I never truly finished my “Month With Mom Series“, I was working on the novel for NANOWRIMO, and then came back and ran out of steam to finish the blog article series.  It’s take me over a month, but I wanted to address a couple comments.  The first came from my youngest sister who still lives with my mother and step-father:

Ok well im just going to say what I feel . About the part 2 and part 3 , I feel she should of never ever took him back . He is not a father and doesnt act like one. He does not bother talking to us all the time except for my yonger brother usually. And is mean to the pets . I dont even like him living in the house . And seems like he doenst even try at all . But I still dont get what she see’s in him. When he was in Columbus it was better without him . But thats all im gonna say .

She seems to have some of the same feeling that I do on the issue, at least when it comes to how my mother dealt with my step-father during their separation and the reconciliation.    So this is similar feelings coming form someone that is thirty-two and someone that lives in that household and is thirteen.   This is also her father, it might be my step-father, but it is her father and this is the treatment she feels that she gets.  Don’t forget that I had another sister pipe in on her feelings.  My own father has read my series, but thought it would be best to not leave public comments, I guess in some ways he is a wise man.

This next comment was left by Groovymarlin who runs her own blog, but I knew through playing SWG with.  This comment was left on part 20 of the series (also the final part I finished).

I’ve been reading these all along and I have to say they’re fascinating, though maybe not for the reasons that you think. I’ll just summarize my thoughts so far:

1. Your mom is obviously a very shallow person. It also sounds like she was a little too selfish and self-centered to be a very good mom.

2. On the other hand, you were all fed, clothed, received medical care, etc., etc, growing up yes? My point being – she may not be a very good mom, but there are much WORSE moms.

3. A lot of your complaints about her sound pretty nit-picky to a third party. I’m sure that to you, just about everything she does is annoying and obnoxious and irritating. But to an outsider, a lot of the things she does sound like…things that middle-aged women do. However…

4. Your opinion and view of her has obviously been colored by the truly negative things she HAS done in the past, and therefore every one of her transgressions is magnified to you.

5. Your mom seems to have a bad habit of using people, but remember: people allow themselves to be used. Your grandparents in particular seem to have no problem allowing her to manipulate them. Is it right? No. Are they adults, and capable of deciding for themselves whether to allow this? Yes (at least as far as we know – if at some point due to age or health they become unable to make these decisions on their own, then there would be a real problem).

I think in general you’re handling the mom situation the right way, which is to just let her do her own thing, as long as it’s not hurting you or your own family. I feel pretty bad about some of the things she said about, to, and in front of your sister. That passive-aggressive shit is not cool, not from anyone, and especially not from a mother. But what can you do about that, other than give your sister your emotional support and help her do her own thing as well? Nothing.

People suck, don’t they?

Ever since I read this comment I thought it would be a good blog post on it’s own for a reply instead of loosing it in the noise of comments that no one would ever read, just like my sister’s comment above.  Though she says I’m handling this the right way and can see where I am coming from I wanted to address a couple of the points.

Point number two stated because we were clothed, fed,  and had medical care that she couldn’t have been a terrible mom, there are crack addict mothers that can do the same.   When I was 16 I had a job where I pulled a muscle in my chest.   It kept going for a few days where I didn’t tell anyone that I was having trouble breathing.   Everytime I took a deep breath it physically hurt ot breath.  Not to the point where I couldn’t breath, but to the point where I thought something was wrong with my heart since it was in that vincinity.  Like eveyr male I ignored it as long as possible and finally mentioned to my mother.

My mother thought I was making it up and yelled at me for making her take me to the doctor.   Stating she didn’t have the money for it (my parents were divorced by then).   I think my grandparents ending up paying for it.   It turned out I didn’t have heart problems like i was afraid, but a pulled chest muscle like I said.   I had been hyper-ventilating for days, which means taking breaths faster and more shallow then you normally would.  I hadn;t noticed since it seems we are taught when you are hyperventilating you are gasping for air.   I was proscribed codeine for the pain, every once in awhile to this day the problem will creep back for a week or two and I just deal with it since pain medication is the only thing they can proscribe.   My siblings have had similar doctor experiences where my mother only reluctantly took them after we plead the case to my grandparents since my mom thought it was some sort of attention plea.

I never asked for medical attention from my mother.   Besides getting teeth pulled for braces the last major medical thing tha tI had done was in elementary school when I got chronic ear aches.   So this wasn’t a case of my mother always dragging me ot the doctor and me haivng nothing wrong with me, it was serious to me, I was in tears fearing the worst about my condition and thinking it was my heart.

