What about the drama from your momma?

I have officially been 30 years old for 2 weeks now, and while I don't feel physically different, I fear that I am becoming more aware of certain unpleasant aspects of relationships I have been a part of my whole life.  I've developed a habit, immediately following any of my well formed plans crashing and burning at my feet, of saying "Well I had this vision, right?"  This applies to my married life as well.  That is not to say my marriage is crashing and burning, oh no far from it, but the reactions to me being married are whats getting to me.  Two weeks from now I will celebrate my seventh wedding anniversary.  In that time I have purchased two different houses, created a daughter and been promoted two times in my job.  The second promotion actually takes effect on October 13th.  With that picture, you could safely say I have done well for myself.  If I wanted to be modest, my efforts are passable.  I pray for and receive my daily bread.  I have what I need, and know better than to try living beyond my means, that is irresponsible and, in my opinion, dumb.  I cannot afford to be dumb when the life of two other people hang in the balance.     

I have blogged before about my happiness being derived from helping others or making others happy.  The easiest and most natural way for me to accomplish this is to feed people.  Honestly, have you ever seen an unhappy person who's just finished a plate of chow?  I cannot say that I have.  With the exception of my wife and daughter there are two people I want to make happy more than anything, my parents, but they choose to make that task as difficult as possible.  Since I have been married there have been highs and lows, and fights and apologies, as with any marriage.  My wife and I have learned from our mistakes and, for the most part, become better people and a better team because of it.  Well I had this vision, right? two people bringing together their families and forming one big family who share things and understand each other, and are there for each other in times of trouble.  As I mentioned above, this vision crashed and burned.  Our families have difficulty being in the same room with each other.  My parents cite "they're just too different" as their excuse.  My in laws try, I have seen them, but what is the point of putting forth effort that is never reciprocated?  The result is a very complicated and overbooked holiday season.

I come from a generation that has a saying "Save the drama for your momma" because no one else cares.  But how am I supposed to respond when the drama is coming from my momma?  I don't want my wife and daughter exposed to it, because its not their fault, or problem to bear, but I am also unable to change two people who have been doing this for 55 years.  This is where recognizing unpleasant aspects of lifelong relationships is coming into the equation.  My parents have committed acts of irresponsible and disrespectful nature toward my wife and I.  The very same things they taught me NOT TO DO when I lived under their roof.  I'm not trying to be dramatic here, and my parents have not devolved into monsters.  Its simple things, like not being able to give me a straight answer to a simple, closed ended question, not being somewhere when they said they would be, and worse, not having a cell phone to contact them.  Any of those things would have gotten me in deep shit 10 years ago.  That's irresponsible, I would have been told.  We worry about you, and one day you'll understand.  They were absolutely right!  But what is my recourse now? To lecture my parents on what they already know?  It is not the job of the apprentice to teach the master.  Do I call them out for being hypocrites?  Do I even have it in me to accept that I was raised in a "Do as I say not as I do" family environment? 

I suppose the bottom line in all this is that I am having to grapple with my parents not being the great and infallible entities I always thought they were.  They are clearly guilty of many of the shortcomings they drilled me never to do.  With this information coming into focus, how do I proceed?  I want to respect my parents, but as a man, husband and father myself, I expect theirs equally.  If they cannot give me what I feel is earned, then what is my incentive to return in kind?  I have long wanted to make my parents proud of me in my accomplishments and successes.  I saw it as my way of thanking them for teaching me, and raising me to have work ethic, and determination to see a job through to the end.  Another unfortunate aspect of my relationship with them seems to be apathy toward my hard work.  Again, without incentive of someone else being happy (my wife, daughter, mom and dad topping that list) why should I push on?  What is the point of giving my all if those I want to share my accomplishments with don't really care?

I do not want to accept that my parents are lonely and quietly angry people.  That cannot be the truth of it.  They taught me everything right, they showed me love, compassion and discipline.  An apathetic person wouldn't value these things as traits, and yet I have them.  Did my getting married cause some rift in my relationship with my parents?  Its too late to repair that now.  I am 7 years invested into my married life.  I am not going to derail that train to appease my parents.  At this point I wonder if they can be appeased by anything that I do.  Being an adult seems to become more difficult with each passing year, even if you don't do anything to make it so.

