by
gritty
My
second husband was the only son capable of managing his
mother’s estate after she was placed in a nursing home.
My mother-in-law was a bona-fide-highly-intelligent-crusty-pedigreed
child of New England scions. She married late in life and
had three boys in her 40s in the 40s. Achieving an Ivy League
advanced degree, she enjoyed respect in a career while raising
a family, a turn-of-the-century woman-ahead-of-her-time.
My
mother-in-law was the reason I decided to marry her son.
She was the glue that held together a family I felt bound
to. I never felt connected to my own mother, although the
impressions she left were pure-India-ink, indelible stains
that refuse to come out.
Unfortunately,
the living-saint-giving-sharing-caring lessons of our mothers
don’t always penetrate the shell of us mutant acorns who
refuse to sprout like all the other little oaks. By always
putting herself last, my mother-in-law was no different
from my own mother. She inadvertently created children who
learned to put themselves first. Nobody valued her suffering.
I
became increasingly frustrated with My Three Sons and their
lack of emotional support for their mother during her last
years. Daughterly devotion took on a whole new dimension
with a dying mother. All the while, I was expected to keep
my life, career, and household sailing along like some unsinkable
ship. My husband spent all his free time pouring over her
trust, will, Medicare payments, household and personal expenses,
his entire imagined duty. My duty was to continue to be
there for him and for her.
The
last time the brothers assembled before their mother passed
away, I unloaded on them. A bunch of spoiled-selfish-materialistic-soul-less-success-addicts.
What did you learn from your father? That it's ok to be
an airbag? You spend so much time discussing your mother’s
financial and legal affairs. Go hold her hand. And what
do you think of your mother’s example? Doormats make the
best wives?
They
were flabbergasted. How dare I reveal that I was not a doormat
at a time like this? I put their ability to love to the
test. Sadly, they were uneasy with love. Sadly, I was uneasy
with pain. But they were sorry huh? What? My outburst was
lost on them and too late for her.
Today,
none of them has a wife living on the premises. The youngest
recently divorced after thirty plus years. The oldest is
ditto his third wife who also maintains a separate residence.
They are all over 50 when the cost of marital upset rises
faster than your blood pressure. But thanks to worldly success
and inheritance, they can afford good lawyers. I’ll bet
their mother looks down from heaven, not amused.
Where
did we go wrong? Do you think My Three Sons are trying to
figure that out? They still lovingly refer to themselves
the same way their mother did. The Boys don’t do soul-searching.
They are rugged individualists who put their energy into
moving on. That’s the ticket to ease the pain. Why beat
yourself up? Done!
You
don’t need an Ivy League education to know that some problems
can never be fixed. I heard a true story recently about
a program created by the local Catholic diocese to furnish
Mother’s Day cards to inmates at the county jail. The program
was so popular they ended up purchasing ten times the number
of cards initially requested because the prisoners kept
coming back for more, as word spread throughout the jail.
When
Father’s Day rolled around, the bishop asked the warden
to announce to the inmates that the same program would be
made available to send greeting to fathers. The bishop called
back numerous times, but no takers. Not even one prisoner
requested a card.
You
can’t change reality. But shouldn’t you at least be aware
of it? Honor the knowledge and the experience of thy mother
and thy father, who hold the keys to who you are. One get-out-of-jail-free
card goes to anyone who can accept the limitations inherent
in their family dynamic.
My
mother certainly never examined her motivations. She was
third in her class, and my father was third from the last
in his class in high school. When she turned down a scholarship
to an Ivy League college, she believed she could not compete
with the relatively-superior-material-accoutrements of the
rich-snooty girls who would presumably make her life miserable.
She did not value education as much as she feared the social
principles of Darwinian females. And she had never met anyone
like my mother-in-law who was too busy studying and building
a better world to pay attention to fashion trends.
