girlfiend

Yesterday at the Fun Fest at Journey’s End (no, that’s not really the name, but it’s close), the neighborhood senior center, F wanted to get his face painted. He ended up getting both arms painted instead. A rainbow with matching cloud ends on one arm and a butterfly on the other. Right now he is watching the Care Bears. I’ll reserve judgment for later.

T has been wearing underwear for 3 months now, all of his own volition. I did not suggest the move out of diapers, he insisted upon it. He is awesome at peeing in the toilet and has hardly had any accidents. He’s even been sleeping in underwear for the past several nights and waking up dry. Unfortunately he hasn’t yet made the decision to shit in the toilet. It’s a good thing we use cloth diapers or I’d be throwing out a lot of underwear.

Miss N, is now 1 and it was the most emotional of all of the first birthdays. She is delightful. Sunny, happy, sweet, cuddly, everything you want in a baby. She is still not walking, which is kind of a pain in the ass, but it keeps her firmly planted in the baby stage. I’m not emotionally prepared for a toddler.

My girl cousin, did I have a name for her on this blog? Whatever, girl cousin- damaged, called a few weeks ago to get me back together with my mother. When I last posted I wrote that I was tempted to talk to her about everything, but I feared she’d side with my mother. I was sort of right. She does think I should let my mother back in to our lives and that I’m being cruel by not allowing her to see the kids. But she gets where I’m coming from and understands why I won’t. I don’t really understand her loyalty to my mother since my mother has never had anything but shit to say about her, but I didn’t tell girl cousin that. I passed on a few links to her, figuring that her mother was just as bad, if not worse than my mother. She was enthusiastic about the links, even ordering a book from Amazon. So, there’s that. I don’t know if we’ll talk again. I don’t really see the point. She’s 15 years older than I am, so we’ve never been close.

She thinks I’m doing the kids a disservice by keeping my mother away. I disagree. But at the same time I wonder. Am I?

Remember how just a few days ago I was done with this? I can’t keep this to myself.

Years ago I used to pose for an artist. A talented artist. Looking back, I probably should have received commission, not just an hourly rate, but I was young and didn’t know the difference. The artist gave me a few sketches, one for each of the major paintings I sat for. Because I was close to the family my mother was invited to a friends and family yard sale he had and bought an oil painting of me at a very reasonable rate. I don’t know what she paid for it, but she got a deal. It was a yard sale, not a gallery purchase. She bought a sketch of me at the same time.

A while back, probably even before disaster struck after Miss N’s birth, my mother asked if it was okay for her to give some of his artwork to my aunt. I told her no, do not give away the artwork because my aunt will sell it. She said okay, she wouldn’t.

Yesterday my mother invited us over to celebrate her birthday. Remember, I am not interested in pursuing a relationship with this woman. However, I feel guilty cutting her off. As a goodwill gesture I brought the three kids over. It was the first time I’ve been to her place since she first rented it. I looked around and noted the sketches displayed but not the oil painting. She fed my children cake and gave them crappy gifts. There was an awkward visit with my aunt (the woman who uninvited me to Rosh Hashanah and didn’t even bother to invite me to Thanksgiving. She is a cold, unloving bitch). Then she took us downstairs to see the “consignment boutique” she opened in her building. The boutique is essentially the contents of her shore house, the pieces she didn’t sell. Art, furniture, tchotchkes, and clothes. I looked around. No oil painting. I didn’t want to, but I asked, and yes, she sold it. At auction. Initially I feared she’d just given it to my aunt. But no, she sold the painting through a proper auction house and made a ton of money off of it.

She sold it. She fucking sold it. I asked her why she sold it, reminding her of our previous conversation about giving the artwork to her sister. She said, “I was talking about the sketches.” Well, if I didn’t want her to give away the sketches to her sister, does she really think I’m giving her the green light to sell the oil painting? Further conversation got us to the point where she said, “it was mine to sell.” Of course it was fucking hers to sell, but who the fuck cares? Who does that? What MOTHER sells an oil painting of their child? It was an original piece by a successful artist. Something my children, her grandchildren, might have wanted some day. An heirloom. Something worth keeping in the family. She sold it.

