Even now, situations arise in which my mother somehow puts a
new hurt on top of the old festering wounds she has already inflicted. I saw a
notice at church regarding a women’s retreat to be held at the end of March one
year. The contact for information person was my mother. That almost made decide
not to even look into it, but look into it I did. I spoke with her at church
that morning and found out that because I would be registering so late, if I
went at all, it would cost me an extra $5. She said that she hoped I would come
and that she would put the information in the mail to me in the next day or so.
That Wednesday, there was no sign of the information I needed. I told David
that if it didn’t arrive by the next day, I didn’t think I’d bother going. The
next day on my way home, I saw mother’s car on the side of the freeway and
stopped to see if she and her husband, who was with her, were ok. They were,
the car had been making funny noises and they had stopped so he could make some
adjustments and they could get home. While we talked, I asked her about the
information she was supposed to mail to me. She said that she planned to “drop
by” with it the next day on her way home. I thought, “uh huh. You’re just doing
this so you can see Caleb outside of church.”
As I drove away from mother and her
husband, I started crying and got angry with myself. Why did I stop to see if they
needed help, when I really didn’t care to spend any time with either of them? I
suddenly realized that despite everything I feel about them, it is not in my
nature to stop caring altogether, nor can I pass up someone I know who may be
in need of help.
That night when I got home, I told
David what had happened. He agreed with me about mother’s probable motive. I
called her and left a message on her machine telling her not to bother, as I
wasn’t going to go to the retreat. She didn’t call back and ask, “why?” nor did
she ask me in church the next time I saw her, which happened to be her
birthday, but then I didn’t stand around in church where she could find me either.
She did try to come over to greet my son during the worship service, but I
shook my head at her and she backed off. I didn’t fully realize it at that
time, but I had made a decision to keep her as far away from my son as
possible, even in church, until she and I work out the difficulties in our
relationship. Unfortunately, my son may pay the price in the end, but then
again, I can’t trust her to follow my wishes in regards to things that concern
him, unless I’m right there. The other thing is, that I was hoping this would force
her to come to me and say something, which would allow me to tell her why I was
doing the things, I did.
It didn’t work. Mother did apologize
for not getting the information to me sooner, then she mentioned the probable
dates for next year’s retreat along with her hope that I would go. I told her I
wasn’t sure I wanted to. The one thing that made me hesitate in the first place
was the probability of having to have more contact with her than I really want.
At a retreat, there aren’t a whole lot of ways to avoid someone.
The next time she called me, it was to tell me that my insurance had been cancelled. I learned that I’d been driving
around without insurance on my car for just over a month. The insurance company
sent the renewal notices to mother’s address. Rather than forwarding them to me
or putting them in my church mailbox, she assumed they were ads and sent them
back. When they kept coming she finally realized they might be important
and opened one up. That’s when she called me and said something about it. I was
furious. Then to top things off, the insurance company wouldn’t re-instate my
policy because it had been over 30 days.
I called mother back and yelled at
her. I told her that thanks to her the insurance company would not renew my
insurance. She told me it wasn’t her fault that I hadn’t told them my new
address and I told her that she could have at least taken it with her to church
and put it in my church mailbox, and hadn’t it occurred to her that because it
was insurance related, it could be important? I also told her to put the shoe
on the other foot. I could bet anything you wanted that if I had done that to
her, she would have been angry with me and said things like, “You couldn’t take
the time to bring it to church and put it in my church mailbox?”
Yet, she seems to think that it’s fine
to not extend me the same courtesy. If she had not known where to find me and
how to reach me, then yes, it would be completely my problem, but that’s not
the case and obviously she can’t be bothered with such a thing.
I also learned that I can’t spend any
time with my mother and my son, Caleb in the same place outside of church. I
had occasion to do so at my niece, Raychel’s birthday party. I found myself
competing with my mother for my son’s attention. When I realized what I was
doing, I stopped, but I was so tense the rest of the day that I even bummed a
cigarette from my sister-in-law even though I no longer smoked.
The next morning was Sunday and
although I wanted to go to church, I woke up with such a nasty migraine from
grinding my teeth over the tension that I was unable to go. I got up and took two
Excedrin at 3:30 a.m. then went back to bed. When that didn’t work, I took one
more around 7:30 a.m. Two hours later I took two more. When the first two don’t
ease it, I know I’m in bad shape. David took us out to breakfast. Although that
helped, I was in no condition to go to church. So, David took Caleb to church while
I came home and took a much-needed nap on the couch. Thankfully, I had
recovered by the time they got home.
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