A similar issue goes with the getting fed thing, my mother has always chosen not work.  Because of this she happily took advantage of the free lunch program for the local schools.  I can’t say that my sibling are still on it, yet for two years of my high school I was.   It seemed to her better to get her kids free lunches then to get a job.    She has worked the welfare system so she could go on buying things from the home shopping network and Longaberger baskets, but send her children into the free lunch program.  that is selfish and naive, and if she had been cutting back on other things maybe I would have more sympathy and understanding.

So did she keep clothed, fed, and medical care – only when it suited her, she didn’t have pay, it didn’t effect other people’s appearance of her, or she was forced.   I still wonder what school officials thought about me wearing hundred dollar tennis shoes (since she wanted us to look our best) while getting free lunchs.

Number three stated I was pointing out alot of nit picky things – I mentioned earlier that alot fo these were small things, things that eventually broke me and caused me to cut off all communication with her.    I don’t deny some of hte things were small, but it is also the small things that shape us.   The big things we overcome; my mother didn’t beat me, she was the person that cared about herself first and her children second.

Number four stated that I magnify the issues and focus them on myself.   I was the whipping boy, after me it the third in line, then the fourth (my brother second in line didn’t get the whipping boy treatment), now it’s my sister that’s fifth in line.  I can say what I felt was slights to me and things that I have a right to complain about.   If one day my siblings decide to tell their own stories alot of similarities will line up, since this is what they tell me “off the record”.   Eventually maybe I’ll get some of them to talk about their own experiences more.

I’m also however not going to deny that I’m writing about the things she did that annoyed me or set me off.   These feelings will seem stronger to me then outside forces.    Some of it is truly petty, but I needed material to write and I did leave some bigger things off the record for the moment, writing this piece reminded me of the doctor’s issue I mentioned.    I’m not saying I’m done with this series, but for the moment I’m done writing about it.   I may do some more pieces in the future, but it will be about the larger things she did when I have the time, energy, and motivation to write about them.

If your interested here are the links to the stories so far:

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

Read Part 15 Here

Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Read Part 20 Here

Day late…

If you haven’t caught on to this series yet I have mother issues.   Because I have my mother issues I need to sit down and logically recognize what they actually do to me.  Things my mother has made me.

Growing up I was extremely self conscious of everything, how I looked, who had what, etc…  What has happened as an adult is that I just don’t care.   I don’t care what you have.  I want what I want for my own reasons.   As I’m getting older I can care less what society thinks about me, so essentially I’ve become the polar opposite of my mother.   Though Xie will tell me that isn’t always the case.

Because of growing up in my household I learned to thrive in chaos.   This is great in some of things I do since I can make order out of chaos (well at the same time creating more chaos around the thing I made in order).  Unfortunately for those around me this isn’t always a conducive environment for those that deal with me.

I get my anger from my father, and I’ve spent many years getting that in check and controlling.   It’s something I have to deal with.  I have learned however people like my mother are the ones that are most likely to set me off at a moments notice.  This is why I didn’t marry a girl like dear old mom.   My father after the divorce seems to have his anger issues in check, can we say common denominator?

I base(d) alot of what I know about relationships from my parents and their interaction.   When things aren’t going well in my own relationships I’m completely oblivious since things aren’t explosive like my parent’s relationship was.  While our child isn’t born yet we don’t know truly who the enabler and the disciplinarian will be.   I’m pegged for the enabler, and that’s not necessary a good thing.   If I get that from anyone it’s going to be my mother.   I just need to make sure my son doesn’t become a spoiled brat.

Frustration at stupidity.  The exasperation I get over comments that are idiotic, that comes completely from my mother.   I have mentioned her belief that ninja humanoid turtles were possible. I used to do all of her proof reading for her college homework when I was in high school, and I was responsible for the rewrites.  When I was about fourteen she said she was smarter then me.   What she may have meant to said was wiser, though I don’t think that was the case, since if she was wiser or smarter she would have said the word wiser.   Also for anyone wishing to defend her on that one, she still says she is smarter (Oprah must have told her she was).  I have a standing offer to pay for an IQ test so we can settle this once and for all, if she is write (highly unlikely) I may just kill myself since it will be proof that intelligence means nothing. On a side note recently I was just talking about sitting for the Mensa exam.  I don’t know if I’m Mensa smart, I may not be, but I’m confident enough to actually sit for the test.

The last thing is I get insane over little requests people ask of me.   I better be in the right frame of mind because I can go ballistic if it’s something they can do for themselves.   I’ll give you the story I use to describe this whenever I talk to someone about her.   When I was in high school I told my mother I was going to be taking a bath (yes I’m a boy and I like baths get over it).  She acknowledged me and said she was going ot cook dinner.  At this point everything is fine and dandy.   About 10 minutes later I’m in the middle of reading a book and my mother starts screamiming my name.   Now this isn’t a your in trouble name scream, nor was it a where are you at name scream.  What it sounded like was the “OMG THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE” scream.   I threw on a towel and rush down the stairs.