I called my dad to ask for his help in getting my sketches back, the sketches that were clearly given to me, with my name on them. I didn’t want to go over there with the kids and her schedule does not allow me to pick up the sketches when it is convenient for me. I told my father that she SOLD the fucking oil painting and he was as incredulous as my clueless father can be. He told me that he doesn’t understand why she would do such a thing and that I shouldn’t take it personally (!) and that I should just forget about it because thinking about it will just upset me. He makes a valid point, but I think after everything that this is just the big fuck you of a cherry on top of a banana split of bullshit.

(As an aside, my father did not remember any of this conversation later. It’s like it didn’t happen. He has no recollection. None. WTF? Denial or senility?)

She is not good for me. She hurts me. She makes me angry and upset. She doesn’t care about my children, other than the Fiendling and she only likes him because he is amused by her which won’t last forever. She is a narcissist and I think she actually hates me. Why else would she sell the painting? She hates me. And I hate her too. She has been a shitty mother who has lied and cheated and manipulated and twisted and made me feel like I’m the one who has done something wrong. She has fucked me over again and again and again. B, who has always been the one to insist I maintain relationships with my fucked up family, has been done with her since May and I keep getting sucked back into it. I want to be done, I should be done. I should just cut her off. It’s over, right?

I picked up the sketches today. She wasn’t where she said she would be. I called to find out where she was and told her I wanted the third sketch. She said no, she paid for it, it was hers. I offered to buy it from her. She said no, it’s hers and she’s not selling it to me. Then she had the nerve to ask if I still wanted the other two sketches. I snapped, “Of course I want the fucking sketches,” and she brought them down and put them in my car without a word.

I hate her. I do. I hate what she does to me, I hate the way she makes me feel, I hate the way I act when I am near her. She is not good for me. She is not good for my family. I am done. I won’t do this anymore. She can’t be a part of my family any more. This is beyond me feeling guilty about being a grudge holder like them. This is about my health and my sanity. I am heartbroken right now. I need to heal and I can’t have her near us.

My mother is coming over this afternoon to visit with the children (not me, of course) and to drop off a present from my aunt. My aunt, who does not have it in her to invite me to two holiday dinners in a row, bought me (or the kids?) a gift. My mother and her sister are not kind, thoughtful, or generous in spirit, but they have wallets. There is so much wrong with this. I can’t wait to see what she bought. Is it a gift card? Childrens clothing in all the wrong sizes? A vase? Oh, the anticipation. I am already drafting a thank you card.

I blink and it’s been a month and I haven’t posted anything, which is ridiculous because there are so many stories I want to tell and things I have to complain about.

Let’s start with my super awesome family. My lovely aunt, who has been a guest in my home for Thanksgiving for the last 5 years (scratch that. 4 years. she didn’t come the year she was fighting with my mother) did not invite me to her Thanksgiving dinner. She did invite my father. If my mother wasn’t the one who instructed her to leave us out she should have been the one to tell her to invite us. Outraged, as I’m always outraged when those assholes are involved, I told my father no, he was not going to her dinner he was going to B’s parents’ house with me. I specifically told him that he needed to back me up. I was not invited and he should support me. He was happy to go to Thanksgiving dinner with me but got a phone call that day telling him he was needed at my aunt’s for dessert. Boyfiend told him that the only reason they wanted him there was so he could give my (piece of shit, pussy) cousin and his wife a ride to the train station. My father said, no, he never gives them a ride to the station. Sure enough, he got there and probably didn’t even eat dessert before it was time to get them to the station. What a bunch of assholes.

Then my mother wants to come here to give my kids Hanukkah presents. My kids, because they are part of a package deal that includes me and my husband, are not welcome at her sister’s Thanksgiving dinner but she gets to waltz into my house any time she wants to see them. And then I’m in the position where it’s either yes, please shit all over me, or no, I am forbidding you from seeing your grandchildren. So she came and I hate her the end.