My
mother knew how to protect herself against reality. Taught
to limit her dreams, she thought she should marry the first
person to ask her although she knew marriage was a ball-and-chain
endurance test from her awful parents’ example. She was
sad but careful to slap on a happy-clown-face in public
to maintain appearances. She learned how to guard her privacy
to protect herself against a world of reality, risk and
change. She was afraid that the future would be a continuation
of her past, mostly bad.
Most
of us accept that marriage is a high-maintenance forever
occupation. It is the Marines of relationships. You need
to be all that you can be to make the best of it. It takes
training and re-training. It requires strategic planning
and tactical maneuvers. How many enter the marital ranks
truly armed and ready for this test? Hillary Clinton? Nora
Ephron?
In
hindsight, we might look at relationships like a forensics
expert. The exploratory phases can be messy. Reach for the
old scalpel and find the entrance and exit wounds on those
old hurts. Check under the fingernails for the true grit
that somehow was lost. Make a chart, draw a diagram, get
a clue about the future. Those who don’t understand their
past mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
Eight
years ago, when my second husband opened a business so that
his adopted-son-just-released-from-prison could earn a living,
I applauded his patronly sense of duty. Imagine investing
a boatload of your retirement savings to help an unfortunate
member of your family grab on to a life preserver. At the
time, I took it at face value, assuming this was a noble
and virtuous gesture.
I
learned a lot about parents and children and failure in
the process of watching my second husband put his sweat
equity into a labor of love for a pseudo-son, a creepy-phony-devil-child
who attempted to play the prodigal so many times I lost
count. This freak of nature knew his adoptive father’s weakness.
Pride kept daddio from facing all the good reasons you kick
your kids out when they reach the so-called age of reason.
Pride made daddio a slave to creating a junior success in
his own image.
Adult
children who remain satellites have a motive for never breaking
away from the gravitational pull of the mothership. They
just can’t grow up, or worse, they have an axe to grind.
So sad, Darth, you became evil because your daddio abandoned
you when you were just a little dirtbag. From now on, I
will ignore you because I know you are nothing but a leech.
Get the hell out of my life before everyone becomes a victim.
The
laws of the universe demand that dirtbags beget little dirtbags.
Now my second husband spends time taking care of his two
little grandchildren who are dumped at his house while their
parents are out doing God-knows-what. He has severed his
mooring to their bad parents and secured a lifeline to the
next generation instead. He gives the poor babes a taste
of normalcy, an alternative to the abusive life they had
the misfortune to be born to. The only thing those children
will learn about sacrifice is that they were sacrificed.
That is, if they are lucky enough to survive.
So
maybe we need to think like an FBI profiler when choosing
a life partner in the 21st century. Remember learning about
the scientific method in grade school and all the ways you
can apply it to solve problems in all subjects and disciplines?
Just for kicks, dust off the old fifth grade textbook, and
rediscover this method. It could mean the difference between
happily-ever-after and cleaned-out-and-starting-over. If
you have thrown caution to the wind in past relationships,
ignored the neon signs of trouble ahead, believing you,
super hero, could overcome mile-high obstacles in other
people’s pasts or yours, get your face plastered on the
cover of People magazine to announce how you overcame all
the odds, fuggedaboutit. Hope is a terrible thing to waste.
In
between bites of turkey, you might say a prayer of Thanksgiving
for all your lessons learned in relationships. Pray that
you will always forgive but never forget. If you are in
a good relationship, God bless you. If you are in a bad
one, God save you.
If
you aren’t in a relationship, get down on your knees because
you, lucky star, have a whole world of possibility out there
just waiting for you to discover the next adventure on your
journey, if you are wise enough to keep to your path and
keep your head. If a bright light in the east doesn’t spot
you this season, hang in there. Cherish your time out, kick
back, be glad you are resting on the bench, breathe deeply,
light a candle, and savor the peace and silence.
For
now, that’s all the cold-bare-naked truth in the hard-core-cruel
world.
Email Gritty at: Gritty@hybridmagazine.com
