alone

Another two years go by. I have such a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. Within my own little nuclear family, it's bliss. Christmas at home is wonderful. Not going anywhere is wonderful. The thoughtfulness of my children as they get more and more into gift-giving in our little family is heartwarming.Visiting with my husband's family, who live locally now, is mostly nice.

But.

I'm lonely.

Everywhere I turn, there are people celebrating with extended families. Cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. And I feel so lost.

There is no big extended family for me. I hate this. I chose it, and I stand by that choice, but this "best" choice still sucks. I want it all. I want the lovely Christmas with my children ANDalso the big hoopla of the extended family AND I want them to be awesome, kind, empathetic, healthy people, and to love me, and to love my kids, and for us to be happy.

That won't happen. Can't happen. But it doesn't stop me from wanting it.

It gets me going down that path of "did I make the right choice?" and "how bad would it be, anyway?"

Really, how bad would it be?

I try to remind myself that holidays with my "one big happy family" were never that happy. They involved marching orders from la madre, everybody held in her thrall, total denial of anybody's desires or comfort except for hers, siblings programmed to think of me as a bitch, ignoring anything I say while laughing at each other's stories, driving home heavy with disgruntlement and hurt. I was no less alone then. It only looked less alone, because I had the big family pictures to show for it. See? We're a happy family! Look at this multi-generational awesomeness!

It's like my favorite Vonnegut book comments: "no damn cat, no damn cradle." It was all an illusion.

My kids have five cousins, but only remember one or two of them. They've never even met one of them. I have no contact with my niece and nephews. I'm estranged from one brother and not at all close to two others. That sense of family ties, family tradition? It's all snarled up.

How do I rewrite my mind to accept that the five of us - me, my husband, our three sons - are enough? That this small, genuine celebration is better than the large, fake one? It's really nice not to go anywhere on Christmas, not to worry about competing inlaws.  I grew up with a big, big extended family. Quiet holidays with just us five plus my mother-in-law and father-in-law are so small. So...boring. How do I learn to accept this as normal and love it for what it is?

Do you know?

i thee dread

I once heard the phrase "don't borrow trouble." The idea is that if you're worrying about things that haven't happened yet, or might not happen at all, you're borrowing potential trouble from your future and turning it into real trouble in your present. Well, I'm borrowing trouble, big time.

I dread weddings and funerals. Specifically, weddings and funerals which my parents might attend. Even more specifically, funerals of relatives that I love, and the weddings of my unmarried siblings. 

Nobody is dying right now, so that pot is sitting cold on the back burner. But the weddings. Oh, god, are there going to be weddings? Brother #3 has a long-term girlfriend. He's had others. Will this one be "the one"?  Will I have to spend thousands of dollars on traveling and hotels and other wedding-related expenses, for a wedding that I don't really want to attend, but feel obligated to? My sister has been with her boyfriend for several years, and more and more lately, I wonder if an engagement announcement will be forthcoming. I told myself, hey, maybe they're just the cohabiting type. Maybe they'll never get married. Maybe they'll break up (sad, wouldn't wish for it, but could happen). Maybe they'll suddenly elope and spare the rest of us the ordeal of a family wedding. If they do have a ceremony, it'll most likely be closer to home, but still, ohhhhh...I don't want to go. Her college graduation was hard enough, but things between my mom and myself have gotten much worse (well, better for me in most ways, but you know what I mean) in the years since then and I Just. Don't. Want. To. Go.

But I will go. She's my sister, and I love her, and her wedding isn't about me or my mom, and I'll suck it up and go and be supportive and happy for her and not let her *know* that I'm sucking it up. I'll bring my kids, because she's their auntie, and they love her, and they should get to be present for the celebrations of people they love.

But I worry.

I worry about having to be near my mom.

I worry that my mom will try to talk to me.

I worry that my mom will try to touch me, or kiss my cheek like she did at another family gathering.
I worry about looking perfect, and not being too fat or too frowsy or too...something.
I worry about having to stand next to her in a receiving line, or sit near her at a table.
I worry about the interactions with relatives that I don't want to see, many of whom may lecture me about burying the hatchet.

I worry about bringing my children.

I worry that my mom will approach my children.
I worry that she will talk to them.
I worry that she will touch them and kiss and hug them.
I worry about whether or not I should allow her to go near them.

I worry that there's no real way to keep her away from my children if they're at the same event.
I worry about maybe telling my kids to stay away from Nona.
I worry that she'll sneak behind my back, when I'm away from them for a moment.

I worry that I'll feel like I want to protect them, and that I'll do something that leads to her causing a scene.

I worry that in the name of not drawing attention to myself during my sister's wedding, that I'll put on too brave a face and subject myself to too much.
I worry about the more-intimate rehearsal dinner, where all of this will be a thousand times harder.

And as of last week, I know that my sister is looking at rings, and that she'd like to have a simple ceremony but that it will at the very least be a small ceremony, not a private elopement, and that she is counting on me being her maid of honor.

And I know that I will go, and bring my children, and act natural, and that it will be really, really hard.

And I worry, and I worry, and I worry. 

when grandparents make threats

Twice last year, my mother threatened my husband with a lawsuit for grandparent visitation. After the first time, he was actually getting worried about it, so I did some research into our state's laws/precedents and what I found was that if an adult does not want his/her parents to see his/her children, it isn't going to happen in our state. The "grandparents' rights" suits that are successful generally occur when a husband and wife divorce and one of them wants to prevent the OTHER one's parents from seeing the children. In our case, I am preventing my own parents from seeing my children, and the courts can't do a damned thing about it. I showed my husband the state laws and legal precedents; he felt relieved.

When my mother threatened my husband again - she gave him a week to make a decision: either find a way for her to see the kids, or she and my father would go see a lawyer and sue us - he told her that she didn't have legal standing. She didn't get what she wanted. If she made good on her threat and saw a lawyer, the lawyer must have told her the same thing that my husband did: no standing, sister. Too bad, so sad.
 
I went fully NC with my parents shortly after that, and in my email to them, I let them know that I was aware of her ultimatum, and I called it what it was, a manipulative threat. 

You have recently threatened legal action against [my husband] and myself. I do not believe that you have legal standing in the state of [our state] to do this. Should you choose to pursue this route, I would like you to consider that the time, emotional impact, and financial toll of litigation would not be in the best interests of your grandchildren. I would also like you to consider that threatening legal action as a way to encourage compliance with your wishes is extortion, reflective of the very dynamic from which I wish to distance myself.

It's my belief that any lawyer worth his or her salt wouldn't touch a case like this. I haven't heard anything from my parents about suing us since my husband and I called them on their bluff. We considered consulting a lawyer but ultimately decided that we would not be manipulated by fear into spending money on legal services. Of course, IF my mother ever actually files a suit against us, we will work with a good family lawyer (several friends gave me references). But I'm not going to go throw all my money at a lawyer every time my mother pulls a jerk move. I have better things to do with my time and money than run around worrying about the tantrums of a madwoman. In situations like this my mantra is "don't bleed until you're cut" - don't freak out about litigation unless it's actually happening.

I'm still not sure if she was actually planning to sue. I think she was hoping that we would be scared by her threat and that we would give her what she wants. Stupid move on her part.




(If you are a member of the Out of the Fog message boards, you may recognize parts of this post. I copied it from my original post there, made under my OOTF username, Mokey.)