I don't write about my family much. Most of that is to do with an unspoken code of ethics. It's fair game to write about myself in torturous detail, but unfair, by and large, to subject my family and friends to the same scrutiny. That's the big reason. The smaller reason is that my family often drives me crazy.
Today I'm going to break that little rule to reveal some of the strange family dynamics I am part of. This little story is illustrative of the sensitivities, the psychosis, the weird and illogical happenings that are an almost constant reality in my family. As in many families much occurs that would be funny if it were not so ridiculous. Much of my life could in fact come from a Seinfeld episode, my family life most of all.
I got a call at about 8.45 this morning from my mother. She was in tears, which is not an unusual occurrence. She asked me if I would drive her to the airport this morning - she's off to Queensland for a week. "What's going on", I said, "I thought you had that organised." And so she launched into her strange but typical story.
Turns out last night she got a call from her step-family offering to drive her to the airport today. My mum refused, saying she was driving herself and it wasn't necessary. Karen, her step-daughter-in-law, insisted, and they proceeded to have a small and unresolved argument about it. Easier to let it go rather than argue about it, but typical.
This morning Karen rings again. I'm coming over she said, I'm taking you to the airport. Once more my mum objected, but it was a fait accompli. Now this is where it gets messy.
My mum has a little dog she's devoted to, Muffy. She had arranged for my sister, who lives 5 minutes away, to mind Muffy while she was gone. She was going to drop Muffy off on the way through and no dramas. That was plan A. Now we've got plan B though, and my sister won't have a bar of it.
If my mother is easily upset, over-sensitive and a bit of a drama queen then my sister is a bit of the hard faced bitch - and I say that in a nice way. She has her good points - she's loyal, she believes in things, she's a great mother, she's a trustworthy person. She is open and fun with the people she trusts. She has her lesser points though too. She is an attractive woman but has few social graces. She has no gift for small talk and knows it, and so tends to dismiss it as an irrelevancy. She is stiff and closed up to the point of being anti social. Essentially she is insecure in this regard, and covers it by being defensive to rude. She is not an easy person. In reality she feels it very deeply I think, and is conscious of what people think of her and what they possibly say of her.
My sister doesn't like Karen. Or rather, she feels as if Karen is one of those people who regard her as being difficult. This predictably raises my sisters hackles, and makes her prickly. Her preferred way of dealing with this is by avoidance. It's a rare day that you'll find them all in the same room, and that suits her fine. But then something like today happens out of the blue. Instead of my mum bring Muffy over it's now my mum and Karen and my sister digs her heels in. I don't want her coming over here, she says.
This is what led to my mum's tears, this is what made her call me. As on numerous occasions previously mum is upset by her daughter and is left wondering what to make of it. As on numerous occasions previously I am the one who bears the brunt of it. And as on numerous previous occasions it is left to me to explain.
I'm up front, as I always am. You should know her by now I tell her. Sure, it's wrong, I say. That's the way she is though, that's the way she's been forever. It might not be good but you have to accept it. There's no point in getting upset about it, you should know by now.
I've had this conversation a thousand times but it never really gets through. Why is she that way though? And so for the thousandth time I explain. My mother is high maintenance. She's a nice person but very fragile, and very self-absorbed - an attribute she shares with my sister, but which is manifested in different ways. Mum becomes self-pitying, comes the martyr. At the same time she seems incapable of actually seeing things from another persons perspective. She doesn't understand her daughters insecurity; she understands only the pain and inconvenience it causes her.
So, fine, at this stage Karen is coming in to pick Mum up to take her to the airport and she doesn't know what to do with Muffy and so she asks if I can take her to the airport. Hang on a sec I tell her, how does that follow? You want to go to the airport alone, Karen is taking you, and now you're asking me to take you instead. What gives?
Well, she says, if you pick me up we can drop Muffy off without my sister getting upset and alls well. At this point I exclaim how ridiculous that there should be such hullaballoo about something so insignificant. And how bloody typical. This is what you do I said. My sister lives 5 minutes from Mum. Go and drop her off yourself and let Karen take you to the airport, problem solved.
She seems to accept that, but it's not over yet. There's always a last shot. "Why is it that my children never ask if they can take me to the airport?" You can imagine by now I'm sitting on the phone with my eyes going heavenwards in exasperation, good grief. Because, I say, you made it clear that you were going by yourself. Because, I say, it never occurs to me to ask for a lift to the airport (which I would decline) and so it never occurs to me to ask. And because you're only going to Queensland for a week, not on some tramp steamer going around the world.
There are times I feel like I need a holiday from my family, but that seems graceless. I love my mum and my sister, but there are times my patience is sorely tested. For much of my life I have been the intermediary, copping it from both sides. In more recent years mum was become very dependent on the two of us, and at times that feels a heavy burden. I sometimes wish that mum would make more of an effort to stand on her own two feet before coming to us - but then I am in the prime of my life with a history of independence behind me. It seems odd that mum and I are so different on that count, and often wrong. I should take my own advice and just accept the way things are, because no matter how I wish for it nothing is going to change now.
I feel kind of disloyal airing some of this dirty washing in public, but it's about time I was up front about it.
Recent Comments