Only it’s not the end, because rather than rent a storage space to accommodate all of her things that can’t fit in her studio apartment now that she’s sold her house at the shore she’s decided to open a consignment shop. Who knows if she got permits, a business license, whatever. I know she got insurance in case of a slip and fall. She said she didn’t need to insure th inventory because people were giving her things they didn’t want anyway. I’m sure this is going to end badly for her. Anyway, she wanted me to bring the kids to the “grand opening” but she didn’t remind me and the day and I forgot about it. Then we get a fucking Kindle in the mail from her,a kindle for all of us,and I called to thank her and she hasn’t called back, probably mad that I missed her big day.

And what am I going to do with a Kindle? I can’t use it for library downloads and I’m way too cheap to buy digital books. Will Kindle ever be compatible with the Philadelphia Library? Is there are workaround? Can I mail it back and get Amazon credit without her knowing? Or do I just mail it back and be done with it? If I even wanted a reader I’d get a Nook because of the library thing. Or an Ipad. I could get behind an Ipad. But now I’ve got a Kindle that I don’t know what to do with and I still hate my mother, and I feel guilty for not making her a photo calendar this year, but not guilty enough to make her one now. She never appreciates our gifts anyway because we don’t have money to purchase her the expensive things she wants. The one year she wanted a $250 pants press so I bought her the fucking pants press and now it’s in my basement because she doesn’t need it. And then the Fiendling planted flowers in a pot he decorated for her for Mother’s Day and she left here twice. With the card unopened. He didn’t know why she didn’t take her present. I should have told him it was because she is a selfish, materialistic narcissist.

Then my dad called and told me that he saw my mother’s store and there is a lot of stuff in it and she wants to go to his place to get some of his things to sell. I said no, over my cold dead body, will I let her rifle through his things so she can sell them in her fucking store. I said under no circumstances is he to allow her to go through his home so she can sell off his stuff. He would probably let her sell the clothes off his back. I hate her.

So that’s that. The rest of my family, my dad, B, the kids, my in-laws, are good and kind and loving and I am grateful for them and lucky. There are good people in this world and people who just suck and I am happy that most of my interactions are with the good ones. It’s just hard when your mother is one of the losers and you want her to be a part of your life but all she knows how to do is buy shit for people.

My mother called to speak to F the other day. Just F. There were no pleasantries. When he answered she did not say hello, or ask how B was doing. He didn’t recognize her voice and had to ask who was calling. Boyfiend told her that F was outside on his bike and to call back later. When she called again I was serving dinner. I said we’d call back but as always, things with 3 children ages 4, 2, and 0 got hectic and I forgot.

Today the boys were outside on their bikes and my mother left a message.

“Hi, I’m calling to speak to F to wish him a Happy Halloween. (pause) And T. (pause) and umm (uncomfortably long pause) Miss N.”

Really? What the hell is that? I know that F is her favorite and all, and the others were clearly an afterthought, but did she actually forget her granddaughter’s name?

Now that he’s talking, and I mean really, really talking, T is even funnier than he was before. He has always had a good sense of humor. (At least we assumed he had a good sense of humor- he was a baby and all.) But now he is outright hilarious. I wish I had video to post of his comedic genius. It’s difficult to get on camera because he’s so aware of it.

Miss N seems to take after T. She is a laid back baby like he was and super-smiley. She is all baby pudge now, eating her toes, blowing raspberries and babbling. Or is it cooing? I don’t know the finer points of baby noises, even with all of my practice. She is so pleasant, so good, that when I took her to the doctor for a rash on her back yesterday I learned she had an ear infection. Or maybe it’s less about her being good and more about me not noticing she was probably up all night for a reason. Hmmm.

F is going through another giant pain in the ass stage. I won’t dwell too much on it because he’s being okay this morning. His pre-k classroom has them ability grouped and I’m proud to say he’s in the top group. Maybe I shouldn’t be too proud. He does have a non-English speaker, several young three year olds, and several kids who look like their parents are a dozen years younger than me in his class. Which means they probably had their pre-kindergartners when they were 16 years old. We were at the Harvest Festival at the park two weekends ago and he was playing in the hay with a bunch of kids. I said to B, “Guess which one is in F’s class.” Jokingly he replied, “the kid in the wifebeater?” But he was right. F goes to school with the kid in the wifebeater. But I’m still proud. He read the entire cereal box last night after dinner. Kid tested, mother approved. He’s still a shit head though. The whining is enough to make me want to punch him in the face. I don’t, because that would be wrong, but I want to. When he is not filling me with rage he is still sweet and polite. He says things like, “Mom, Mama, may you please get me more cereal?”