Well the emergency?  My mother needed a wash cloth to do dishes .  Her answer about me being in the bath?  “I forgot”.  In ten minutes she forgot what she had been told and acknowledged (and I’m sure she heard the bath water run) and put all of that aside for her immediate need of a wash cloth.   To make matters worse, she thought I was down in my room.   Now our family was a plit level.  The kitchen on the main floor, the bathroom on the second floor, and my bedroom on the lower floor.   In theory give or take ten feet I would have had to expend the same amount of energy to come from my room or the bathroom to come to the kitchen.   She would have expended half the energy (minus the energy to start yelling) to go down to the second floor and get it herself.  It was absolute pure laziness.   I pointed it out to her, and she didn’t care.   She wasn’t old or invalid, she was healthy and approxiamately the same age as I am now.   The worst part, I was dripping wet, freezing, and I still had to get the washcloth.

I was a sucker and should have said no, but I was a mama’s boy.  That story though is an example of many many things that are quite similar.   Because of her necessity or decorating the house for the holidays, I now loath decorating for the holidays/  I have never had a christmas tree in my  house, that may change next year with the kid on the way.   Compared to my mother’s house and her record breaking three christmas trees she did one year, my house will be quite sparse.

My mother likes to tell people how things are to be decorated and have everyone else do the work.   After the divorce I became the man of  the house.   I learned to loath the holidays.  When your mother is healthy you shouldn’t be fifteen and being Santa Claus setting up the tree late at night for your siblings, but yet I was.  I love the holidays, I just hat emy mothers version of them.  These days though i’m preferring Halloween over Christmas, black and gory for the win.

Ok  I’m stopping now otherwise this will become the post that will never end.

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

Read Part 15 Here

Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Sorry – this one is a couple of days late.

My parents don’t get along. I mean really don’t get along at all. I’m not sure I can stress this enough. My father always seemed to be doing what he did in the best interest of the children. My mother on the other hand was in a money grab and used leverage. This was nothing out of the norm from before the divorce however.

From about age seven until age fifteen, I was keenly aware that my parents did not have a good marriage.  I remember telling my friends that my parents were going through a divorce.   Ironically, they managed to keep going and going (along the way they also had two more kids).  My parents were a mismatch from the beginning, and if I had not entered the picture they might not have gotten together.  They did and now for some historical information.

My father attempted to be the disciplinary or the family, my mother was the enabler.   She was very much the enabler.   If  my father tried to set something down (this is looking back mind you), my mother would take a position just to be the opposite of him.   Of course if my mother wanted to agree with him, I could just bring out that everyone was doing something, this would normally allow me to gain her consent.

Now some of this I remember and some of this is stories passed down, I’m going to try to remove the bias and just give you some examples:

When we were living in Elyria, we didn’t make a ton of money.  Sometimes we were scraping by month to month.  It something that happens to a lot of families, and even as an adult I still find myself doing that most the time.  One month we had twenty dollars left in the bank account.   My father was counting on this money to provide lunch meat for himself for work.   My mother on the other side had other plans.  Knowing full well how much money was in the bank she went out and bought wash clothes, effectively draining the bank account.

My mother was never happy with what she had.   My father was constantly remodeling to her tastes.   He learned a lot of things about working on a house, so I guess you could say that’s a good thing.   I however remember the house always being in the state of flux as some project or another was constantly being performed.  Of course now as an adult I leverage my father for knowledge he gained from that experience, but my wife can’t live in that sort of atmosphere.  So that tidbit is something to take for taste.

During the early nineties my mother decided she wanted her own money.   That’s a good thing.  She decided she was going to make dolls and enlisted my father and my grandmother on her venture.  She made enough to buy a living room set after hours and hours of labor and sewing on all three of them.  I remember I did a bit of stuffing myself, but I don’t believe I did much else.   Now you would think that this is a good example of the family working together.  However, my mother didn’t seem to understand the concept of “cost of manufacturing”.  She believed that it was pure profit and just poo poo’ed all the money that it cost to create the dolls before sales.   Thinking back I hope my father set the profit margin, since my mom would have probably sold them for a loss and then went “Golly, look at all the money I have from sales”.

