So here goes . . .
So now the end-of-year Holidays are over. This is the first Sunday of 2010; I go back to work Tuesday. I can pause now, and reflect on 2009, how it ended, and what I face in the coming year. What's more, I can do so in something approaching relaxation. The heavy spending of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve are finished, the pounds have been gained, the presents are bought (or made) and given, the hangover is underway. Now, in the quiet of the morning, is when I do my heavy thinking. This is when it starts . . .
The end-of-year holidays were tough for me this time; tougher than usual. It's sad to say it, but I'm disappointed in how things turned out. My In-Laws gathered for what was likely the last reunion they'll see of its kind. There were five generations present. It was pretty wonderful actually, at least in that particular facet. But this gem had many faces, and not all of them were pretty.
I should back up a bit . . .
The past five years or so have seen me start and continue a personal tradition; Turducken. I planned badly in '09, and wasn't able to make my special dish. Our friends, the Clutch, did not get the Holiday meal for T-Day, X-Mas or NYE that I usually give them. I truly blame myself for this. I'm sure none of my people feel let down; they typically hold me to no obligations in this regard. But I do. Feeding my special circles is one of my greatest joys, and I let myself down. I have decided to do better in '10. This is my first resolution. My wife and children will have the holidays I want to give them, my friends will have their bellies stuffed to stupidity, my toilets will runneth over.
Next, I will be 40 in roughly six weeks. Time has snuck up on me. Inside, I still feel as vital as I did in my twenties. I had inestimable life ahead of me, and tomorrow never came. Things are now different. At 39 and lots of change, I'm starting to hear the clock ticking. I have ideas I want out of my head and into the world. I want a home for my family that is as respectable as my wife. I want her retirement assured with a sense of accomplishment beyond just the raising of the two borderline geniuses sprung from her loins. This is my second resolution, to at least lay the foundation for our joint businesses.
I will explain:
We have learned that Stacey is gluten-intolerant, and we have restructured our diets to compensate. Two of her favorite pass-times have ever been baking and learning.
I have a love for coffee and service personnel. Two of my most favorite pass-times are making the best coffee anywhere and honoring those who still wear a uniform, whether civilian services or military. Police, Fire, Medical and Rescue services, all branches of the DoD; they all sacrifice daily to protect and care for us. As a Marine, I respect their efforts very deeply, and want their coffee to be the best.
I want to give Stacey the chance to further her education, and become a Master Baker. She wants to specialize in gluten-free foods. I want a smoker with its own zip code, from which I will provide meats for sandwiches, soups and stews. Between the two of us, our restaurant will the serve the very best in gluten-free breads and pastries, seasonal comfort foods, and coffee that would make even God's hands shake! She will create a menu that anyone can enjoy, but will especially serve those in the community with diets restricted by gluten intolerance and diabetes. I will create a place where our honorable service people can relax with a cup of my coffee, lounge with Wi-Fi, or grab a midnight snack while awaiting the next call to endanger their own lives for our sakes.
Moving on from the happy plans . . .
I want blood! I speak figuratively . . . to a point. My wife and I have long dealt with censure from my Inola in-laws, and I find it harder by the year not to hate that family branch. Their only mitigation is that I know with certainty that their actions come from a place of love. Their hearts are in the right place in wanting the best in safety, security and happiness for Stacey and the kids, which is why I struggle with myself against hating them. The reason there is a struggle is the ways they show their love. Excepting Sabrina, they are fault-finding, callous, derogatory and disrespectful towards my wife, and it burns my guts out to watch it happen. Pardon me; I rarely get to watch it happen. Somehow, I am almost never in the room when they hurt her. Maybe it's chance, maybe it's design; I can't say with certainty. What I can say is I see the aftermath. She comes away damaged by the people she loves.