I need to start writing things down as they happen. There is so much going on that I’m afraid I’ll forget. At the same time I want to experience things as they happen, not photograph and craft blog posts while they are happening.

My (asshole) mother stopped by the other afternoon. I didn’t remember that she was planning to until she called half an hour before I needed to pick up F from school to tell me she’d be here soon. It was B’s birthday. She did not bother to wish him a happy one or tell me to extend the greeting. Instead she took a moment to congratulate me because T was wearing a disposable diaper. He is wearing a disposable diaper because his butt, which has always been large, grew out of all of our diapers. Once I started replacing the elastic I realized they only fit him because of the stretched out elastic. Once repaired, they were tiny on him. A friend gave us a ton of other diapers that her kids grew out of, but the covers were too small so I had to buy disposables to fill the gaps. It was not because cloth was inconvenient or because disposable diapers were easier. He was wearing a stupid Blues Clues paper diaper because I didn’t have enough cloth diapers to get him through the day. Once my mother congratulated me I immediately got on line and ordered more diapers. I don’t want her approval for creating more trash.

Around 4pm yesterday I got a call from my mother. She said, “Your father told me you were very upset about being excluded from dinner tonight. It’s the new year and I think we should put everything behind us. It’s time to move on.”

I wasn’t sure where she was going with this so I didn’t say much. She continued, “I hope you understand why you weren’t invited. It’s a holiday and other people shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable by your anger.”

I stayed quiet. “It’s time to move forward. You are my daughter and I love you. I want to see you and my grandchildren. Can we put this all behind us now?”

I wasn’t really pleased with her approach. I said, “Yes, if you are ready to apologize I am ready to put it all behind us and move forward.”

She did not like this. She said that she didn’t do anything wrong and she had no reason to apologize. We were the ones who excluded her and we kicked her out of our house and that we need to apologize to her. I reminded her that we apologized to her on more than one occasion and that she refused to apologize in return. She said she had no reason to apologize. I reminded her that the last time we had a discussion she called me a fucking idiot, and if nothing else she should apologize for that. She told me that we all said things we didn’t mean. I said I want an apology. She said she did nothing wrong.

I told her that twice, once after T’s birth and then again after Miss N’s birth, she had a fight with my husband and left when she was supposed to stay and help. I said that she was not truthful about many things. I told her that I apologized to her several times since May and my apologies have never been accepted. I have reached out trying to resolve our issues and gotten nowhere. I said that I called my aunt because I wanted to come to dinner with my family to move forward and that I was denied. She said, ” I hope you’ve learned a lesson. You feel excluded just like I’ve felt when you have excluded me. Now you know what it feels like.”

Furious, I said, “Are you serious? You excluded me from dinner to teach me a lesson? You felt badly so you decided that I should be made to feel badly too? You thought this was an appropriate teachable moment, to exclude me to prove a point? How is that a way to resolve things?”

This point was not lost on her. After I told her nothing was going to happen unless she apologized, she apologized in a general way that only clarified that she felt that she did nothing wrong. She told me that she is selling her house at the shore and that she’s moving back to the city. Now that everything is behind us she wants to sit for the kids and she is looking forward to being useful to me. I should call her when I need a hand. She said she is going back to the shore tomorrow (today) but she’ll back next week and we’ll break the fast together. I said, sure, fine and we said goodbye.

Somewhere during the end of the conversation B got home from work. Almost immediately afterward the notary person doing the refi paperwork with us showed up. The kids were running around like maniacs and the baby was fussy. I didn’t really have time to process.

