Re: bold nada on the phone

[Guest guest]

Good job! Let's hear it for Little Vicki!

>

>

> I mentioned that my nada called last night. I was ready to answer, and

> see where I stood, so I did.

>

> Well, because she has become " dead " to me, I noticed that not much of

> what she said on the phone bothered me.

>

> I was at first intrigued in the conversation that my mom was

> apologizing for pushing me so hard as a child. But the way she said,

> sorry, made me think more of a sly cat with a canary in its mouth,

> that it thought its owner could not see.

>

> Nada thought she was being subtle, but knew she was going to find a

> way to be bad to me. To keep her from advancing in my direction, I

> would ask her to repeat her bad language, as long as it was not

> directed at me. I watched her spar with all kinds of imaginary

> enemies. I even got to hear her forgive my aunts and uncles for things

> she had held against them. Mostly I just listened, and hoped for the

> best.

>

> The good things were I got to learn some important family history.

> Now that I have nothing to lose, I can ask any questions that come to

> mind. I took notes.

>

> It was only after a half hour, that she stepped over the line and took

> a poop on my heart. My radar went up when my mom started to tell me

> that I had been a bad daughter for getting close to my aunts and

> uncles when we moved to her old home state for my husband's job (we

> lived there eight years, and left for our current home the year our

> son was born and when my husband got a new job in the Southeast)... I

> don't object to that construct, usually I just ignore... But I was on

> careful watch. That is when I heard her switch to making fun of those

> who had befriended me and SAVED me from her torture as a child.... She

> was mid sentence, and starting in, " You had to have the Maia's and the

> Shmaya's and the Bye-ahs..... "

>

> Where she was treading was so disgusting that I interrupted her: Maia

> was the friend that was tragically killed in a bike-train accident two

> years ago and we visited her parents on my trip out west.

>

> I did not tell her that she was being mean, or try to set a

> boundary. I just said,

>

> " This conversation had been OK up to this point. Now it is

> degenerating. I've got to go now. " Even as she objected... " Now

> listen, " I declined the opportunity to hear anything more. I had no

> place in me to listen, and I honored that. I knew no apology was

> coming and I had no wish to reward her gross faux pax, by giving her

> another chance to get it wrong. I had already handled enough slights

> assertively and with more diplomacy than she had deserved. So I hung

> up without apologizing. I felt so at peace!

>

> I suspect next time I will call her cards earlier, and point to her

> putdowns of me. Ask her if she knows what she is doing. If she denies

> she is doing it, I might say. " Mom, when you are able to use your good

> brain cells to refrain from belittling and downing me, then I will

> not have to hang up on you in order to protect myself. Until then,

> good-bye. "

>

> I am going to put that quote by the phone. Because little Vicki is on

> strike and she is telling my adult , that she is sick and

> tired of this horseshit that my mother calls " parenting. "

>

> Sometimes nada makes me laugh. I think I laughed a little too easily

> at her crap last night, so she tried a " gotcha " at the end with my

> dear late friend. What a toadstood nada can be!

>

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