The Agony of Defeat

I think this latest blunder on my brother's part could be a tipping point for my mother. Perhaps it is the 1000th cut...and now the tide has turned forever.

High time.

The list of gaffes goes on for miles. Some of them are famous. (Don't even get me started on the topic of toenails and orange juice. I still cringe.) My sister and I have entertained our friends for years with the stories. For every holiday, there is the requisite Joe story. It is like Page 6. Only with considerably less money and uglier clothes.

There was the time he was 3 hours late for Christmas dinner because his stay-at-home wife had to wrap the gifts at the last minute (what, the holiday just snuck up and bit her on her sizable ass?) and he'd left his wedding ring on top of a file cabinet at work (what?) and had to go back and get it. Leaving a room full of toddlers and grade schoolers chomping at the proverbial bit.

There was the time I overpaid him to mow my lawn...and he mowed down the tree I'd just planted. Even though I'd put a little fence around it. And left a note. With a diagram.

And when we were cleaning out Dad's house to sell it when he went to the nursing home. Joe, instead of doing his part, managed to get his ancient mother-in-law and miserable sister-in-law to do his part for him, because he has children (And we don't? Who might these little people be running around our ankles?) and they managed to "help" by defrosting the freezer by leaving the door hanging open while they go off for a nice lunch and water floods the kitchen.

And the collection of items - none of them of particular value or anything - but items he admired in my home, and asked, incredulously, if he could keep. Who does that?

Or the myriad times he arrived at my house at some inopportune time - and let his children run rampant about the house unattended, breaking priceless heirlooms left and right and smearing God-knows-what on the walls of the stairwell. While he expected me to not only provide meals and beer, expected me to jump up and serve them to him.

Or the Christmas after my daughter was born...when he came for dinner with his family, and expected me to have an extra highchair for his 15 month old...when my 16 month old and 4 month old would clearly be using the two I have...and got indignant at the lack of hospitality. But thought the perfectly natural solution was for his wife to nurse their child at the table - in front of everyone - my aging father, step father, cranky old aunt and very nervous husband included. Please pass the Valium.

Or the time he came to visit and I offered to order pizza for us...and he decided to adhere to some suggested dietary restriction...and ordered some complicated and very expensive dish of his choosing because he couldn't eat the pizza...and then he ate the pizza anyway and took the other meal home. And I paid for everything.

Still, I am not quite sure that this is truly his death by 1000 cuts. (and BTW we passed 1000 decades ago!)

I am not at all convinced that Joe's time has come. That his get out of jail free card has expired.

No, I think Estelle's life really is at a crossroads. I think she has major decisions to make and issues to handle. She has to convince and cajole her husband to agree to some major decisions she has made in her own heart. She needs him to go along with her. And she is not arguing from a position of strength.

And to foolishly back yet another one of my brother's hare-brained howlers with her usual vigor and persistence and defensiveness would further weaken her position. This fish she could clearly throw back.

And as easy as that, she has abandoned the good ship Mama's Boy.

Man overboard.