Later it occurred to me that I got exactly what I wanted and I don’t feel better at all. I got my shitty apology that doesn’t mean a goddamn thing except that she is not going to change and she will never see how she could possibly be even partially to blame for anything. She is going to come back into our lives, that, frankly, were easier and more pleasant without her in them. She will want to babysit and I won’t let her. She will want to be alone with my kids and I won’t let her. She won’t understand why and will become unreasonably enraged and the bullshit will probably start all over again. I am going to have to keep her at arms’ length because I will be miserable if she is any closer. The older she gets, the more unreasonable she becomes. The older she gets, the more apparent her narcissism and utter disregard for others.

So, fuck, here we go again.

Miss N is almost 3 months old. She is less of a squishy, lumpy, newborn and more of an actual baby these days. It is a little bit heartbreaking.

T is speaking more and more. I don’t believe his nutty speech therapist has anything to do with it. I think he’s just ready. He isn’t always clear and with new words it often takes a while to figure out what he’s saying, but he’s talking. Sentences even. He is hilarious and sweet and a holy terror these days. He is exhausting. Not too long ago he asked for a lollipop and I told him no. He pushed his chair over to the door by the basement stairs- we have a little pantry behind the door where I can lock the treats away. He couldn’t figure out the lock on the door and turned to his brother for help. He said, “F, help, please,” only it sounded more like “[F], ep, eese.” Because he had used words and asked so nicely I didn’t stop F from helping.

F is such a big kid now. He is tall and skinny and makes poop jokes that aren’t even slightly amusing. He is funny and charming and smart. He spent the better part of an hour writing the alphabet in the sand on our vacation. He can be sweet and polite without prompting, asking our friends how they have been and thanking me repeatedly for the watering can I bought him because he just really likes it. I want to say more nice things about him, but honestly, he is being a complete asshole today and I’m so blinded by rage that I can’t think of a single thing. But other people like him and have lovely things to say about him. Just not me right now.

A few weeks ago my mother emailed to tell me she was sending movers to my house to pick up my dining room furniture. The furniture was my grandmother’s and was at my mother’s shore house up until a few years ago when she decided the salt air was no good for it and she wanted to take my more casual dining room set and replace it with my grandmother’s. She spent who knows how much money for a guy to move the furniture to my house and swap it for mine. There was no fucking way I was going to let her take it back just because she was pissed off. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I would have said okay just because she is my mother and I don’t know how to respond to any of her insane shit, but B’s immediate “no” response snapped me out of my stupor. Rather than putting anything in writing I called her and told her no, I would be keeping the furniture. She told me we would discuss it further. I haven’t heard anything since. It is strange not talking to her, F tells me that he misses her. This is the week the movers are supposed to come. We changed the locks preemptively.

Aside from the crazy the summer has been relaxing and nice. Well, relaxing except for the children because children are anything but relaxing. We’ve gone to the beach and the mountains the art museum and playgrounds. We’re trying to cram in as much as we can before it’s over.

One last tidbit, just because.

One of my mother’s favorite things to do is to change the linens. Her house is never actually clean. (My house is never actually clean these days either, but my excuse is that I have three children, two cats and a man thwarting my efforts.) Her house always looks magazine ready, as things mean a great deal to her, but if this is any indication of her level of cleanliness, she only bought a broom, dustpan and brush after we bugged her about it. If you walk barefoot in her house, your feet will be black. She didn’t even have hand soap in her bathrooms until we complained about it. Anyway, she loves to make beds. She is good at it. They look beautiful.

When she told us where we were sleeping my mother told us the linens were freshly laundered. Iit never would have occurred to me to ask, but she seemed to take pleasure in saying the phrase freshly laundered that day. The bed, as always, was made, so even after changing the “freshly laundered” filthy crib sheet I didn’t think much of it. Later that night, after the hideous conversation with my mother and the subsequent loading of the car, Boyfiend got into bed and asked, “Why is there sand in the bed?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Put your hand here.” Sure enough, right in the middle of the bed, was a small pile of sand. In her freshly laundered linens.

Was it just another of her small, inconsequential lies? Or, like the missing clothes and the beach cart the workmen must have thrown away, was just a passive aggressive way to fuck with us?

