I wrote yesterday that I thought Thanksgiving had gone pretty well because Wife and my father had not started screeching at each other. This morning I picked up an e-mail from my dad which acknowledged that part but had a slightly different evaluation all the same. He wrote (in part) as follows:
Our visit to the Durmstrang Thanksgiving Dinner was an interesting excursion. I think the school looks like a pretty wonderful place and I'm glad that Son 2 is so happy there and that they are so happy with him. Your mom and I felt very welcomed by the faculty: they seem like a truly wonderful and dedicated team who are devoted to their students and the learning ideals of the school. We felt considerably less welcome by Son 2. I got the feeling that he wished we had not come. I was utterly unable to engage him in any conversation at all, although not for want of trying. As we left, I thanked him for inviting us; he replied curtly, "I didn't!" With that kind of welcome I don't think we'll plan on returning for any more such adventures. Maybe when he graduates in 2016 ... ?
As you know, Son 1 undertook to keep the peace between Wife and me by extracting promises on both sides that we would avoid any confrontation or anything that might conceivably lead to a confrontation. I believe I fulfilled my part of the bargain. I uttered no negative criticism of anything that I thought she might hold dear, and I feigned deafness whenever she made an uncalled-for snarky remark to me. It seemed to work. No shouting from her. I don't know if her disparaging comments are delivered out of malice or if it is just a habit she got from her mother. When Son 1 was having supper with us on Tuesday, he responded sarcastically to something I'd said and then joked "I learned sarcasm from the best of them: my Mom!" Except in Son 1's case there was humor in his remark and not any malice.
I don't mean to add to your emotional burdens -- they are heavy and numerous enough already -- but I related the above as an explanation for why your mom and I are having second thoughts about hosting any sort of big family get-together this Christmas. It hardly seems worth the trouble.
Right. I guess there are levels of success in anything, and while we reached at least the bottom rung of bare civility we may not have gotten much farther. I wrote back as follows:
Glad you got home safely, and yes I was pleased that the day went off as smoothly as it did. I am grateful that you were able to be so careful and indulgent with Wife; on this side I tried to reinforce Son 1's message a couple of nights before. I think at this point that she doesn't even hear herself (so to speak) and therefore has no idea how malicious the things she says are. But at least she didn't start hollering.
Not sure quite what to say about Son 2. We didn't get much of a chance to talk to him either. Yesterday we went back up for the parent events and then checked him out for the afternoon to go to the movies. (We saw "Skyfall".) But we had to hurry him back to get him checked back in on time, leaving Wife lamenting that she didn't get "any" (read "much") time with him. The thing is, I'm well aware that Son 2 doesn't want to spend a lot of time with us either, and I joke with him about it; but I don't especially blame him. I can see plenty of reasons he might not want to. I try to be more pleasant and engaging than Wife is, but it is still easy for me to imagine that the whole Family Thing just doesn't appeal to him a lot. So I don't push it; and when he comes up with reasons that he "has to" get back to campus earlier rather than stick around, I tend to support him rather than arguing with him.
So what about Christmas? I admit it had not occurred to me that you might bow out completely, though your reasons make lots of sense. I had been thinking that it would be most prudent to circumscribe rather carefully the amount of time Wife spent visiting, in much the same spirit that animated Son 1's proposal this time; and so I had imagined that she (and I, as driver) should not plan on spending the night but rather on driving down and back the same day. My thoughts were more fluid concerning the boys, since I was musing vaguely (in the mode of several years ago) that they might like to stay on and visit you for a while. But perhaps we shouldn't plan for that either. I don't know. I can't say that you are wrong, but my thinking had not proceeded that far ahead yet.
It's not a solid answer, I guess, but what you say makes some sense to me.
But it leaves me wondering what exactly we are seeing here? Is this a kinder-and-gentler version of some Tennessee Williams script about the decay and collapse of a family that has rotted from within? Or what is it?
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