Tuesday, January 11, 2005
so, christmas eve was family christmas here, you know, just the 10 of us. turkey dinner, opening presents by a roaring fire, snowball fight. it was all good. my step-sister that refuses to stay in this house even showed up. and that was actually kinda cool.-my stepbrother's LiveJournal thingy the day after Christmas
If he can play nice and I can play nice for two or three hours, why does being nice not come as easily to our respective parents?
After some internal debate I phoned The Father last night to inform him I had arrived in Lubbock and bought a couple of my books (they are exciting). Then I told him I would appreciate his calling me once a month or at least a couple of times a semester. When I asked, 'Can you do that?' he replied, 'I don't know- we'll see.'
What is his problem? I thought, At Christmas he played along as though everything was fine. He told me as much when I mentioned Terri seemed stand-offish. He eventually released this news: 'You promised you would apologize to someone.' Here I flipped completely- we had had a conversation the week before Christmas during which I mentioned I thought I should sit down with Terri to have a discussion about our little relationship problems. I might have said I would apologize to her for our misunderstandings, but that would have been self-initiated- it certainly would not have been because he told me I should apologize. But The Father pretended we had some sort of understanding that I broke, and when I directly accused him of dishonesty he hung up on me. I called back and my brother answered the phone.
The Father intended to avoid contacting me again this semester because of a minor misunderstanding that he would never have told me about had I not called him. I never did have any conversation with Terri, because her behavior Christmas Eve signaled she wasn't ready to face me. From Lubbock I was going to send her a sincere letter, apologizing especially for the times I attacked Jeremy and also explaining some of my reasoning for other incidents, but The Father decided to act sophomorically. If he wants to be silly, then I suppose I will leave him to that choice.
During that conversation the week before Christmas, The Father made a completely off-base point:
Your mother was a bad mother.My jaw dropped five feet and I looked at him fully expecting him to recant; I thought perhaps he meant she had made some bad decisions, so I waited, then I said, 'No, you don't mean that,' and he actually repeated the statement! As though I ought to agree with him!
As if making that incredibly disrespectful remark was not enough, he dug himself deeper by adding, 'Why else do you think Michael has all these problems?' The Father actually blamed my mother for Michael being... Michael. Anyone with any dose of common sense understands disabilities are no one's "fault"; my mother coddled Michael partly because The Father wouldn't have shown him any sort of affection! When I was little I wet the bed chronically, and The Father told me several times I was doing it purposefully. What sort of parent does that make him? The fact that she babied him, in retrospect, surprises me not one bit, and it certainly doesn't amount to classify her as a bad parent- after all, she could have drowned him in the bathtub out of "mercy". Besides, she died when Michael was ten, and now Michael is nearly eighteen. Who has had direct parental influence during that period, I wonder?
My mother spent months with Ashlea practicing pronunciation and definition of words so that Ashlea became Spelling Bee Champion every year during grade school. She taught Ashlea to read before entering kindergarten and me to write my name and recognize words (I was, still, Child Number Two). She made us stand for pictures every year on the first day of school. She insisted each of her children take at least one year of piano lessons, without "forcing" any of us- we all understood she meant to enrich our lives, even Michael, who was the only one who didn't "take" to the piano. She praised us when we made good grades and hounded me relentlessly every time I brought home those dadgum discipline report cards with a mark for "talking during class". She sang to me and my siblings and she read to us. Every Christmas Eve my mother read Eloise at Christmastime (which April knows about; hence she bought the movie version as a gift this year). Of course she was far from perfect, but she did not approach "bad" in any conceptualization.
Sigh...
I applied yesterday to work at the convenience mart next to my dorm. The manager had an interview with another bright prospect, so I left my references and am awaiting a phone call. The girl who took my application mentioned they needed closers and weekend people, which I am more than willing to do. If I receive no further word I'll visit other locations tomorrow after classes.
Tomorrow is my first day of school, and it is fortunate I have no one around to take my picture.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 7:20 AM]