Thanksgiving

I turn into a domestic goddess for Thanksgiving.  I will roast the turkey and this year I’m doing it with some apple juice and stuffing the inside of the bird with apples, oranges and pineapple.  The inside stuffing isn’t to be eaten of course but it does add some nice flavor to the turkey.

And then my XMIL is going to teach me her dressing recipe.  This was a real hardship for my family in the divorce, we lost my husband who had been making his mother’s dressing for several years and it was the really good stuff.  Thankfully she is willing to spend Wednesday night teaching me so that we can keep enjoying Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is all about good dressing, pecan pies, Dallas Cowboy football and family.  Not neccessarily in that order.

Just a surreal experience

So I’m not sure how to explain yesterday.  It was my oldest’s birthday and it was the X’s weekend to have the kids.  The X invited me to come over to his parents’ house (where he is now living) and celebrate the occasion with them.  My X-SIL was there and everyone acted like the past 1.5 years never happened.  I’m still called Aunt by the SIL’s kids. 

But the icing on the proverbial cake was my X-MIL.  She was talking with KB about KB’s crushes on the Disney Channel guys and told KB, “Maybe you will meet the right guy in 8^th grade, date him all through high school, get married to him and live happily ever after.”  I sat there in shock.  Happily ever after?  Uh, hello, we are DIVORCED.  What was happily ever after about that?  Was there a remarriage that I don’t know about?

No one there would have had a clue that there had been a divorce and he had had another girlfriend in the meantime.  Well except when I asked the X-SIL if she was missing Ju-Ju and she pretended to wipe a tear away.  Ju-Ju did not have a fan club among my X-IL’s. 

It is just wrong

When my bestest friend who lives so far away emails with my family to laugh at the fact she has TO on her FF team and I don’t.

And to think she accused me of breaking her laptop in revenge (if only I had thought of that idea).

Conflict, thy name is mother

My mother

I love her.  But she is such a different kind of person.  She is a hypochondriac and a drama queen.  Everything is about her.  She sets the schedule everyone else is suppose to follow.  She gets mad at my dad because he doesn’t jump up to do the things she wants done when she wants them done.  She likes to set my schedule and I’m just enough of a daughter to not to let her.  The house fire drama gave her months of being the center stage of attention.  If she wasn’t get enough, she would pull out her cards – she was “homeless”, her depression issues, etc.  Any time I suggested she needed grief counseling, she would say no she didn’t need it (because we all know it would take away from her attention grabbing ways).

Friday night my parents were going to take me and the kids out for a dinner to celebrate my birthday.  Every year we go through the following routine.  She asks “Where do you want to go?” and then she shoots down all the places I want to go until I give in and pick where she wants to go.  So this year I stuck to my guns.  Sure enough, while she is eating her dinner she is carrying on about it isn’t as good as where she likes her Mexican food from.   After dinner but before we have left the restuarant, she is in full mode about she just doesn’t like this place, etc.

Then I mentioned something about the X coming around to help with some projects I need done around the house.  She went into an absolute tirade about how he said something negative about her new house and how he always finds things to pick apart about anything and all the hundreds of times he has hurt her feelings.  She doesn’t want him to ever set foot in her house again.  Well she has no idea we are considering reconciliation, just imagine what that will do to her.  She then left the room, looking like she was going to cry.  My dad and I looked at each other, said nothing and then finally talked Cowboys.

She was going to have the entire family over for my birthday dinner but she wasn’t sure if it would be Sun or Mon.  Now the funny thing is that usually the birthday boy or girl gets to pick the meal.  Not for my brithday, I was told what we were having.  Saturday she never called to let me know and so Sunday am I called her so I could schedule a promised trip to the swimming pool for the twins.  It is going to be Monday so my aunts and uncles and grandfather can make it but she wants me to come Sunday afternoon as well because it is the only day my sister can make it.  I explained I needed one afternoon with the twins and I get this big sigh.  Well she needed to get with me and my sister to see what all we had already planned.  I told her I hadn’t planned anything, that I didn’t realize I was the planner.  Again, big sigh and a huff.

I go over Sunday late afternoon and my sister and mom have planned the open house without me (yeah!).  My sis leaves and mom stays out on the porch.  The tension had been thick so I figure I had better go out and make my peace.  She is on the porch crying, and said her happy pills weren’t working that day. 

The best we can figure is that she quit taking her depression meds (or cut back on them) thinking that now she was moved into the new house, she wouldn’t need them.  However, she has underestimated her depression before the house fire and the residual effect the fire had on her.  Add to that she has just retired plus her health issues (real, imaginary and self-induced), her depression is still around. 

Oh and then Monday when we show up, no other family made it.  Apparently there had been some kind of communication error.  Hmmm, not hard to believe.

This is why I love my Dad

Today’s email exhange between us…

He starts the conversation…

Happy birthday hon.  You should be getting to that stage where you sort
of don’t even want to think about that anymore.
For a birthday present, I got them to schedule a Cowboy game for you
tonight. They said “who the hell are you?”, but went ahead and put one
on with all the backup players. Oh well.