Here are some examples:
Stacey has always been frighteningly intelligent. However, she has also been a swinging pendulum in organization. One result is a nick-name in family circles that has stuck with her since child-hood: "Spacey." She is looked at as being disorganized and having highly questionable judgment. This is actually far from the truth. She has a memory like a steel trap, a razor wit, and is capable of insight that would give Freud pause. You'll have a hard time convincing her family of that, though. We received a present from an out-of-state relative this year. The card was addressed to "Spacey." I'm sure it was thought of as cute and funny at the time it was written. What I observed when Stacey saw it was resignation and just the slightest touch of hurt. A frequent trend with that half of her relations is a lack of regard for how their humor insults and hurts her.
I later heard report that Stacey tried to join a conversation including other siblings and relations from out-of state. She was told, point-blank, to shut up and butt-out. It was as if she were a child being shooed away from an adult conversation, or instructed to not interfere with her betters. Exclusion, anyone? This leads to another example of why I have to fight so hard against hatred: Stacey's "training," which I will explain. Later, Stacey was "sent" to fetch her Dad for dinner. He was in a back bedroom, comforting a very large and nervous family pet behind closed doors. As I see it, anyone in that house over age 10 could have knocked on his door to tell him dinner was ready. Stacey was the one given the task. As she passed me, she said: "I guess I am included after all." Stacey rationalizes this away with an observation: she is one of the very few people whom can commune with this particular pet. He sees no danger from her, and never shows her any displeasure; they are no threat to each other. Therefore, when he is stressed and nervous, she is one of the few that calms him. Stacey feels she was the safest choice to enter his little domain to speak with her Dad. I saw from a different perspective.
Training:
As children mature, parents entrust them with tasks of increasing import. Successful completion of these tasks earns praise, rather like a pat on the head. In the middle ages that Stacey and I study and re-create, one might send a servant to run a minor errand. The more worthless the servant, the more menial the errand. In different circumstances, e.g.: Stacey being regularly included or even (dare I say it?) welcomed into adult circles in that household, this would have been no issue, and her reasoning would stand: she was the safest choice. But circumstances were not different. She had been verbally kicked out of a group that should have been happy to have her. Being "allowed" to "go fetch" her Dad for dinner felt like a pat on the head to her. This is insidious to me! She felt grateful to be "sent" on this piddly little errand, and felt like a dog wagging its tail at attention from the Master! In what world has my wife earned such disdain?
I saw in this scenario an utter lack of respect for Stacey as an adult in the following way: over the years of her life, and especially over the past seven, she has been emotionally beaten up to the point where she feels gratitude for the smallest praise. In effect, her treatment at the hands of her family has "trained" her responses. They are now instinctive and automatic.
Next example:
The morning we were to all gather for family photos, Stacey’s hair-curling tools failed. She became upset to the point of tears, because she feared her Mother’s response. Let’s be clear: my wife doesn’t cry. It takes an awful lot to get tears from her; they have mostly dried up. She has cried over emotional injuries so frequently over the years, that she has hardened herself towards them, at least in façade . . . What galls me about this scenario is that she had been, up to that point, run ragged going back and forth from Tulsa to Inola, getting home late, sleeping too little and being chewed on too much by her family. Between physical and emotional exhaustion, her defenses were down. I’ll clarify another point: the curlers were a disappointment, to be sure, but they were a small one. My Lady’s tears were not from frustration over inability to primp to a high standard; she has never been that vain. Stacey was upset over her Mother’s predicted reaction. Once again, training. That woman made my wife cry from two counties away, without a single spoken word!
I remember Thanksgiving a few years ago. We all trooped out to spend that holiday with Randy's father George. Also there were Randy's siblings and their own children. On the way home, Stacey remarked to me that George treated Randy like the black sheep of the family, and Randy could do no right in his Father's eyes. Randy was looked at with disappointment. Children of Randy's siblings were praised while Randy's were disdained.
