Isle of Remote

Had a long talk with Dad today. It was nice but kind of weird. He seems different and I stayed on the course of our regular safe topics - weather, computers, the housing market, etc. We don’t go too deep. Usually he says he has to run and the conversation ends. About 45 minutes in I was wondering just how long we were going to talk. Finally I said I had to go (I was sitting in the grocery store parking lot and it was starting to get warm) and I think he said, “love you”. I didn’t know what to say. He may have even said it twice, but you know how the phone is halfway from your ear to disconnect and you hear the person still talking so you move the phone to catch what they’re saying, but they’re done? So I’m not sure. Normally I would say that I didn’t hear them but this time I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear him for real. I was worried I would have to respond. Selfish? Maybe. But I like to think I’m erring on the side of caution. I mean, he’s never said he loved me before. Not that I remember anyway. I believe he does, but he’s just never been demonstrative about it. My mom doesn’t say it frequently, but she does say it. What’s funny is my grandmother and I said it all the time. I even say it to my friends. I guess my family dynamic is a little conservative in ’saying it’ corner.

Wow. That was some paragraph….

Thanksgiving went well. It was nice with just my Mom and me, to be honest. I usually feel really tense there because she and her husband bicker a lot and he just hollers at her to bring him stuff. So she’s constantly running back and forth fetching and carrying (not enough ice! food’s not hot enough!) It really bothers me. And every little thing has to go in the precise same space or it’s “the napkins are upside down in the napkin holder!” and “the green sponge is for the stove!” like all this should have been ingrained in me since birth. Consequently, it’s easier to do nothing. I will even bring my own food sometimes so I don’t have to cook anything on the “wrong burner” or something.

And I think it bothers my mom. She seems really tense when he’s around. She comes in after me and makes sure I made the bed right or cringes if I use the dishwasher (um, that’s what it’s there for, right?) or do something that goes against the way he thinks it should be done.

So, like I said, it was nice to not have to witness that behavior. Makes me crazy. Mom and I watched movies, went shopping and cooked a turkey together. Thanksgiving with the relatives was also good. I met some new relatives from my grandfather’s side that I didn’t know about.

They’re building a beautiful custom home in the country. The son has a pregnant girlfriend that the mom doesn’t particularly like. He tells his mom he doesn’t want to marry her, but I think he will. Plus, he’s like 38 or something - since he hasn’t knocked up a woman in all this time, it’s kind of strange that he got hoodwinked into this one, if it wasn’t what he really wanted.

Still, I don’t think they’ll be too happy a couple. She’s kind of a mouse. He’s social and friendly and cultured. She barely said five words in the whole five hours we were in her company. Considering most of us had never met before I can’t just chalk it up to awkwardness. I think she just had nothing to say.

I always find that sad when someone has nothing to contribute. We talked about sports, politics, religion, books, art, home decor, cooking, real estate, California, Minnesota, weather, dieting, child-rearing….nothing. I can’t wait to see where she stands next Thanksgiving!

Tuesday 11.29.05 [2:33 am] delete entry | edit entry

I hope ya’ll had a fab Thanksgiving. Mine was really nice, despite all the medical drama. I had a swell time with the Mom and I even made an effort and visited my friend - you know the one I talk about incessantly? Yeah, her. It seems kinda weird to hang with her now. We don’t seem to converse the way we used to. Every topic somehow bounces back to her husband (who is out of work yet AGAIN). Still, it’s good to keep the lines of communication open, right?

I think work between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays should just be a forgotten thing. Does anyone really get any work done during this time period? There are four holiday parties on my calendar already and those are just the ones that are work related! I’m definitely going to keep the holiday prep on the light side this year.

Still, if my goal is to be not stressed as the holidays approach, I need to get a regular amount of sleep. It’s 2:37am and I’m fading fast.

