I have to really credit myself these days for my ability to
control my anger. I’m amazed I can do it actually. And this Easter was proof of
it. I got into a bit of a row with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. It began innocently enough. We had a
beautiful easter morning. Alex woke up to a basket full of treats, which he
breakfasted on a bit. We then had an egg hunt in the yard, which was repeated
because he loved it so much (I had to re-hide eggs). I was feeling good. One of
the rare days these past weeks when I have.
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Easter morning egg hunt. We just put a flannel over his jammies and put on
his shoes. No, he did not dress in the dark. LOL. |
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| I was in my jammies too. Nobody saw. |
The next stop was to the family gathering at the SIL’s
house. Let me throw in some background
here. T has never liked me. Ever. It’s
been almost twelve years and she still hasn’t bothered to even try. She’s one
of those people that celebrates her rudeness; she thinks it’s funny to be
obnoxious, and her crappy people-skills earned her a demotion at work because
she can’t keep her mouth shut or control her anger. For the duration of my
being with my husband, T has made it clear that I am not to her liking. She’s
cold and brusque with me. She makes underhanded, snarky, passive-aggressive
comments, she invites me to nothing, does nothing with me, will withdraw from
things I’m involved in, and has not bothered even once to try and get to know
me on any personal level. It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve even done things I
hate just to humour her. Laughed at Mexicans, and put up with listening to
their ignorant drivel about Obama and their racist jokes. I have smiled, I have
nodded, I’ve swallowed my urge to lay it all out for twelve years. Why? To keep the peace, to let my husband
have a good time with his family sans drama.
I’ve put up with this caustic woman and her loaf of a husband for long enough.
Shortly before our wedding, I noticed that Loaf-in-law hadn't
gone to the tux store to pick up his tux. So my husband called him to ask what
the deal was. The loaf-in-law then proceeded to tell hubby that he wanted
nothing to do with our wedding in that capacity and began listing the reasons
why my husband shouldn’t marry me. I don’t know the exact words; I just
remember the terse reply my husband gave him.
It was the one thing my mom got right on my wedding day. She walked up
to Loaf and said: “Oh, hello. I didn’t recognize you without your tuxedo.”
It has always been a delicate dance. They criticize me, I
suck it up and smile. I hug them hello; I engage them in conversation, I
compliment whatever I can compliment, and I keep the peace. The only time she
really engaged me in conversation was to complain about people. She bitches a
lot about people. Every event that involved them is an event I approach with a
pit in my stomach. It’s not pleasant being around family members who don’t like
you—and you know if you say something to defend yourself or retaliate, you can
earn the ire of others, including your husband. It’s emotional blackmail.
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| Dude, what's wrong with you? You're all weird looking. |
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| You have something stuck in your teeth too. |
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He likes pretty girls. So much so,
he will get his face painted for some
face time. |
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| Yeah, I'm cute. So what? |
Yesterday, we arrived in high-spirits to their home. We got
inside and Alex, being a normal child of two-years old, bee-lined for their
cat. Their cat is an asshole. Of the worst kind. T even laughingly called him
that when he spat and swiped at my child.
I did not get up in arms about it, I dismissed her ‘embarrassment’ and
moved on. I could tell from the get-go
that Loaf was antsy and irritated. The TV was off for one. Usually, Loaf spends
entire family gatherings in front of the boob-tube and then has the audacity to
nitpick me if I choose to stay home from their get-togethers sometimes. He
doesn’t participate, he’s just present, and not even really present. But hey, I digress.
Alex proceeded to collect the eggs that T had sweetly set
around the house for him; and he LOoooooved egg hunting. Everyone was fussing about him, so I moved to
the dining table and sat down, and the family then got him his easter baskets
and oohed and aahhhed. Since he’s the only little one, that is the attention he
gets. I just sat in the corner and let it happen. I love it when he is
surrounded by his family. He loves his
grandpa and grandma and his cousin B.
During this fussing interlude, I heard a peppering of “Alex,
No!”s coming from the cluster of 3-4 adults hovering near him. I called out from the corner because I could
not see, “What happened?” My husband replied: “He threw Easter eggs at the cat.” My response was to the like of: “Oh, maybe he’s
taking revenge for being swiped at by the cat.”
I did not see the incident, I figured there are four adults there,
including his father, it’s covered. No biggie.
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| Daddy and Alex colouring some eggs. |
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| Sweetest father on earth. |
Then a few minutes later, I felt a bit removed from the
hullabaloo, so I came out of the corner and sat down nearer to them, in one of
the bottomless pit armchairs they have.
It’s the kind where you sit down and wonder if you’ll ever be able to
get up. And Alex came crawling around the corner pushing a little Thomas train
he got along the carpet. He chugged it along towards what turned out to be
Scratchy the Asshole cat who should have been put away, and then paused, and
chucked the train at the cat (and missed by far). I tried to extricate my fat
butt from the sofa and was telling him no, but Dan actually got to him before I
could actually get to my feet, and he turned him away from the cat.
