Dialing for Dollars

So from Mom's side of the Hatfield and McCoy property line, I am stonewalling. Really I am cowering. Mom is an formidable opponent on her weakest days. Fired up and loaded for bear she could stop a speeding train. Probably with one of her looks.

It is downright shocking to me that this could shiver me timbers with 5 states worth of real estate in between us. But such is the power of one's mother. And Estelle the Human Growth Hormone 'Roid Rage version of "one's mother."

Determined not to let it bug me, I go about my holiday preparations as I normally would. Get a tree with the kids and drag it home from the local tree market in our little red wagon. Snap up the photo ops for the Christmas card. Put out all the holly and berries and mistletoe and pine cones and stockings and candles and snowmen and sleds etc etc etc I can make room for on all the mantles and shelves and various and sundry flat surfaces all about the house. Christmas is coming, whether Estelle is or not.

And then, since we are the masters of the triangular relationship in our demented little family circus, rather than place a call to me to talk, Mom calls Charlotte and Joe.

Let's start with Joe, shall we?

Joe as you may have gathered, has all the emotional maturity of a sand flea. He is a big 45 year old child with about as much ability to cope as a tumbleweed. And even though Joe had, quite remarkably, mentioned to my mother that her Christmas visits are too brief, and that she really needs to come see his family while she is frosting the Northern states with her unusual brand of Christmas cheer, he, when confronted with my mother's wrath, quite understandably, caves.

Like he can be expected to grow a spine and man up, now?

I assume she reads him at least a portion of the letter, the portion where I state that I am pretty sure my feelings are shared by my sibs. Because, Joe, like the wuss he has always been under any kind of pressure to perform like a grown up, tells her "Ummmm, no. She didn't consult with me on that."

Hello, morons! Mother dear, your rant to me in the opening drive of the 8 am phone call a week ago detailed your indignance with Joe's suggestion of these very things! How convenient it is to have a selective memory. And Joe, well, Joe has a mind like a sieve. Barely holds anything for more than a second. Runs right out where it pools at his feet and quickly turns to mud.

I don't care. I don't need support from idiot Joe. (On the contrary, I am sure his wretched wife would surely agree and step right up to the podium to do so. But I don't need to go down that road either.)

The truth is, I stand by what I have said. I don't care if the feelings are shared by anyone. They are mine. And that matters. It doesn't have to be a majority vote. I feel these feelings about the way my mother treats me and my siblings. It is genuine.

That, darn it, should matter for something.