Before moving on to the post divorce era I’m going to relate one last story.  There was a movie I wanted to see (I was 15) – it was “People Under the Stairs” and I wanted to go with a friend.   My father said no, it was an R rated movie and he didn’t want me to go.   My mother snuck money to me and dropped me off to see the movie.   She was in full enabler mode.   Later when my father found out the fight between them was explosive, don’t mix two volatile chemicals together.   I have my father issues I may write about another time, but this month is about mom.

After the divorce my father and I didn’t talk for a few years.   We talked lightly after awhile, but it didn’t start getting regular until I was traveling for consulting.   This led to a whole new ball game in dealing with them.  I didn’t want to accidently pass information from one side to another, but at the same time I had to make my feelings known.   I would get my fahter to talk about things my mother had told me – indirectly inquiring.   I also did the same thing on the reverse.

The problem is I normally sided with my father’s point of view.   I was this go between, trying to maintain peace on each side of the family.   When I first moved into my house i was in the middle of everyone, so my house was going to be the holiday get together place.  A Switzerland where neither side could fight.   Well that didn’t last long before i stopped talking ot my mother.

The most interesting thing was the Thanksgiving when we first moved back to Ohio.   On my father’s side all of his siblings still get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to have a family meal.  My brother lives next door to my father.  My mother was staying at my Brother’s house that day……

Somehow, in some wierd mix up of the galaxy, my mother invited herself over to my father’s house.  (I’ve mentioned that they do not get along at all).   Her excuse was to see all of my aunt’s and uncles who could care less about her.   The rest of the family completely agrees that she was there only to see the house and see how my father was doing.   I don’t know how she managed ot get the nerve, but I wouldn’t enter the den of a place where I know I’m not wanted.

But maybe she just wanted to see if my father’s curtains made her look fat……..

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

Read Part 15 Here

My Mother, a grown woman now in her 50′s is still scared to death of her father.  She will do anything to avoid getting a lecture from him, this includes just telling him what he wants to hear, regardless if she is sincere or not.  My grandfather does have wisdom, but at the same time he doesn’t understand the world I live in, so I will challenge him, or tell me when he is wrong.

My mother on the other hand sometimes gets upset and will snap at him, but for the most part she cows down to him, or turns to my grandmother for support.  I think in her mind, if she attempts to placate him the issues won’t be there, the fear she has, the feelings of inadequacy that she seems to show after dealing with him.  She tells me I don’t understand.   I do understand, my grandfather is one of the most intimidating people in the family.   My siblings are still scared of him, we also all adore him.  My wife thinks he is just like a big gruff teddy bear – I’m not sure I would go that far…

If my grandfather showed up at my mom’s house unexpected and she noticed him, well then she would attempt the ten second clean up as he walked to the front door. I know she loves her father, but she (at the time anyways) dreaded his visits because she knew she was going to get lectured.

Like I said I stand up to my grandfather, my grandfather once asked my mother why she doesn’t stand up to him like I do. Maybe it’s a challenge to help her grow. She has somethings she definitely needs to work before she is capable of not being that ten year old girl in his shadow any more.

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

Rather building up to the explosive end, I figured it better to start at the end and show how it built up to that.   Hopefully this will allow me to end this journey with something nice to say.   Since we’re not finished yet I guess I won’t know.  My family is screwed up, tht’s not a lie.   I don’t think however it’s any more unique or screwed then anyone else’s.   So I guess as I go through this journey I will classify us as normal.   Some scenes may seem absurd.   Some will seem strange.  I however grew up with a better life with then some people I know so she would be responsible for that.   However i can’t go home again.   She told me so, I have no home except my own.

Tomorrow I’ll give more background leading up to the last day I talked to my mother face to face, however we’re looking at that day first.   Time to go back 2.5 years ago.  I arrived over to my mother’s house to help my sister out.   My sister had special juice my father had purchased for her (i don’t remember why), and it was being drank by my other siblings (not my fathers children).  My youngest brother, was actively allowed to enter her room at all time and she wasn’t allowed to lock her doors.   My mother was actively looking to drive her out, though she was waiting until she graduated.

I came over to come to my sisters rescue.   The first thing my mother does is deny any of this happening.   Then she comes and admits it, but comes up with excuses on how the different things happen.   At this point trying to maintain the peace all around I offered to bring in a mini fridge for my sister and buy a lock for her door since my mother can’t maintain boundaries for my youngest sister from both my biological parents.   Since my sister was the last one of the four of us in the house, she got it hte worst.   All the problems that the rest of us went through kept compounding on her (why my sister talks to her now I can’t fathom).

The first excuse is that my mother won’t have a locking door in her house because my sister doesn’t need privacy that no one would invade her space.  Secondly she said she wasn’t going to pay the electric bill a mini fridge would cost, my step father at this point came down the stairs and started to chime in.   I told him to shut the hell up (ok I used stronger language), the man who had abandoned my mother for over a year had no say in this dicussion in my book, he had been back less then month.