Let’s recap:
1. pudge
2. beach cart thrown out by “workmen”
3. freshly laundered sheets, reminiscent of Thanksgiving floors
4. B’s clothes mysteriously disappeared

The next several hours were fairly uneventful. The beach was lovely, we got the kids showered and dressed, my mother made dinner, her bitey fucking dog snapped at T twice, and I put the kids to bed after she hopped them up on ice cream at 8.30. It was time to talk. Now the talk should have been something she was waiting for. When we spoke about the family going to see her, I asked if she planned to sit down and talk about the situation/disagreement/bullshit with B. She assured me that she had every intention of working it out with him. So when we stood in the kitchen, the three of us alone without children, and she started to ask us about our current television viewing habits, we just stared, answered lamely and waited for her to stop so we could move on.

After she finished recapping several seasons of Breaking Bad, she said that the new Sunday shows were starting and she was off to watch them. B stopped her and asked if she was ready to sit down to talk through some of the problems. She said, “Can it wait?” No. We sat around the kitchen table and B started the conversation. My mother seemed confident that there was nothing to work out. So confident she asked, “What do we have to talk about?” B reminded her that he called her two months ago to try to work things out and thought they’d come to some sort of agreement, but since she hadn’t spoken to him in two months it was clear that nothing had been resolved. She interrupted B and restarted the conversation.

According to my mother, the root of the problem is that she and B are like two ships passing in the night. They view the world through different prisms because of how their experiences differ. She is 67. He is not. They have different values. She doesn’t understand his values. He doesn’t understand hers. That doesn’t make them right or wrong, just different. This little monologue, in which she repeated the bit about prisms, and lenses, and values went on for several minutes. We didn’t interrupt, we just let her finish. Then told her that she wasn’t actually saying anything or addressing the issue. She said she didn’t know what the issue was.

(A few things I may not have written about. These are not the issues, but these are a few of the things she is furious about: 1. She claims that the cigarette smoke B smelled was not cigarette smoke, she just lit a book of matches to cover up a smell. This explanation came two weeks after the initial incident in which she denied smelling any smoke at all. 2. She wanted to take F to the museum by bus for a day trip. We said no. 3.She wanted her sister here the night we came home from the hospital. We said no. )

We reminded her of the issues and she continued to talk in circles about prisms and values for a while before she let loose. It became clear that she was angry because we’d said no to her. And when I say angry, I mean a crazy, ranting lunatic. She was banging on the table, shouting, calling us fucking crazy, telling B to shut the fuck up, and screaming, “I am your mother. Your mother. You do not say no to me because I am your mother,” spittle flying from her mouth. We tried to get away from the screaming and back to the conversation.

I was stunned. I knew she’d be angry but I wasn’t expecting her to verbally attack me. I wasn’t ready for the screaming and banging on the table. With some help from Boyfiend, here are some other highlights of the conversation:

Mother: Who cares if I took F home in a taxi without a car seat? It was raining. So what if I didn’t feed him or change his diaper? He’s fine. He just remembers that he had a good time?

Me:We are adults. We have children. We are allowed to say no to you. If we don’t want your sister here our first night home from the hospital we can say no.
Mother:NO, I am your mother. That is disrespectful.

Me: You are my mother. If something upsets me, if I don’t like something you do, you need to acknowledge it, apologize, something, because you are my mother.
Mother: I don’t have to acknowledge anything. I am your MOTHER.

Mother: You don’t care about my feelings. You only care about yourself.
Me: But mom, I called you. I apologized. I said I was sorry. You never called me back.
Mother: You don’t care about my feelings.

Mother: Our values are different.
Boyfiend: But you lied to me. You lied. You told me was no smoke. You were the adult in charge. I come home, there is smoke in the laundry room. I’m worried about that and you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Two weeks later you said you lit a book of matches. You lied and never acknowledged your wrongdoing.
Mother: I didn’t lie. I explained.
Boyfiend: An explanation doesn’t mean that it’s not a lie. You explained why you lied.
Mother: I don’t have to apologize for anything. Why does everything have to be so black and white with you?