Then Loaf says from the peanut gallery: “I would have spanked
him twice already if he was my kid,” he mutters. Then he proceeds to say: “He
needs to be disciplined. He needs just a little discipline.” You could tell by
his red face that he was grossly irritated by my kid. I looked over at Dan who said in a low voice:
“Do you want to leave?” I shook my head and said no. I wasn’t willing to make
waves at that point, even if I just had to endure having my parenting criticized
by someone who thinks parenting is using the back of your hand. But then the next ten minutes or so, Loaf did
nothing but eyeball Alex, and make comments under his breath whenever the kid
even moved. He stood too close to the
screen window. He walked too close to the cat treehouse. My annoyance with him was building so I put
on my shoes and decided to take Alex outside where he and I could be outside
without irritating the Loaf.
They all followed, because it turns out the ‘adult’ egg hunt
was set up out there. I roamed about,
letting Alex find eggs. I resolved to have a talk to T, and establish that what
Loaf did was not okay. So when the eggs were all found, and we were counting
them out at the picnic table, I said:
“For the sake of maintaining good feelings, I’d like to talk
about what said. It isn’t
his business to tell us how to parent our child. I grew up in abusive home, so
spanking is just not going to happen. If Alex is too rambunctious for him, then
we can just not bring him here anymore.”
At first, T was claiming it was about the cat’s safety. You
see, our kid could have
harmed
Scratchy the Asshole Cat who wouldn’t let my kid within four feet of himself without
baring everything sharp on its small furry being. I accepted that, but as she
spoke, she just got nastier and nastier. And then the setoff happened. She
looked at me and said: “Telling me that you won’t bring Alex here anymore was a
shitty thing to do,” her face contorted into the twisted ugly expression that can
only be remotely be described by posting this picture:
She then repeated it in a low, gravely voice: “IT WAS A
SHITTY THING TO DOOOOOOOOO STEPHANIE….” It took every fibre of my being, god
help me, not to just burst out laughing right at that moment. It was sadly
comical how she was blowing everything out of proportion.
I replied as I felt. I honestly felt that Alex wasn’t
welcome by Loaf. That my crappy parenting made him intolerable to him. So that’s
what I said. “If is uncomfortable with our undisciplined child,
then we don’t need to bring him here.” In my head, I was thinking; you are
welcome to visit him at our home, where we allow him to freely abuse and imperil
his own cat without consequences :::snark:::.
The eyeroll was wanting to happen so bad, but I kept calm, meanwhile, T
was starting to spool up even more. Her
husband loafed over, and my husband, who is a taciturn, quiet guy by nature,
was also bristling.
She got in my face and started claiming that I laughed at
his throwing toys at the cat. I did not. “IT’S NOT CUTE, STEPHANIE! IT’S NOT CUTE!” she
spat like some sort of possessed freak. She had decided to turn me into the
enemy. This is the point where I realized this wasn’t about the cat. This was a
venting of resentment that has been waiting for twelve years. T doesn’t like
me, so I was about to feel the brunt of it.
Miss Anger Management then went off.
“Nobody said it was cute, T,” I muttered calmly. Her reply was a furious growl: “Stop speaking
to me like a CHILD, Stephanie…” At
that point, I think I totally did roll my eyes. Then Loaf put in his two cents,
which I don’t recall what he said; and my reply was: “Look, I would NEVER, EVER
PRESUME to tell you how to parent YOUR child.
It was uncalled for. You do not get to
tell us to spank our child. Period.”
My husband said “Let’s just go.” So I got up and we went
into the house. T ran in front of us, and declared to everyone else as we walked
in, in a loud, berating tone: “WELL THEY’RE THROWING A TANTRUM AND LEAVING…” She
then began to repeat her accusations of my laughing, and then told everyone
that I THREATENED her. And she said
threatened exactly as you would imagine it, In this dooming, horrified tone. I
told her she was interpreting what I did and said to suit what she wanted, and
that I am none of those things. But I can’t control how she feels. I called her
defensive, and she blew up again. I started gathering up our stuff and Alex’s
things. Dan, who is the quietest, sweetest, calmest person hollered at her to
shut up, and shouted at Loaf that he had no businesses telling us how to parent
Alex. Loaf then listed how great they are as parents, and how successful they
were at raising their kid. B is a great kid. But they are far from
perfect.
T is a helicopter mom. She hovers over her kid like some
kind of carrion bird over a carcass. She dresses in matching track suits with
her kid. They don’t do anything socially, they really don’t have any friends,
their lives revolve around their kid’s sports. They coach, they do booster
stuff, they are their kid. She has been overprotective of him since his
birth as a preemie. I get it, I don’t have any issue with that, but that brand
of parenting is not for us. We want Alex to not be a narcissist who thinks the
world revolves around his needs and wants. I have never once, in all my time
with this family, made any comments. I never asked them them if they had
college plans for him. I never made any backhanded comments about what a momma’s
boy he is—and how rarely I see him with other kids his age. I never snarked
about how many hours the kid spends with his headphones on in front his array
of gaming consoles every day, and during family gatherings. He’s like a ghost.
