Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

What happens next is a horrifying combination of shame, blame and unnecessary roughness.

Mom verbally slaps Charlotte around. Slam dunks the the insults. Drop kicks the logic. Commits fouls and generally unsportsmanlike.

Because she has to win. So a little cheating is justified, right?

Mom wails that no one visits her 9 hours away. (Because that is such and appealing vacation plan!)

Charlotte attempts to make a logical argument. Mentions that all of Mom's children are parents. And all eight grandchildren go to school, and have activities and obligations and commitments that tether us to home most of the time and certainly on weekends.

Mom comments that she (ever the saint) makes the trip at Christmas.  (OK, we've been over that uniquely painful experience.) Charlotte mentions that Mom is retired...she can visit us any time she cares to. But only comes at Christmas.

Mom makes some kind of half hearted whiny lament that she is out of our lives.

Charlotte will not take the bait. She reminds Mom that she chose to move so far away just as her children were starting their families. All of my children and two of Joe's were born after she left. Charlotte's youngest was only a year old.

Ever the warrior, Mom retorts that she was not the only one to move away.  Hint hint hint.

True, Charlotte and Jack did move to Atlanta when they were first married.  Jack had gotten a wonderful promotion that would start him on a career path that they'd have been fools to let pass him by. They stayed 3 or 4 years and moved back, just as Charlotte had hoped, when they were expecting their first child.

It's what young people do. They launch. It is what parents hope happens. But not Mom. She has to turn it into something dirty. She has to deflect and draw a similarity between the reasonable thing Charlotte did and the sleazy thing that she did, in the hope that Charlotte won't keep arguing the point. But the truth is this: Mom and Bill moved when they did to escape.

Escape us.
Escape Bill's children.
Escape jobs.
Escape adversarial neighbors.
Escape law suits.
Escape familial burdens.
Escape the past.
Escape the ties that bind.
Escape responsibility - especially those that come from having a family.

They packed up and moved when Mom was in her late 50s for no compelling reason at all. Just walked away claiming it was their dream to move to North Carolina (I'd never once heard that) They moved and then just a few short years later, moved again. To Maryland. Had a house built. And then they decided that the house was all wrong (WTF?) and moved again. To a waterfront town also in Maryland and into an historic house. Stayed 9 months and moved again. This time back to North Carolina. And then very shortly thereafter, bought something in South Carolina that they've never moved into and are trying to sell even now. They are ready to load up the truck and move to Beverly at any moment. When the going gets tough, Bill and Estelle's bags are already packed.

So it wasn't the life long dream of a home in North Carolina that drew them away. They were running. And not one of their children believes otherwise.