My mother’s husband is in the hospital again. He is having a partial amputation of his leg this week. My mother sounds weary so I think I will go early for Thanksgiving and see what I can do. It’s kind of a pisser - she took care of her mother all those years, now she has to take care of a husband too. I guess the frustrating part in all of this is that he just didn’t take care of himself. He’s diabetic and was not able to keep his weight down. So this injury of his never healed. Mom still wants to go ahead with Thanksgiving though. That ought to be fun…

I’ve sort of been surrounded by a lot of death these past few years. A co-worker, a good friend, a cousin, a family friend (and her brother- AND son-in law), another co-worker, my grandmother, another friend, an aunt, my grandfather…..that’s just all I can remember right now.

I think that’s been the reason for my funk of late. I’ve just been pushing through life and not reallly living it.

Yesterday I got to babysit for my friend’s little boy and I just felt like my whole day got painted in bright and shimmering colors.

It’s really weird to realize that I thought I was living life before, but, in reality life was just sort of leading me through a series of hoops that I thought I needed to jump through. In other words, I was just surviving.

And yet, I laughed, I hung out with friends, I made new friends, I continued to pray and be thankful. But my heart was really bitter because it was full of grief and anger. I can usually sense those feelings and work myself out of them, but this time it crept upon me in an unfamiliar way. In a pit of grief so deep, but, at the same time, comforting.

So now I’m taking some time to bring the technicolor back into my world (and Meadow - Antonio Banderas might just do the trick! ) I’ll let you know how that goes.

Have the opportunity to get a free trip to visit my mom and grandmother this weekend and I’m not going to let it pass. So you won’t hear from me until Sunday or later. Hopefully I’ll remember to pack my camera and can post some purty pictures upon my return!

Word to the wise:

If your parents are over…let’s say 50….and have a computer and are not very computer savvy, do yourself a favor now and the next time you’re over there download a popup blocker and Ad-aware for them. It will save you time in the long run. Also set up their system to automatically defrag once a month or so.

My Mom has been saying yes to all the popups that ask if she wants to block future popups. Her computer was loaded with spyware! All of the other seniors she’s been asking for advice didn’t seem to have a solution to why her system had slowed down so much.

S’better now! Gotta run - afternoon with the relatives!

As I previously mentioned I have a lot of father issues and I was planning to write them out on Father’s Day next week. However, since it’s been occupying a lot of real estate in my mind lately, I’m thinking the issues may take a while to exorcise completely.

Today, for some reason, I was wondering how my self-awareness has been shaped by my father and our “relationship”. How my self-worth has affected me both negatively and postively. Let’s look into that, shall we?

A little back story. The first 7 years of my life were spent as the quintessential Daddy’s girl. While I remember having issues with my mom early on, I don’t remember too many with my dad. I suppose that is typical with little girls: mothers are the disciplinarians and fathers are the heroes. One of my earliest memories I have of my father and our relationship was telling him, when I was about 4, that I couldn’t wait to get older so I could marry him.

Anyway, my parents divorced and I don’t remember it as traumatic. I didn’t act out in school, I didn’t sulk. My opinion on that is, because I was such a well-adjusted kid, I didn’t think anything could separate me from my father. That feeling played a part in my future decisions as well.

Dad moved to the Bronx and I saw him once a week. Because he worked night shift, this was a minor change for me. When he came to see me or I went to see him, we would go out to dinner or to some event, a movie or a play or something. Both my parents got along very well and I don’t remember any conflict until a few years later.

My father was living with his uncle and cousin in a house rent free. He’d had the same job for over 10 years at that point. His child support payments were, and I kid you not, $70 a month. I remember seeing the envelopes addressed to my mother when I got the mail in his uniform block print. The checks started to be less frequent. We had to cut back and I know my mother said many times that I couldn’t do something because my father hadn’t sent us money.

When I was 10 my mother asked if I’d like to move to southern California and I was adamant - no way! However, after I returned from summer camp I told her I thought we’d should give it a try. That was in August and by November we were here. Again, I thought distance wasn’t enough to separate me from my father. Even though I’d noticed he was more distant - he seemed to not have anything to say to me, when he picked me up for the weekend he never had anything planned, his gifts were not age appropriate, he cancelled a lot of the time and just seemed to be pulling away - perhaps because I was entering adolesence and he couldn’t deal or maybe it was to get back at my mother….I don’t know. What I do know is that I didn’t recognize the signs and still thought I was Daddy’s Little Girl.