In many ways, Randy and Beverly have continued that trend with Stacey. She has many childhood memories of her sisters being introduced with lists of accomplishments, and herself as an afterthought. Her Brothers' past transgressions are glossed over, while Stacey's are never forgotten. There were, and still are occasions where the other girls are supported in their needs and aspirations. Stacey has had her own dreams shot down in flames, by her parents, almost from those dreams' inception. At one time, Stacey was in desperate need. She had just left a husband who was abusive to her and the kids, and unworthy to raise help raise her children. That winter, she and the kids huddled in a broken down old trailer, with back rooms closed off and the gas stove running for heat. Where was her parents love and regard then? Why were Stacey and her children out in the cold? Conversely, when the sisters have needed a place to stay, they were taken right in.
To repeat: Stacey's treatment at the hands of her family has "trained" her responses. They are now instinctive and automatic, and she wags her tail at every rare and grudging "good girl" she receives, when "rare and grudging" should more appropriately describe any disapprobation.
Everyone in that branch is educated, intelligent and capable. Everyone but Sabrina is highly accomplished in their own right. Sabrina herself is back in college, and is doing famously. I respect them all for their intellect and abilities; I always will. How does one disrespect a mom who helped build the B-1 and B-2 bombers? How does one disrespect one the most renowned names in small aircraft maintenance? How does one disrespect a sister who rehabilitates troubled youth? How does one disrespect a sister who is a mother of three, one of them newborn, going back to school to build a better life for her children and family?
On the other hand . . .
Again, excepting Sabrina, I don't like them!!!
Once, maybe 3 years past, Randy repaired Stacey's car, and I assisted. The night the work completed, we stood out on his porch and talked. I say "we talked;" it was really more that I listened as he talked at me. He told me Stacey had questionable judgment, low morals and a love of attention. Her previous choices in men had been poor, and she had done immoral things. In short, and in politer terms, the woman I love was described by her Dad as a flat-backing attention hound who wasn't above stripping for strangers, and consistently made poor choices in men. This is the same man who tromped on Stacey's attempts to join a dance squad in high school by embarrassing her out of it. This same man discusses his other children, both blood and step, with glowing praise, but Stacey is an afterthought and "space-case." This same man torpedoed Stacey's one chance to attend a college for clothing design because he didn't see the career potential, regardless of Stacey's demonstrated aptitude for the art form. This same man has been divorced once, and on and off the rocks with his second wife, largely because he disdains her intelligence as well. This same man was counseling me how to run my relationship with my own woman, when he has shown little, if any lasting change to how he treats his own. Point of fact: the day Stacey moved in with me, and from that moment on, I have been a better husband and partner then he was ever known how to be. My wife and I are acknowledged emotional and intellectual equals, something he rarely, if ever gives his own wife in public.
I will give him this: recently, he has started to recognize that maybe Stacey didn't make such a bad choice in me after all. Also, he has told Stacey that maybe my treatment at the hands of his household has been worse than I deserve. Nick-named the “Boat-Anchor” in family circles, he is the one of the last people I would ever expect to admit mistreatment of me from assumptions, rather than observations. He appears to have held out an olive branch to my household. In response, I have resolved to answer his attempt at reconciliation; I will seek him out for parley.
However, Stacey’s Mom, “La Muestra,” has yet to show any significant signs of coming around. That woman is another swinging pendulum, only hers is in moods. When apart from her husband, she is fairly tolerable, and when the stars are aligned just right, can be fun company.
Example:
She and Randy had a falling out several years ago. She moved out of Inola and into Tulsa. She took an apartment, and stayed with us in during the week. She got an inside view of how our household runs, and who we have passing through it. In short, she got to meet the Clutch, and she was OK with it, or seemed to be. It was a difficult time for her. As much as he aggravates her, she loves her husband, and is loyal to him. She was heart-sick at the separation, and truly needed the reconciliation they eventually came to. This wasn’t the first time they had separated, and memories of the others had us all walking on egg-shells. Then she moved back in with him.