I had heard my mom cry about how much she hated him.   The main reason they got back together?  The noble thing would be to say it was love, maybe it will be again for them.   However my mother’s excuse to me over the previous month of deciding if she was going ot take him back was two-fold the first is that she didn’t want to die alone – fair enough.   The second was the part that disgusted me, she didn’t feel she had to work.  She complained that this was her time to enjoy with grandchildren and she shouldn’t have to work.   She told me how she was going to pay all the bills with her inheritance and be happy.  That was the life she always envisioned and she was upset she wasn’t going to get it.  She sounded like the preppy girl complaining that she came in second place in a beauty pagent, and if she cried and screamed loud enough someone else would fix it.

She got back together with him, not for love, but live a more comfortable life.   Why I won’t explicitly say that, someone who lies in bed with someone else for money as the primary reason…….

I knew this, my siblings knew this, my wife knew this.   He held no power over me and I wasn’t going to have any of it.   He had put my mother through months of pain, helping my mother out because of this was part of the reason I moved back to Ohio from Oregon.   I had been a part of that house and family for many years.   At this point he asked me to leave.   As I’m walking out I’m still arguing on my way to the car.   My mother told me the words that are opposite of what I’ve been told that a mother is supposed to say – she told me that it wasn’t my home anymore.

I had grown up my whole life with my mother telling me that it would always be my home.   She however would choose to be with her part time husband and choose his side over mine.   It wasn’t the first time she did that though.  My step father told me to never come back and I wasn’t welcome there anymore.   So be it.   My mother has relinquished what she wants or believes in for her comfort.   She tries now to deny what she said (like she always denies what she says) but my wife heard it also and her jar dropped.   My wife had seen the drag out fights amongst my family, and this wasn’t the worst.  This was my mother clinging to safety and the fear of being alone.  If I thought she did it because she wanted to, because love made her do strange things, then I would forgive.  My mother is more calculating in protecting herself though.  She will protect herself over the expense of others.

For the record if my step father ever shows up on my door step, the first thing I’m doing is calling the police.

This is the incident that is the proverbial straw.  Does it sound stupid?  I’m sure it does.   I won’t deny it.   Starting tomorrow we’ll be working on how we got to here.

Read Part 1 Here

I previously wrote about an e-mail my mother wrote me, I also mentioned I would follow up on this later.  I guess this is later.   If Yod can write about his family and his problems, I guess it’s my turn.   I am going to attempt to do a post a day about my mother.   Now I could take the road that I was just going to blast every negative thing she’s done to me and my siblings, however I’m not going to do that.   I’m going to mention the good and the bad.   The things that made me stick by her through the problems and the what made me break.

In the end though this isn’t going to be about her.   This is going to be about my inability to deal with her.   I just can’t take it any more.  I don’t have to put myself through any more torture just in the excuse that’s she is family.   I can’t deal with her, god bless my siblings and the rest of my family that can.   I’ve joked with my father (her ex) that he has talked to her more in the last two years then I have, that i still find amusing since they do not get along in any way shape or form.

This is my cartharsis, the way of writing it down and putting it behind me.   I don’t need to deal with the torture and pain anymore.   I don’t need to be in the middle of the he said she said stuff.   I don’t have to not tell this person this thing, but I can tell that person that thing.    Thirty two years of this, I’ve finally said enough.   Enough to dealing with someone who finds herself more important then anyone else.

We’ll see if any of you actually find this interesting.  Whether I’m writing to the oblivion that is the Internet, whether anyone listens.   Whether this matters.

Earlier this week this email (it’s been edited to protect names- edits in italics) showed up in my inbox:

Hi Brent.. I just want to know that I miss talking to you.  I am thrilled for you and XIE as you await the birth of your new little son.  I remember when the two of you came to see YOUR YOUNGEST BROTHER and I after he was born saying you will neve have kids and I said oh give yourself another ten years things may change.  Here you are….I am sure XIE is getting all prepared, reading planning, etc.  I think she will do great during  delivery, they have so many different ways to help with relaxation during labor.  After YOUR SON is born the two of you will be so amazed at that moment and your life will change forever.  You will never look at certain things the same way again.  And the way a new baby smells, its a special scent that only lasts a few days then fades away to the sweet smell of baby lotion bath wash.  You will see, I think its a good thing for both of you, you will have alot of fun.