Mother: You don’t think I can do things by myself? I’m capable. I’m resourceful. I did all this by myself. I worked hard for everything I have.
Me: [silently, because I wanted to make things better, not worse] By yourself? You are still collecting alimony. My father gives you money for every gift you buy for me or the children on top of the alimony. Resourceful? You sell shit online. Capable? You switched schools every two years because you couldn’t maintain relationships to stay in the same place for any longer.

Me: Mom, I was home from the hospital with a new baby. I wanted help, not a fight.
Mother:It was my special weekend and Boyfiend ruined it for me.
Boyfiend: It wasn’t your special weekend. It was our baby. We wanted to be alone with the family for a quiet weekend. Just us and the kids. For things to return to normal as best as possible.  And honestly, after the mystery smoke in the laundry room the day before that you claimed you didn’t know anything about. That you said you couldn’t even notice.  Under the circumstances, I just wanted you to go.
Mother: Oh, you’re still hung up on that! It was my new grandchild and you ruined it for me.

Boyfiend: You’re ruining this for yourself. We’ve both reached out to you to try to fix this but you don’t respond.

Mother: I’ve racked my brain and I can’t think of a single thing that would please you. I just don’t know what to do.

Boyfiend: Here is what we need you to do. Recognize that you have done things that are not in the best interest of the children. Like riding in a cab with a baby. Acknowledge that we are their parents and respect what we think is in the best interest of the children. We can say no to you.

Mother: That’s bullshit. You’re both fucking crazy do you know that? You both fucking idiots! I don’t have to do anything (voice now rising to a fevered pitch) I am your mother! Do you hear me (both hands with palms rise above her head and come crashing down on the table.) Again she screams, I am your mother, wild rage in her eyes, spit flying with her words and her hands rise and slam down again on the table, I am your mother. You don’t say no to me! And she repeats this again and again, punctuating each sentence of her with a slam of the hands. I stare at her until Boyfiend turns to me and says, “You don’t need to listen to this any longer.”

Mother screams, “Let her decide when she’s done listening.”

Boyfiend apologizes and says to me, “Girlfiend, you can listen to this for as long as you want. I was merely suggesting that there are other options. Either way, I think we’re nearing the end here and we decide how things are going to work from now on. If you want to have a meaningful relationship with the boys you need to have a relationship with us. You need to do things differently.

Mother: I don’t want anything to do with either one of you.

The conversation, obviously, went badly. When she wasn’t bullshitting about how there is no problem, we’re just different, she was ranting and berating me. She said we were control freaks and wouldn’t be able to control everything forever. I told her it’s not about control, it’s about her respecting our wishes and not doing things with our children we don’t want her to do. I tried to get her to meet us halfway. We kept trying to get her back to the point, which was that she needs to respect us by apologizing or acknowledging her mistakes. She refused because she is my mother and we have to think about her feelings. I can’t say no because she is my mother. We left it with her saying that she wasn’t willing to bend, to change, or to apologize. She has no interest in repairing our relationship, she just wants to see the kids, not us.

Boyfiend wanted to pack up and leave right away. I decided to wait until morning. The night wasn’t easy. B started loading the car. I got into bed. The baby woke up once to eat and not long after I fell back to sleep T fell out of bed and got trapped underneath it trying to get his sippy cup. It took over an hour to get him back to sleep and I fell asleep in the twin bed with him.

When the boys got up I made the beds and packed our bags. We had tentative plans to see a family friend who was at her parent’s house on the bay with her children. The Fiendling was looking forward to seeing them and playing at their house. My mother told B the plan was off. I called to follow up, and sure enough, my mother just made that decision to punish us. My mother wanted to speak to me alone. I told her no, and we got into the car and left. We stopped for breakfast then went to our friend’s house for the morning before we drove back to the city. The Fiendling was sad about leaving and told us so, quietly. He wasn’t hysterical or tantrumming, just sad. He cried a little, softly, which was only evident from his tear-stained face. I felt terrible, but there was nothing else to do but leave.

So that’s that. She’s already told her sister that we’ve forbidden her from seeing the children, but that’s just untrue. She lies, and that lie was created both to make us look bad and to excuse her from trying to get along with us. She says we are hurting the children but she is just hurting herself.