There are a few things I understand about this woman. She has had her share of hard knocks, and three other people’s besides. Coming from a broken home, having lived in her home states foster-care system, and having suffered damage from it, she grew up fast and tough. Since then, she has developed an alpha-wolf approach to the rising sun, and all that follows it. The joke about her in my household is “when you live like a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It is my nature to give credit where it’s due: no one on this planet could ever have a stauncher ally, or more frightening enemy. Beverly is formidable! Her accomplishments have earned her a healthy level or respect, and I don’t let myself forget it!
However . . .
Since she returned to Randy, Beverly has followed his lead in antipathy towards our household, and all that goes on within it. Any situation she becomes aware of, good or bad, is met first, before anything else, with criticism. I suppose her intent is to be constructive. OK, fine. Constructive criticism can be a helpful thing. However, in my experience, it should always be tempered with praise. There are good and bad points to make when dissecting nearly any given event, and the people involved with it. To my way of thought, it is just plain good leadership to highlight both the negative and the positive when giving a critique. Actively seeking the good, and giving praise for it helps build happier bonds between ourselves and the people we deal with. Beverly doesn’t do this very often. She both implies and states outright, and not subtly, that our friends are unfit, our day-to-day life is worthless, and our children are being raised improperly. She is now vehemently exclusive towards me, and her stress levels are very obviously increased whenever I am near. I am a subject of intense disapproval, and she makes it apparent.
Interesting point: there have been perhaps two times when I have been confronted directly with Randy and/or Beverly’s disapproval. These were times when I took some particular action that they found so heinous that they simply saw no other way to address it, but to confront me. On all other occasions, they have left me alone. It is always Stacey whom they attack. Stacey is, by nature, a peace-maker and conciliator. She is not weak, but she is soft. It is likely that she always will be. The soft target is the one they always chew on, and she always, always comes away hurt by them. I find it abhorrent that two people who purport to prefer a direct approach to disagreements would continually hurt the daughter they love, instead of going to the source of their ire. It seems that whenever Stacey visits House Inola, her ass is the always on the menu, and they chew it to distraction. She simply can’t do anything well enough for them to offer praise. Her every mistake, large or small, real or imagined, is highlighted and lectured on. They just won’t let up!
This is another reason why I found this Holiday season so difficult. I have made a science of biting my tongue. There have been too many times to count when I have wanted to confront Stacey’s parents over how deeply they wound her. I never have, though. Again, I would not pay the price for it, Stacey would. This year, I again had multiple reasons and opportunities to call them out over Stacey’s mistreatment. And wouldn’t that have been a grand thing? To cause a scene and pick a fight in the company and view of 4/5 generations all in attendance (the fifth was George Herren, who only attended the portrait session). Curse me for missed opportunity if you wish, but I refused be that callous monster. I declined to cause that commotion in front of those children, or air that laundry during a family gathering from four different states. None of them came to Oklahoma to see that strife. I chose not to be the one that brought it. God, I love Prilosec . . .
So, here I am, pounding away at my computer, wishing I was more of a bastard, and could see fit to start World-War-Family with the Herrens. Unfortunately, it would solve nothing to do so.
I promised Stacey some very important things when she moved in with me. I swore to her that I would never try to separate her from her family. They are her family, her history and some of her greatest loves. I also swore that I would not follow the tracks of previous men in her life, either parental or romantic, in that I would not be the overbearing ass who “took over,” and ran her like a marionette. I promised her the final decision in our household. She is the Goddess of our lives, and I will not take that from her. When I met her, I saw that Stacey had a core of tempered steel in her soul. I also saw that it was wrapped in miles-thick layers of cotton. She was damaged goods, having been walked on in one way or another by nearly everyone she loves. I can not stand a weak woman. Therefore, over the years, I have worked incessantly to help her reinforce her own spine to the point where she feels confident enough to show it. For the most part, I have succeeded. The Herrens are still her Achilles heel, though, and will probably always be. I can’t change that. In truth, I don’t want her to stop loving or respecting anyone in her family. What I want is for them to respect her more. While I can’t make that happen, I can stand by her as she deals with the pain they give her.
And I will. Whether they like me or not.