Love, dad.

So I emailed back…

Glad you are always thinking of me.  See I had arranged a game between the Cowboys and an old nemesis in your honor, but I got them to play the starters and have it at a decent football watching time.  They said “He’s still living????” and put the game right on the schedule.

He is not the gushy type.  While I was growing up, he worked nights and I rarely saw him, except when a football game was on.  So somewhere along the way, i decided if we were going to have a relationship, I would learn football.  Let me tell what a hardship that was…I got addicted watching Staubach win games in the last two minutes of a game.  I learned to love incredible defense watching Too Tall, Randy White and the boys.  From there, my father and I grew into a good healthy relationship.  He and I are very much alike in personalities and it often becomes my job to act as a go between for my parents.  “Dad, Mom is worrying about you because you didn’t get emotional about your mother’s death.  You ok?”  He says yes and I go back and tell Mom that Dad is doing fine, that he doesn’t spend much time worrying about things that can’t be changed and while he misses her, he knows she isn’t in pain any more.  All is good. 

I talk politics, religion and all kinds of current events with my dad.  I’m one of the few who can work him out of a bad mood.  I have promised my mom that if she dies first, I will take care of my dad.  I’ll make sure he eats and has fresh batteries in his remote control and his cable bill is always paid. 

I’m lucky to have a friend like him.

What were you doing 24 years ago?

Me?   I was getting pregnant.  It is the same old story, teenage girl comes home from church camp, missing her boyfriend.  So they go out on a date, go back to the toolshed he has converted to a bedroom and the condom breaks.

I remember just knowing I was pregnant.  I never had a doubt.  The next day I helped my parents move into their new house (just like I did yesterday, yes beautiful symmetry) and a couple weeks later I was off to a good little Baptist university to attempt to be a female youth minister.  Of course the Baptists explained how I would never earn enough working with youth to pay for my college education and they were really pissed finding out I was pregnant. 

When I was about 11 weeks along, I miscarried the baby.  Just like I knew when I was pregnant, I knew the instant the baby was gone.  The X and I still got married in November.  But you have to wonder what life would have been like if that moment, 24 years ago hadn’t happened.  We were planning on marrying after I went to college.  Lots of high school sweethearts make that vow and it never happens.  Perhaps that would have been our story.  Instead when I told him I was definitely pregnant, we started talking about our marriage.  He never asked me to marry him.  I always let that bother me, that perhaps he never felt he had a choice about marrying me. 

He just called.  Of course he doesn’t remember what this is the anniversary of.  We are having high winds and he called to check on me and the kids.  But it was on my mind what today was for us and hearing his voice made the anniversary that little bit harder.

I can’t regret my life with him because I would have to regret my children.  I’m sure if I had married some other great guy, I would have had amazing kids also (I have great genetics, I can only spawn fantastic kids of course).  But how different life might have been if we had just had a little different luck 24 years ago.

It comes in 3’s

Death always comes in three’s.  At least in our family it does.  We are all at the 2nd funeral, eyeballing the crowd, taking bets on who is the last one to go in this round.

Death #1 – Distant but I’m going to claim it because I need to make sure I have three to count.  A distant cousin that my grandfather had great memories of being a kid around.

Death #2 – A former co-worker’s grown son was killed in a car wreck on Wednesday.  His wife was driving recklessly (passing on the shoulder at high speeds), lost control of the car and hit an oncoming car.  He is the only one who died.  They have a 3 year old daughter who luckily was not with them at the time.  How is my friend going to deal with her daughter-in-law, always knowing she was responsible for his death?  How difficult will be as the wife goes on with her life, probably remarrying at some point in the future, for my friend to keep contact with the grandchild?  I can’t go to the funeral because it is Monday, my first day at the new job.  But this death is haunting me, a life cut short, a mother’s breaking heart.

Death #3 – My great-aunt, the last of my grandmother’s sisters to go.  She is 91 and has late stage Alzheimer’s, so the passing is sad but time.  I can deal with that.  But I will go tonight with my Mom out to be with the family.  This great-aunt (who has a beautifully unique name but I can’t use on here because it is so unique that if it was Googled, my family would find my blog instantly, something that is best avoided) never had kids of her own, so the neice and neice-in-law have been taking care of her, a task their mother had been doing before she died last year.  I have a lot of great-aunts and uncles, more than most so I have a lot of funerals in the last few years and still to go.  But I also have many memories of a great big extended family.  You would think we were a big ethnic family, with how close we are, all the family gatherings we do.  Sometimes family is a chore, but mostly it is a blessing.  My X’s family was not very close at all, and one thing he told me is that he is grateful that the kids are learning about family through mine.  I will not put them through this weekend as they don’t really remember this aunt before she went into the nursing home.  They know I’m dealing with it and they understand that when my sister gets old, they will be expected to look after her since she has no kids of her own.  Luckily my sister is much loved by the kids and is always there for them, on all of the occasions of their lives and sometimes just for kicks in between.  I don’t think they will see my sister as a burden, but a part of being family.  I hope they do, if I raise them right.