Thoughts from the weekend

The boys are both home from school for the summer, and for the past week they have been staying with me.  Yesterday we drove to Wife's condo (with a considerable amount of grumbling from them) and I asked them to rearrange her garage to make more room while I drove to the storage unit I've been unloading lately (here, here, and here) and collected another load of stuff.  And afterwards as we drove back to my place, I listened while they commented on some of what they experience with Wife.

What encourages me is that they recognize many of her crazinesses as crazy.  For years I have feared that they would take them as normal, and grow up living in the same alternate reality she does.  But it looks like living away at boarding school has given them good, sane role models, so they have been able to establish some external, Archimedean point from which to form an opinion.

By the way, I take for granted that they probably have similar criticisms of me, that they just haven't voiced (or that I haven't heard).  That's fine: they should.  Independent judgement is the best kind.  I'm just grateful that they haven't grown up thinking that everything Wife believes must be true.

Some examples, as I can remember them:

Son 1: Why does Mom believe that she has to fulfill all the dreams of both her parents? Her parents are dead. They've been dead for twenty years. Why do they still have such a hold on her?

Hosea: I don't know. They do, for sure, but I don't know why. All I can say is that it looks to me like that whole side of the family feels that way. I don't get it, but for all of them it seems like ancestors are a really big deal ... like they're afraid of being punished by Furies if they don't do what their ancestors wanted.

Son 1: Well I guess I'm glad I take after your side instead, then.
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Son 2: You know, cleaning up that garage would be a lot easier if we could just take each box and tell her, "You get to keep one thing from this box: all the rest goes in the trash." But no! She always says, "No, I have to keep all of it. I need that for a sewing project I'm in the middle of." I want to tell her, "You are never going to do any more sewing, let's be honest here. Throw it out and use the space instead." Or maybe she could sell some of it instead ... parts of that coin collection would fetch a few hundred dollars.

Hosea: True. Of course a few hundred dollars isn't a lot.

Son 2: It's more than she's getting out of it now. She never enjoys the collection or even looks at it. But if I suggest selling any of it she says, "I can't. It's an heirloom." I hate to think what finally happens when she dies and we have to go through all that stuff ....
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Son 2: I don't understand how anybody can hold onto grudges the way she does. She doesn't just hold onto her own grudges, but she holds onto her mother's grudges too. She was telling me once about when she was six. She used to play with the little Mexican girl next door, and one day that girl's mother said, "I don't want you to play with my daughter any more." And Mom said to me, "So now do you understand why I'm prejudiced against Mexicans?"  And it's like, "No, I don't! What, you hate all Mexicans because one mother didn't let you play with her daughter fifty years ago? She was just one person and you were only six! What does that have to do with anything any more??" Or ... like, she's still mad at our kindergarten teacher.

Hosea: Why?

Son 2: Probably for being a ditz. Which she was. But that was kindergarten -- who cares any more?

Hosea: I think maybe she's afraid that if she ever forgives anyone, she's somehow letting them get away with something. But the way I look at it is, who is actually suffering because she carries around all this anger? Is she really punishing the other person?

Son 2: Well I'm sure our kindergarten teacher doesn't care that Mom is still mad at her!

Hosea: So the only person who is actually suffering from all this is your Mom. And, ... you know, ... "How's that working for you?"

Son 2: Exactly.

There was more and I don't remember it all.  But it encouraged me.  Not because I want them to rag on Wife ... as I say, I assume they have criticisms of me too.  But I just don't want them sucked into her worldview.