Love mom

Now grammar and spelling mistakes I didn’t touch, just the names to protect some people’s identity.  When I told Xie about the e-mail she was miffed that my mother didn’t call.   I told her that was the only smart thing my mother did for this situation.  I’m sure my mother knows by now that if I heard her voice I would have just hung up the phone and she wouldn’t have had a chance to get anything out.    Score one point for my mother.  Though I’m going to make the wild assumption that she didn’t assume I was going to post this on my blog.

I read the e-mail out loud to Xie.   I started reading it in my mothers tone and voice pattern (I do a fairly passable impression of her speaking mannerisms).   I didn’t make it through the first sentence before Xie said she would smack me up side the head if I didn’t read it normal.   I submitted and read it normal.   The first thing Xie said after her rant on my mother e-mailing, was “So she wrote that whole thing to say ‘I told you so’.”  I replied with “Yep.”

One point of view could be said that my mother is attempting to repair a bridge between a fractured relationship.   Like eveyrthing else my mother attempts to do this is a selfish act.   When I was younger she put guilt trips on me for not having kids because she wanted grandkids (bear in mind I’m the oldest of her 6 kids so she was bound to have grandkids).   My brother already has a daughter and a son that should be born in the next couple weeks.  My brother is on speaking and family terms with my mother so she has two grandkids she would have access to.   My mother’s only access to me is messages that my siblings or my grandmother deliver.   The only message I ever send back is that I don’t care.

As it stands right now my grandchild will never have access to her.  I know how she screwed me up my siblings and myself (though I have a different world view, so I’m sure they think that I’m the one that’s screwed up).   I don’t want to risk exposing my child to that.   After my child is of legal driving age and can take himself over there, it will all be in his court on what he decides to do.  My child won’t be forbidden from going there, but I’ve been told that I’m not welcome there and can’t come over.  So I’m holding that to heart for the rest of time.

My point of view if you haven’t figured this out, is that my mom wants to be seen as the good grandmother.    She follows the theory in life that it’s better to appear good then be good.   Now I’m not going to say that I am any sort of saint.  I am who I am.   I don’t put on false airs for anyone.   I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not.   I’m rough, I’m honest, and I can be brutally blunt.   I’m used to that and I can deal with the consequences, because I enjoy who I am.

I haven’t put more than a passing thought into my mother in the last year.   When someone mentions her I give my knee jerk “I don’t care answer” and forget about her.   But this email has forced me to bring the pasts thoughts to light (just when I’m in a peaceful place again).   So in the upcoming month look for some articles about the problems I have with my mother.   This email may look like an honest attempt for reconciliation by some, but I know my mother’s methods.  I will concede that is what she believes she is doing in her mind.   She is just too naive to really look at herself for who she is though.

Picture from here

Yesterday I wandered into a forum that contains random population members from my ex-hometown.  There was a thread about the teacher strike going on in town.  I don’t really self promote by going and saying hey read my site here and there around the net, but I did leave a post in the thread stating:

I rarely post here – rarely read it also – but today boredom struck  – I agree with the parent of this thread – ironically a few weeks ago I actually wrote on my blog on this subject here: http://creeva.com/2008/07/28/teachers-on-strike-in-my-hometown/

That aside – I’ll be very happen when teaching becomes a non-union position.

Though it was in general to a thread a user named Homersazdoh wrote this:

Where do you people get off thinking all the teachers are members of the peace corp.?  They have every right to try and get more money just like everyone else.  If you’re so concerned with the quality of teacher, then you want the best package to draw the best talent.

My next response was:

The problem is under a contract scenario with unions or large groups of employees you need to pander to the lowest common denominator – this means that better teachers are going to make less because the large number of average or below average teachers will bring them down.

But I’ve recently had siblings go through the vermilion school system (some still going, I graduated in ’94) – over time the quality has only gotten worse, the education is not as werll rounded due to block scheduling, more and more restrictions on individuality, and the lack of money being poured into the system that has nothing to do with teacher wages.

Oh well, I’ll drop out of this conversation, my child is probably going to be home schooled.

This is what I got from Scott:

Now of course I wasn’t going to let that by, but I excused myself from the thread with this:

Be careful – my wife is home schooled – I’m a college fail out/drop out – yet I’m in an extremely competitive white collar career.

My child will always be challenged – the common misconctption that’s I’ve always fought for public schooling is socialization – I never found it competitive nor strived to be more competive – I’m a member of a few social and group organizations.

BUt believe what you want – and thank you for derailing the conversation any further – I apologize to everyone for my detour I helped on this thread – I’ll drop out.

BTW – I don’t care either way the teachers strike and union goes -I’m not a vermilion resident – I moved out in 2001 – I won’t move back but I have friends and family there – I’m friends wiht a couple teachers there, and I’m a member of vermilion community organizations.

