• Posted By Crazy Single Mom @ 11:39 PM • • •
Monday, March 28, 2005
Holiday fun....sometimes
I love the holidays, I truly do. I love the fact that I have become one in my family to make the holiday meals, as I love to cook, and I don't cook like that every day. The holidays are a time to get together with family or good friends and have a good time, sit back, laugh a little and eat a lot. So why are the holidays a stressful time?? I've never written a lot about my parents, and someday soon I will, just to get some pressure off my chest, and to explain things a bit. I also have not written a lot about one of my brothers, who's a schizophrenic, and someday I will. Suffice it to say that my brother has had a lot of ups and downs, so when I get a phone call from Mom saying " It's hard lately dealing with your brother" I tend to think that perhaps he's going downhill again. No, not this time. She has been spending way too much time with him lately, and she's getting snippity about it. No problem, he's not the easiest person to deal with, but the whole gist of the conversation was so that I would feel bad for her and offer to have him stay at my house on the couch instead of in the hotel room with mom and dad. I unfortunately don't have the room to have them stay here, otherwise I would. Mom tends to use passive aggressive ways to get what she wants, and quite frankly when I've been tired and stressed all week, I don't take it well. After she went into her emotional blackmail, I said "Mom, if you want Bro to stay here all you have to do is ask, please don't play games with me." Which she totally ignored the latter part of that statement and instead zeroed in on the former part. "Hey great idea" she says "you can say hey bro why don't you stay here tonight" which I replied with "if you want him to stay here tonight, you can tell him that yourself." I think she knew she had pushed it as she was sweet as pie to me after that. I'm not totally comfortable with my brother staying here on my couch, for reasons which someday I may (or may not) tell you all, but if it was really necessary I would have let him, but not when mom tries to do it in such a round about way. Long and the short of it, he stayed with them in the hotel room, because I didn't make it easy on her. She couldn't bring herself to tell him she wanted him here not there. Which is funny because she has no problem usually telling all of us, including my mentally ill brother, when we have failed her in any way, great or small. Not too much positive reinforcement in my house growing up let me tell you. Then this morning, they were supposed to come over to have breakfast before they left for home. It's been raining all day, but this morning wasn't too bad. I called over to their hotel room to ask if they could bring over milk when they come, and mom told me they were going to head out early. Mind you Princess had not had breakfast yet at 7:45, when she usually eats when she first wakes up (she was up at 6:30) because she wanted to wait for grammy and grampy and uncle. I asked mom if I hadn't called would she have called to let me know. I told her that going early was her choice, but Princess had been waiting for them. Her response was "well we saw Princess yesterday". No matter that today Princess cried because grammy and grampy had promised her something that they had no intention of doing. I made mom call Princess to say goodbye, because it was the right thing to do, and she hadn't had any plans to do so. I've been disappointed by mom most of my life for one reason or another, she will NOT do this to my child. I will make her take responsibility for her actions. Dad, well he lets mom do all the talking and decision making, always has. The difference is that now he NEEDS her to make them, he's getting very forgetful .
I leave you all with another question, how do you watch your parents decline, and love them so much but at the same time know that many issues will never get resolved, but will hang there long after they are gone because while you may want to confront and resolve, they never will?
I wish I had the answer to that one.
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