Until we meet again...
Chase   

Balancing act

Quick show of hands from all my married friends, are holidays ever easy?  I feel like a juggler trying to keep 3 pins moving while off balance, with my eyes closed. I sit here looking at all the people going on about their mothers and the sparkly sign GIF's proclaiming HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY all over facebook.  I debated posting a picture like everyone else, but then remembered I have very few.  My mom has become adept at dodging cameras over the years, and with that in mind I concluded she wouldn't appreciate my posting one of the few I do have. It feels the same every holiday: Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mothers/Fathers Day, Arbor Day, Armed Forces Day, it doesn't matter.  I will be juggling 3 pins trying to keep my wife, my wife's family, and my parents happy.  Placing the happiness of others before yourself makes it very difficult to find a genuine smile.  Does prizing your own happiness over those around you not make you self centered?  I'm not self centered, so I don't do that.  The older I get, the more difficult real happiness is to find. Pouring my energy into everyone else's happiness becomes the norm.

I am not an asshole, nor am I callous and inconsiderate of others. Yet, by comparison, it seems to me those who choose this path of human interaction are happier than I allow myself to be.  Have I gotten the equation wrong, should I be self centered and to hell with everyone else who isn't on the same page as I am?  That looks like a volatile lifestyle, if you ask me. I derive happiness by making others happy.  Feeding my friends is one of the primary avenues I employ to reach that end.  If someone needs for something, or asks to do something, I take joy in being the one who makes it happen.  Though I am usually not the one doing the asking.  Does that make me wrong?

To any fans of Terry Goodkind, and the Sword of Truth series, wizard's 2nd rule applies to me.  The best intentions can give rise to the most catastrophic outcomes.  I can't see the future, I've never boasted that I could.  I can't know how spending an afternoon with my mother will impact the rest of my family.   My brain breaks it down to "you are doing something loving/good/ kind for someone you love. This is the right course"  I find out later that in so doing I have offended, or irritated, or forgotten about someone else, and that causes mental and emotional conflict all over the map.  I cannot rationalize how doing good is resulting in my being in trouble.  I did nothing wrong, I made one person happy, that should not, in turn, make another person mad.  Why am I wrong?  How am I wrong?  How is making someone happy wrong?  This is a question that doesn't get answered, but boiled down to me not understanding.  So ultimately I punish myself while the person I made mad remains mad at me.  Making someone happy is then equated to my being in trouble, and getting punished.  It isn't right, it isn't fair, it just is.

With that in mind, it could said that I have a perfectly good reason to be a callous dick.  I was told earlier in my marriage that as an adult no one was there to punish me anymore. (barring breaking the law, of course)  If I burn dinner, or forget to lock up, or leave the pantry light on all day, no one is there to berate me or impress upon me the importance of not doing that again.  So I took on the responsibility myself.  It isn't my wife's job, she told me.  Though she has no qualms punishing me for when she feels wronged by something I did or said.  Remember I am not yet a callous dick so these outcomes are born from my best intentions.  (You see a cycle forming yet?)  What prevents me from catching that initial onslaught of verbal/emotional punishment and firing back with, I made my decision, you need to deal with it however you need to deal with it?"  or "This problem is your problem."  1st of all, because I love her and I care about her opinion foremost.  If she hurts, I hurt.  2nd, she can always word her argument to somehow convince my brain that the thing I did/said that I thought was good, was actually bad.  There is no way for me to undo, or unsay what has happened so I then have to live with the aftermath.

It seems to me that if I put myself 1st and said to hell with everyone else and their opinions, a good bit of this complication would cease to be; but I know acting that way would cause those I love to respond in kind and eventually either: a) we would all be dicks to one another, or b) I would be a very lonely individual.  I do not look forward to either of those outcomes, but I am equally dissatisfied with my current situation.  I refuse to accept that my acting to the happiness of one person should result, for any reason, in the angering of another.  I have done right, so why is it so difficult to ignore the good that was done, and focus on how you were wronged by me? The result of which is trying to persuade me that my actions were wrong from the start.  In my opinion they weren't and it isn't fair for anyone to try and convince me otherwise.  I need to discover how to support my actions in such a way as to not be convinced of wrongdoing; I need to balance bringing myself happiness without it costing me compassion for others, and I got about 40 years to pull this off.  Wish me luck.     