Now why did I give you this?  I figured I would give you some back story to what inspired this post.  Xie and I have had many disagreements about public schools versus home schooling, she wasn’t always homeschooled so she has the advantage of first hand experience on both sides of the coin.   She is also one of the most intelligent (and quiet) people I know.   I had a good experience with public schools, she did not.

However with the random inspections, school uniforms, the crushing of individuality, and the loss of personal liberties that kids go through today to “make them better citizens” and to “keep them safe”, has made me think twice on sending my child to public schools.   My argument in the past was the social aspect and the ability work with and meet people.   The competiviness of school was never a selling point for me.   Heck the overly competitive people were the ones that made my life hell in school and were the super jocks, the bullies that had something to prove, or the grade whores who thought straight A’s would give them the good life when they graduated.

I wasn’t a straight A student, nor did I try to be.   When I was in elementary school I was on the honor role and merit role all the time, so what?  My parents then changed schools on me and I then almost failed fifth grade.  My wife says I don’t respond well to change and I’m better with routine.  This is obvious when I went from good grades in a competitive private school moving to a sub par public school.  I should have excelled from an academic perspective, but I didn’t.   I was a fish out of water.

The same thing happened two years later when we moved to Vermilion.  At one point my father stated the best thing he could at me to alleviate my stress and to ease his concern of his son failing a grade.  He said that he would be fine if I was a C student.  This was all I needed to alleviate the strain.  I high school I only failed two classes, Spanish 1 and Algebra 2.  I did maintain a C average throughout school.   I was so much a C student that I graduated around 100th in a class of 250ish.  This didn’t stop me from going anywhere.   I managed to get into a good private college (which I then proceeded to fail out, but that was from lack of wanting to go to class).

Was I really a C student?  Not really.  I could have easily made honor roll, I just didn’t like homework.  I scored in the top 10% in the nation on my ACTs and in the top 1% on my PRE-SATs, I’m sure this helped me to get in college.   I just wanted to take the tests to prove I knew what I was talking about, the busy work held no interest for me.  The only competition I really participated in school was who could hit the highest trumpet note.

Now I have a good job.   There are articles kicking around the Internet about why going college is a waste of time and money these days.   I don’t feel I’ve lost out on an education.  Life is about learning and loving to learn.   To build upon what you have learned already and never stop growing.  Why would I put my child in the bad aspects of that, pointing out that my child would not be competitive because he may not go to public school is moronic.   Also when I saw the college valedictorian delivering pizzas when I was making 35k a year 9 years ago made a big impact on me.

I think that traditional schooling leads to more socialization and more social activities then traditional schooling, however saying I need to send my kid to traditional schooling for him to remain competitive?  That’s moronic.

Picture from here

Original From parentphobia.com: Daddy, Why Did You Blog About Me?

This is a letter to my future child.

Dear Little One,

Though by the time you read this you will be old enough, hopefully, to comprehend it.  Who knows you may even have brothers and sisters by this time.  I’m writing this because I know that your mother and I will make mistakes.  Contrary to what we may teach you we are just human and not super-human.   We possess no special abilities beyond judgment that is tempered with wisdom that we have arrived at through age.   We will screw you up.   That is an unfortunate fact.  Like your grandparents we will think about ways we can do things better with you then they did with us.   It is highly likely that we, like them, will screw you up and make you less then perfect the same way they did it to us.  The only thing you get to look forward to is when you screw up your own children by teaching them in ways that you perceive were the wrong ways to handle you.

We will always love you in an unconditional way.   We may get angry at you, and I’m positive you will get angry at us.  I hope it is not lasting.   Our home will always be a home with a place for you in it and a place that you can come back to.  If you sixty and I’m ninety-three you will always be welcome to live with me.  Though expect me to drive you up the wall like I do to your mother sometimes.   Your mother and I may fight, that’s because we are very strong in our ideals.  You will learn that a lot of what your mother and I fight about is much different then other parents.   This is because we are strange, please see the section where I said that we will screw you up and our parents screwed us up.

I write this to you now to give you something to read that is just for you and your siblings.   An understanding in case I’m not perfect.  A message if I’m not vocal enough in expressing my feelings.  A hope that you can learn and grow from the things I write down and give you a moment in time to grasp across and to see if in the future you have the same feeling and problems as I do now.   Not everything is time period specific, something transcend human time to give you an emotional connection with what you feel is important.

I blog about you so you will always have a sense of who I am.  How I experienced things.  What I believed in.  It may not be the same as you feel in the future, but hopefully you will the struggles I overcame to get to the place you know me.   I’m sure there will be many stories I tell you over the years that won’t be recorded.   These hopefully you will be able to keep forever so you can have a piece of me with you always and something to pass down to your own children.