So we move to California and the child support almost completely stops. He accuses my mother of taking me far away from him on purpose. She has to go through the courts to get child support. He makes several promises to see me but only comes twice.

Since I was 12 years old I’ve seen my father about 6 times and not in the last 25 years. I last saw him in NY when I was 15. I was there the entire summer - he called me twice and saw me once.

When I went off to college he was very good about supporting me financially. In fact, the only time I heard from him when was when he sent me money. He told my mother that I only contacted him when I wanted money (which was not true, I wrote him a letter at least once a month.) and I knew I would only hear from him when he sent money. It was a weird cycle.

Meanwhile, he marries 2 or 3 more times and has a son. He calls me about 2 times a year and moves without leaving me an address or phone number.

3 years ago he ups and disappears. Left his business, his apartment without a trace (who gives up real estate in NYC?). I hadn’t talked to him for a couple of years at that point even though he’s always been regular about talking to my mother. My mother starts to get concerned and digs up his SSN to get the police to search for him. Turns up nothing.

A few of months ago he calls her and then me. Seems he left everything when he got stressed from work and ended up homeless on the street for a few months. He’s living in some sort of halfway house or something. He sounded good - jovial even. Maintained a good relationship with his son even though he was living on the streets. I was surprised that I could talk to him with no animosity, but I’d done a lot of work to get to that point. More about that another day.

So how does this dysfunctional relationship work for me today? He sent me $500 in March as a gift and it was such a blessing to me I knew that he was trying to make up for not being there for me. But then I realized that I sometimes expect men to give me [i]things[/i] rather than time and attention. A journal entry from when I was about 16 or so says that I would rather have known that he went to the store and picked out a gift that he thought I would like rather than send me cash. Even if it was something dorky or a simple little card I wouldn’t care, because at least it showed that he thought of me the person, his daughter.

So when he calls this last time and apologizes for dropping out of my life and promises that he’s going to be different this time, I thought to myself he’s not going to be different and that’s okay. I’ve long since accepted his limitations and have thrived in spite of them. He is what he is, not what I want him to be. That’s fine. So the positive out of that is that I’m very accepting of others. The negative is I somehow take it personally when someone doesn’t live up to their potential.

I’ve not been in a relationship in a long time. Part of that being because I knew I needed to get past this so I could be with someone and not expect them to leave me physically or emotionally. I understand that not all men leave, but I still find myself pulling away from men who appear interested in me. I find myself getting closer to the ones who are unattainable - my friends’ husbands, gay men, men online, etc.

I know I have to be vulnerable, but the old instincts are hard to ignore - they’re intrinsic; part of who I am. Is it because I somehow feel that I am not enough to hold someone’s interest and love? Yeah, that’s part of it. Do I think I was somehow responsible for my parents’ divorce? Not at all, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way even though I know that is a normal response for children in that situation. Do I fear the unknown? Definitely, but I also love not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Where does that leave me? Well, I’m going to be 40 years old and the last relationship I had was with a man who lied and said he wasn’t married. I’m an extraordinary people pleaser, who, while it doesn’t matter if I’m liked, really wants to make everyone happy at least for a moment. I’m more comfortable with giving rather than taking. I[b] hate[/b] asking for help of any kind. I don’t get nearly as upset when I’m mistreated as when others are. I love figuring out what makes people tick, probably because I think it gives me a better understanding of why they do the things they do. I’m wildly attracted to men with strong family relationships. I’m no longer bitter, but sometimes I do see a father and daughter together and it makes me cry for what I missed. And it definitely makes it difficult to have a relationship with God, my heavenly Father, when my biological one can’t be bothered. But if I didn’t believe in God I don’t think I would have ever worked through these issues…..

