After they were at my place for a few days, I was to drive the boys back to Wife’s. Well, Son 2 left to help my folks on Thursday morning. Then Thursday afternoon, Son 1 suggested I take him to Wife’s place a day early. I don’t know if it’s because he finds it too boring here without his brother, but maybe.
Friday, Son 1 texted me from Wife’s house and we had the following conversation.
Son 1: So apparently she only checks her email once a week, then she totally flipped the fuck out and started shouting about how much she hates you. Then I actually had to shout back. It was a fucking mess. Then she just yelled “I still believe Dad [i.e. me, Hosea] bought you.”SEE NOTE 1
Hosea: WTF?? What does she hate me about this time? Did I send something inflammatory that I don’t remember? Not trying to get sucked into the tempest – just curious.
Son 1: Not including her in the college selection process for Son 2SEE NOTE 2 and meSEE NOTE 3, and not inviting her to college trips, regardless of the fact she couldn’t make them physically.
Hosea: Right. She couldn’t make the drive to B—SEE NOTE 4 even as a passenger. It’s a long fucking way.
Son 1: What I said. Didn’t help any though. Tried to explain even you weren’t that involved.SEE NOTE 5 It was just a clusterfuck. She also tried to say I loved you more.SEE NOTE 6
Hosea: Oh Jesus. OK this is not veering back to sense any time soon. I was going to write … “More important is that visiting the college isn’t the important part. Thinking and talking it over afterwards is. Nothing prevents her being a part of that.”
Son 1: Well, hopefully she’ll take a nap, calm the fuck down, and I can talk to her sensibly.
Hosea: Yes. Try to assure her that she can be valuable by giving wise advice even if she doesn’t do the running around. Like Yoda. OK, bad analogy but you get the idea.
Son 1: Ya, I’ll try.
Hosea: Sorry dude.
Son 1: Now she’s bitching about you to C— or something. Fuck it, I’m not even going to try for the next few hours.
Hosea: OK. C--? Weird. No idea why she’d call C--.SEE NOTE 7 Whatever.
Son 1: Not your uncle. This is C— S--. Some guy who she met on a dating site and who became infatuated with her. He worked at [a military base near where Wife lives] but is now retired in [a state on the other side of the country].
Hosea: Infatuated? Good to know that life goes on ….SEE NOTE 8
Son 1: He’ll call a couple times a day. He’s old and harmless, but can be annoying at times.
Hosea: Couple times a day? Wow. Good for her, I guess, to have someone to talk to. Surprised they don’t talk about one of them moving closer to the other, but maybe that’ll wait till Son 2 graduates high school. Or not. You never know.
Son 1: He’s married.SEE NOTE 9 And Mom [i.e., Wife] is scared to death of living anywhere not near [her home town, or at any rate her home state].
Hosea: Ah. Well if he weren’t married he could move here but I guess not.
Son 1: Yep. I don’t give a fuck. Her life; she’s over 50, she needs to be able to confront her problems and the unknown without panicking.
Hosea: No argument.
Son 1: I didn’t think there would be.
Hosea: J
__________
NOTE 1: Wife commonly expresses her anxieties in financial terms. Never mind that it’s impossible to “buy” the love of anyone perceptive and intelligent – Wife is convinced that in the grand scheme of things she is poor, has always been poor, and will always be poor; also that anybody in life who has any more success at anything than she does got it by buying it with money. That’s why she always loses, you see … because she doesn’t have the money to buy victory.
NOTE 2: Not sure if I have mentioned it yet, but Son 2 is looking at colleges. He wants to visit two or three of them this summer, and wants me to take him. None of them could be called “nearby” and at least one of them is very far away. So I have been discussing plans for this with him, along with discussing his thoughts about college in general. I have no tincluded Wife in any of these discussions. As regards the travel, it’s impractical and I don’t want her along: I don’t want to have to put up with her company that long. As regards the general discussion … she gets the same e-mails from the college counselor that I do, so she can initiate the conversations if she wants to. I can’t and won’t manage her relationships with the boys. (When they were a lot younger I used to try, but it was a hopeless effort.)
NOTE 3: I did the same thing when Son 1 was looking at colleges. In fact, I think I wrote something about his college trips, but I’m writing this disconnected from the Internet so I can’t check just now.
NOTE 4: B— is the town housing one of the colleges Son 2 is interested in. Mapquest estimates the distance from my town as twenty hours of solid driving. Maybe we should fly. In that case it won’t be the rigors of travel that prevent Wife from coming along, but the cost of a ticket. All of which are easier to say than “Neither of us wants to be around you that long.”
NOTE 5: And that’s true. I gave Son 1 some general advice, including the criteria I would propose for rating his top two choices. He decided to pick the other one, and I told him that was OK as long as he performed there. So far he has (more or less).
NOTE 6: The same insecurities as in Note 1.
NOTE 7: I have an uncle named C--.
NOTE 8: Way back when I started this blog (that was in 2007 for those who are keeping track), I was really upset that Wife was always trying to romance other guys. Now I think it’s probably a good thing, because I hope that it insures her against isolation. Given how bad she is at human relationships, and how helpless her medical conditions can make her (see the recent story about my taking her to the hospital), isolation is both highly likely for her and a danger as well.
NOTE 9: Did Son 1 see the irony that he was trolling a dating site while married? Not that there aren’t plenty of other guys doing the same thing, of course. I didn’t ask, because it struck me only now as I was retyping all this.
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