At one point in this whole deba­cle where I stopped talk­ing to my mom, Xie thought she would try to mend things. She dropped me off at burger king to eat and went over to my moth­ers to talk (this is all sec­ond hand mind com­pared to most things I’ve writ­ten). Xie sat her down and told her she was going to push her chil­dren away one by one if she con­tin­ued down the path she was going. That my mother had to pick her­self up, get a job and move for­ward being an exam­ple (I’m sure Xie will com­ment on this story to fill in more details).

The self­ish thing my mom said to my wife? “You don’t have to have a job why should I?”

Now because this is sec­ond hand I nor­mally wouldn’t have included this, but I wanted to point out Xie’s effort. This wasn’t the first time my mother had said this. There are a lot of answers to this.

1. Xie has a sup­port­ive hus­band that hadn’t left her once and pos­si­bly will again
2. Xie spends her free time learn­ing and expand­ing her­self — my moth­ers expan­sion comes from Oprah and Dr. Phil
3. Xie doesn’t have two chil­dren at home not even teenagers yet that need to eat and hopes daddy will give mommy child sup­port money
4. Xie isn’t a leech that feels enti­tled to it, she has offered to work many times, I don’t under­stand why both of us need to be mis­er­able for a few extra bucks

While my mother is graz­ing the home shop­ping net­work for things to buy, Xie is doing Alge­bra out of text books for fun. There is a world of dif­fer­ence. Most notably my mother needed an income she could trust to take care of her kids and not ask friends and fam­ily for money to get by.

I will now give you an exam­ple I have full mem­ory and first hand knowl­edge of. It was at a fam­ily hol­i­day din­ner a few years ago at my grand­par­ents and some­how the mor­bid sub­ject of what we would like if my grand­par­ents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grand­mother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousins fam­ily, well my grand­mother has been say­ing that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sit­ting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Self­ish? Well let’s con­tinue this story.

A few min­utes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was some­thing that would always remind me of my grand­par­ents, their house, and the mem­o­ries. To me the chest is kind of like a sym­bol of my grand­par­ents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her self­ish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that some­how I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just wor­ried about some­one else get­ting some­thing she can’t. What a great mother.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

Read Part 14 Here

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