He comes and goes and rarely speaks. If he’s not gaming, he’s watching TV with
grandpa who spends at least 5 hours a day himself in front of Fox News getting
angrier and angrier.
I think if there was no such thing as public school, he’d
probably socially stunted. The closest thing to criticism I ever shared was
asking them on the event of his thirteenth birthday, if he was going to do
anything with his friends. The answer
was no. I feel sorry for the kid. He’s a
nice, sweet, passive kid with a good heart. But then I hear him parroting the
hateful, racist shit his parents and step-grandfather like to say and I feel
immediate and profound pity. I’ve known
him since he was three. He had only just begun talking at three. He was the
polar opposite of Alex. Alex is independent and spunky, he runs and climbs and
jumps. B is reflexive and clingy. He plays sweetly with both his mom and dad,
and they have a good relationship, and I genuinely like the kid. I feel bad
that he had to be spanked at all. How they raise him is their fucking business.
Bottom line, and it’s none of my damned business to tell them how to parent.
But the T and Loaf seem to be under the impression that they
have all the answers, and that they have the right to impose their methods on
our kid. T was shouting at this point how she’d have been all over the kid if
he’d thrown toys at the cat. I told her Dan handled it. She then implied that
Dan would always handle it, making sure to leave me absent from that. I looked
at my husband, whose face was beet red, and he retorted that she was full of
crap and that we both handle the kid quite well. The irony is, I’m much tougher
on Alex than Dan is. He’s the good cop. But T seems to be under the impression
that I’m some sort of marshmallow/doormat. Of course, the three times a year
she actually sees me is all the evidence she needs to come to that conclusion.
Never mind that Alex is with me pretty much 24/7 and is really a good boy for a
two year old. I then realized that maybe the reason why Loaf was so irritated
when we came in, and why everyone looked so uncomfortable (aside from being
exposed to this shouting match), was that maybe they were discussing our
parenting before we arrived; possibly anticipating with a dash of dread
spending time with the Tasmanian devil we are raising. I dunno, it’s speculation at best, but I can’t
account for the reason why Loaf was being such a douche, unless it was because
the TV was off, which as I said, is a first in all the years I’ve been married
and with my husband. The TV is usually the most valued guest at these
gatherings.
Either way, hubby and I gathered up the stuff, and the kid
and we left. My hands were shaking, but my temper was under control. I don’t do well with confrontation most of
the time. Just letting a tiny bit of my anger leak out usually just leads to
the inevitable explosion of every resentment I’m feeling at the moment,
including personal insults, attacks and any other nastiness I’ve swallowed over
the years. I did not do that.
I’m not sure if this is fixable. I truly believe that these
people owe us an apology. I truly
believe that the cat should have been put away. If they brought a kid into my
home with my bitey, scratchy pet, I would put the pet into a room. Alex is two
years old. You don’t reason with two year olds yet. And I sure as hell won’t
hit him and take the lazy parenting way out.
Too many people do. I won’t be
spoken to like that again. So there’s a crossroads here. Hubby is angry as hell
at his sister and brother-in-law. How can I trust Alex in their care at all
now? If they think that it’s permissible to lay a hand on him when he does
something as trivial as touching the cat’s tree? They obviously don’t respect
the guidelines we have for our boy, and they think what is normal (giggling,
running, jumping, being curious, touching things) for us, is intolerable for
them; that kids should be cowering in quiet intimidation. Not going to happen.
I love my child’s inquisitive nature, and if he was mad that the cat tried to
attack him, then he had a right to be. That cat should not be around toddlers.
My child’s comfort and safety is more important than their dickwad cat. You can’t
expect a two-year old to leave a cat alone. At least, if you don’t hit them to
make sure they do. I don’t have any
desire to continue swallowing anything when it comes to this anger-management
nutcase of a sister in law or her lurch husband. I’m tired of their shit. And
Dan is finally with me on that. It took them turning their attention to his son
for it to smart enough for him to actually react. It’s funny how one sibling is all reflection;
Dan… and the other is all reaction. Good luck getting that demon woman to
listen to anything. Yikes.
The saddest part was that she was projecting so much
nastiness on me, I can’t help but understand her dislike for me. Because all
that spitefulness towards me, the projection she makes onto me, just reflects
her own dislike and unhappiness with herself. Of course, her drawn, face, dark
circles, her baggy clothes, her defensive, embittered nature; that is already
pretty obvious. She isn’t happy. Dan said she’s always been this way, which is
even sadder. How long can someone
function just being a ball of resentment? It’s so sad. I do have some measure of relief over all
this. I don’t have to smile and fake it anymore. If I see her again, I won’t hold any bars.
And if I don’t, oh well.
