Happy gobble-gobble with a side of smallpox to you! Hope you had a lovely and low-stress holiday.

My mother, sisters, their spouses and children all traveled to Carlsbad, CA for the holiday. This is less than an hour’s drive from The Exes (or at least it was, last time I knew them) and I was 25% nervous they would somehow show up and crash the event.

In TL;DR news, they didn’t. Although my mother did do that (what is becoming a time honored tradition) thing where she brings up one of the Exes several times in casual conversation.

I don’t know why exactly. Maybe just to start things off with terrible anxiety for me? Maybe to show me that she still talks frequently with them? Maybe because she thinks I secretly want to know?

Every time, I consider snapping, “If I wanted to hear what they were up to, I wouldn’t have bothered to sever all ties with them.”

This time the second attempt was rather sneaky: “Who does this photo look like? Guess!”

The photo was Ex’s biological parent, whom none of us had seen IRL.

Little tried to pass the photo along, and I literally noped out with a hand up and the singular, “Nope.”

But perhaps this is just a thing we must all go through. Mom must test if I am willing to let my boundaries move. I must re-affirm the boundary.

The rest of the trip was somewhat uneventful. My mother and I are still on anxious terms when we meet, and then there is a gentle thawing of true love and respect. She loves me! I love her! We talk about hesitant things and have positive result.  But always at some point one or both of us makes the error in judgment of slipping back into old patterns, and I (maybe both of us) realize nothing has changed, and perhaps change is impossible, so things go back to politely friendly with a crispy edge of charred hopes.

A week before the trip, Middle asked all of us via text if her husband’s male friend could stay a few days at their vacation home

(Middle’s family, Mom and Little’s family had a massive house with a heated pool and game room, my immediate family had the beachfront house)

(We simply could not find a large enough house)

The friend was going through a divorce and Middle’s family wanted to offer him a place not to be alone—a couch on which to crash, a dinner at which to eat

Since I wasn’t staying at that house, I texted my opinion didn’t matter that much and it was really how Little’s family and Mom felt. Even so, I privately texted Middle about what kind of person he was, if he’d ever been to jail, why he was alone for the holiday etc., explaining that because of The Exes, I was wary of letting strangers in-house access to my kids.

I realize lots of terrible people are vouched for by their unwitting friends, so this didn’t seem a foolproof security measure by any means. But if the guy was getting a divorce because he was about to go to jail for kiddie porn, I would rather hear that info before they’d spent the holiday with my kids.

Middle assured me he was a run-of-the-mill mid-divorcee and I didn’t see anyone else ask or answer any questions.

The guy did seem a little off at dinner. But maybe that’s anyone who’s mid-divorce and staying at someone else’s family reunion vacation.

On the last night of vacation, Little confided that she knew the guy better from being in contact with Middle more often, and she always found him creepy.

She also confided that she’d told our mother that she thought he was creepy.

So here is where I leaned in with dread, wondering if all the heartbreak and deep conversations and behavioral feedback and promises and arguments had changed my mother. I had arguably lost my close relationship with her because I didn’t believe she had changed. Had I been too harsh? Had my mother heard me as she’d said and done fundamental work to change her world view?

Bets? Place your bets.

All bets on the table. No further betting at this time.

According the Little, our mother’s response was, “{Brother-in-law} never asks for anything. Let him have this.”

I have gone around and around with what I would do in this situation if I were the parent.

On one hand, I think people in need DO need community. That is, after all, what friends are for.

Slightly off or creepy people going through a hard time who are ostracized probably only get creepier and maybe dangerous in their isolation and social rejection. If I could help someone having a hard time get back to normal., that helps everyone. Generosity of spirit and inclusion are those basic human needs.

On the other hand, maybe creepy or slightly off people need the feedback that their behavior is off-putting and cannot be tolerated.

And the third hand, maybe it is good for people to be included, and that’s just not something I can ever give, and I will put it out in the universe for people who can, please do.

Either way, the interaction gave me clear and definitive feedback on my mother, which allowed me to give clear and hopefully helpful feedback to Little: “Don’t look to Mom to protect you. You don’t want someone around, go directly to the group.”

Which was hard learned wisdom, since I spent twenty years whining, complaining and then hoping for my mother to protect me, without ever having the foresight or courage to go over her head to protect myself.

Perhaps unrelated? We went to San Diego Zoo and saw two tortoises screwing, center stage after the male chased the female around their enclosure. I have never seen a tortoise move so fast as this female trying to get away from this dude. I remember reading nature books in the 70s as a kid, and about the thrill of the chase, but at the risk of anthropomorphizing the situation, that did not look like turtle flirting.

Anyway, 190. Come at me, bro

—
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Twitter: @AnneNahm