I wish I could be at the place where I had confidence in my relationships with men, single men…. But progress comes one step at a time and I’m so much closer than I was before. That in itself is a miracle.

Geez…that was a lot longer than I thought it would be. And this is only part one! Crikey!

I’ve been stewing on this a couple of weeks and it’s not getting any better, so I better just give it a home and stop obsessing.

So, one of my friends just recently found out her husband was cheating on her with one of his students (college) and she’s getting a divorce. He blames her for the reason he cheated.

Says she got fat and doesn’t take care of herself. He’s been having this affair for two years. Yes, she got fat….because she was carrying his child! She gave birth to his 10 pound little girl and he’s out complaining to some vapid, delusional third year sophomore that his wife has “let herself go.” Men like that make even the nice ones look like dogs.

And what precedent does this set up for his little girl? Parents always think that the things they do don’t really affect their children. Well, maybe not in ways you can see right off. Little Elena may grow up happy and healthy thinking everything is going to come up roses for the rest of her days. But what will happen when she’s in a relationship? Will she become obsessed with pleasing her boyfriend, doing anything she can so he won’t leave her like her father left her mother? Will her relationship with her mother be fractured when she enters her teens, believing her father left the family because of something her mother did?

Look, men cheat because it’s easier to be a cheater than it is to be a man. Being a man is hard work, and not all are up to the task. Whatever issues that led him to that point where he says yes instead of no are irrelevant. This is not 1650 - if you are unhappy in your relationship, it is easy to get a divorce. Right is right, wrong is wrong. Nut up and admit it. If you promised to love and honor someone till death do you part, pursuing another relationship outside that bond makes you a liar and a person not of your word; a person of questionable character.

What makes me mad is she was doing all these things to try to make him happy and he would just kind of bag on her till she felt bad. He told her she looked raggedy, she changed her hair. He said she didn’t know anything about sex (um…yeah, he was her one and only…anything she didn’t know, she didn’t learn from him…) so she talked to her girlfriends and he did like what she learned there. But, for all that it sounds like the classic Madonna/whore complex, he has to realize that she was making an effort and he was being dismissive.

Well, he told her she should get a lawyer, that he was tired of dealing with her accusations (he says that he never had sex with this woman - that the hotel visits were meetings of the mind….). So she gets a lawyer and he calls her yelling and screaming that she’s being a bitch, that she’s just trying to take everything he owns. Can’t win for losing, can she?

Here’s how I see the story being played out. My friend is gorgeous. A size 6 (yes, that’s her fat self!) and smart and a go-getter, whatever that is…. Anyway, she is not going to be on the shelf for long, if you know what I mean. In fact, there are 2 guys at her job who have been interested and another from her old job who’s already heard that she and her husband split up and is trying to make his move. Anyway, one of these days old Mike is going to wake up and see that Elena is going to see some other dude as her father rather than him. Or maybe my friend will get a job in another state and he will miss out on all the major events of her life.

And let’s not leave the other woman out of the mix. How little confidence can you have to want some other woman’s leftover man? She knew he was married from the get go. In fact, she and my friend have met a few times. Why would you put yourself in the middle of a man, his wife and their baby? Do you really want to be with someone who is so disrespectful of their own family? For two years? Even if by some miracle he leaves the wife for you, that previous relationship is always going to be there if there are children involved.

This girl has got to be in the negative on self-worth. I mean, maybe he’s with her now, but he didn’t leave his wife - she kicked him out the day she discovered his infidelity. Ouch! He didn’t go to her until he had no where else to go? Get some pride, girlfriend!

The bottom line is whatever you think children don’t see or hear, they do. When you’re involved in the little details of other people’s lives you are more apt to overhear, piece together and come to a conclusion that fixes yourself as the catalyst. Children don’t have the tools to realize that something is wrong with Mommy or Daddy - parents are the heroes of their story. Children will think that something is wrong with them. Be the Mom. Be the Dad. Think about how your actions could ultimately effect your children ~ is it worth the price?