Easter week blog off - Finale

Today's topic is forgiveness, whether for yourself or someone else, because love was more important.  I'm going to roll the clock back to last October again, are you starting to see a pattern here?  All the important things that happen to me seem to revolve around that month.  Committing 16 or more nights to our haunted farm means we need find someone to watch our daughter more often than usual.  That means calling my parents into play. A misunderstanding as to who was watching her when, resulted in an argument that drove a wedge between me and my folks. 

Everyone handles conflict differently, yelling, berating each other, guilt trips, wrestling, and sometimes all out slugfests.  In my mother's case, the silent treatment is her weapon of choice.  After a very heated exchange at their house, I was asked not to come back.  I wasn't their son anymore, they told me.  While that comment cut deeply, I relied on my wife and our plan.  We had decided on who would watch our daughter and when well ahead of time. To our knowledge, we'd expressed this plan to both pairs of grandparents so they could schedule accordingly.  Miscommunication at this point didn't make me wrong, in my mind the argument wasn't my fault.  I had my daughter's best interests at heart and if anyone, even my parents, disagreed, that was on them.  Period. 

The holiday season passed with very little interaction between me and them.  I was assailed by doubt on multiple occasions, but I fell back on my wife.  I had done nothing wrong.  I was living my life, making decisions with and for my family, and if my parents disagreed, it was still on them. That fact had not changed.  If they wanted to isolate themselves from us, and from their granddaughter, that was their choice.  There was nothing I could do about it.  I concluded time was being wasted because of their decision to be prideful. 

My dad reached out first, as he usually did.  He doesn't hold the kind of iron grudge that my mom does.  We spoke briefly in text messages through November, and discussed meeting at a local mall to get our daughter's picture with Santa.  Sadly another Thanksgiving came and went without my parents at the table.  I am becoming more accustomed to that tradition since I began my family.  The next time we saw each other was for lunch outside the mall on the chosen day.  My dad seemed genuinely happy to see me, while my mom was down right frigid.  She would smile at my daughter with one side of her face and grimace at me with the other.  This is over a month later, mind you.  She has been holding this grudge for a month and a week. As the photo session came to a close, we asked my parents point blank if they would be attending our daughter's birthday the following weekend.  As if they had practiced it, they both looked away from us and did not answer the question.  We left, there was nothing more either party needed to say.

For our daughter's sake, my parents did make it to the party, and while a bit withdrawn, she wouldn't have known any better.  As before, my dad seemed himself, but my mom still couldn't look my direction without seeming pained.  I had seen this face many times in my youth, it meant I'd done something wrong and there was no repairing it.  This time though, my shield came back up in the form of my wife.  I was doing right by her, and at the end of the day when I closed my eyes, that's what mattered most. Pictures we took at the party will show, smiling faces, balloons and everyone having a good time.  My daughter won't know how her grandmother was feeling toward her daddy that day. 

The next opportunity we had to get together was our annual Christmas Eve sushi feast at a local hibachi house.  For the 1st time in years, my parents were not at the table.  This is verging on 3 months after our initial argument.  3 MONTHS! Who can let anger fester for that long?  Clearly I know the answer now.  While all this had been going on I was attending my weekly men's accountability group at church, and it seemed I had more bad news to deliver on this subject each time.  My brothers always offered comfort or advice whenever they could, but ultimately time was the only thing to right the situation.  Nothing I did or said would have an effect now

After New Years something changed, I gave up the fight. I stopped caring about right and wrong, and realized I just missed my parents.  I prayed hard and forgave them their behavior over the past 3 1/2 months. I lifted up their names in group prayer each week, and asked God to show them their way back to my family.  It took time, but my conversations with my dad became longer, and one day he came out and asked if mom and he could watch their granddaughter for a weekend.  He asked my permission!  I was shocked, but agreed.  It seemed they missed her as much as I missed them.  After that, we reached a new arrangement where our daughter spends the 3rd weekend of the month with them.  My parents have resumed their role in our lives and last night, for the 1st time since October 3rd, 2013, my mom said she loved me.