.

She also would feed the babies round hard candy, like Werther's

Butterscotch, until one day I did raise my voice at her bec. the

baby began to choke. " I said, I've told you 100 times that you

cannot feed them choking candy. ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL

THE BABY?

We had gone through a terrible, terrible choking incident in San

Francisco the year before where the baby was saved by an infant

Heimlich. Yet one of the things I remember clearly about that

time with nada was how she was always living on the edge with

the babies and Doritos and candy.

Anyway...the kids are not attatched to nada. Nada is attached to

her image as the doting grandmother. She actually cannot dote

after age 4, they start to bug her and she tries to make them

" useful " .

Another thing nada tried to do was to have them in her room and

sneak an R rated movie onto the TV. My kids would leave the

room. When we went on a roadtrip and the girls were sleeping in

her room, I had to tell her that there would be no watching of sexy

movies " accidentally because she did not know " . My girls were

the ones to call me on the phone and say, " She has the TV on to

the Movie channel and I don't know what is coming on " . She took

me to steamy movies at an inappropriate age. How awful to be

14 and watching people have a hot and heavy and be sitting by

the sphinx. There was something very wierd about that.

I regret being intimidated by her over the schooling issue. It was

one of the bigger mistakes I made as a mother. Really glad she

is gone. There was a lot of whooping when she left, " We have

our house back! Yippee! "

Kathleen