I can’t wait to meet you for the first time, to read to you, to cuddle with you.   These are going to be the experiences I will cherish even when you have far outgrown them.  I hope you gain the same in return from your own children.  I will write you more in the coming future.  See you in a few months.

Love,

Your Father

Original From parentphobia.com: Daddy, Why Did You Blog About Me?

One thing we both have in common beyond family ties is that she discovered this year that she has a love for playing music. She’s in her first year of saxophone, while I’m in my seventeenth year of playing trumpet (and I didn’t start until I was 15. Hopefully she stays with it longer then my other siblings. Besides myself my family has seen a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinet player, a violin player, and now a saxophone player. The rest of them didn’t make it out of junior high playing their respective instruments.

She is doing well in sports and thinks she has a shot at making the seventh grade basketball team next year. Something she has in similar to my other siblings and not myself.

In a way I wish we could have talked longer, but she was working, so I thought it best to let her work. I made sure I left her my email and phone number so she could stay in contact. I also gave her Xie’s e-mail address and let her know we are always there to talk.

I would definetly spend more time with her if I didn’t have to see my mother.

P.S. This is my first fulland normal blog post from my N810 so please excuse the typos.

Wikipedia defines inbreeding as:
Inbreeding is breeding between close relatives, whether plant or animal. If practiced repeatedly, it often leads to a reduction in genetic diversity. A concomitant increase in homozygousity of recessive traits can, over time, result in inbreeding depression. This may result in inbred individuals exhibiting reduced health and fitness and lower levels of fertility.

So we’ve established that if we agree with Wikipedia’s definition on inbreeding as a reduction in genetic diversity, what can we say about communal, intellectual, or societal inbreeding?  Is there such a thing?  I think there is, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing is for you to decide.  Let’s go over some examples.

A boy who is two years old and walks over to a new-born baby girl sitting in a stroller in front of the neighbor’s house.  He meets her for the first time.   Over the coming years they run around naked in the yard together at an age where it is somewhat socially acceptable.  They go to dances together.  In all ways they are best friends, brother and sister living next door to each other brought together by location and shared experiences.  At the age of 18 they marry.

Socially acceptable?  You answer that.

Another boy is 11 years old, his single father comes back from a business trip and tells his son that he met a woman and they are getting married in 6 months.  She happens to have a 11 year old daughters.  Seven years later the son and the woman’s daughter marry.  They are step-siblings at the time.

Socially acceptable?  You answer that.

I can’t tell you how you thought and your feelings on it, but if we look at the two above scenarios and define neither of those as inbreeding from a genetic stand point but from a relationship stand point both may be considered incestuous.  Granted incest laws and inbreeding are separate on the moral compass scale, but truly you can’t have one without a varying degree of the other.

Some incest and inbreeding are accidental, take the case in point of the separated twins that got married in England last year.  While they would have inbred if they would have had children before finding out they were related and on the strictest sense it is incest since they were brother and sister, if we throw morality out the door for a second is it truly incestuous?  They had less in common in life experience then either the first two examples I gave.  They are further apart so they bring more to the table for a child to learn from in a life experience department.  From an intellectual or communal stand point this wouldn’t be inbreeding or incest.   It would be two people who were in love that had the unlucky chance of common DNA.

Part of what was discussed at the time that was a news story was that people are attracted to people who are like them.  So people with similar experiences and interest are going to be more attracted to each other with the more they are like each other.   Unfortunately the more your significant other is like you the more your offspring is going to be like you because of the moral traits and beliefs you and your mate educate your offspring with.     Hence while you may have preserved genetic diversity you have squashed a mutation in the sense of the child being more independent and different than yourselves.   Your child is not likely to be more successful than either you or your mate.  It is likely to fall in the same economic and societal structure as their forebearers.

Socially acceptable?  Sure is.

Morally right when you look at the big pictures?  You answer that.

The reason this comes up is all the friends and communities that people have had for years at a time.  Whether it be a church group, a video game guild, an online forum, or a local chess club the closeness you can evolve with these people can become close enough that you can’t differentiate between your feeling for family or your feelings for the group you belong to.  It is a family in every sense of the word except for genetics.    The longer the group stays together and the more they become like the other people the more intellectual and interest stagnation can occur.   If you live your life obsessed with something and so does your mate, highly likely your child will be the same way.

I can say that my wife and I shared friends but we were two very different people.  We knew each other for a few months, and have grown more alike in the decade we’ve been together, but deep down from shared experiences we are very different people.   However what if we would have met at 11 years old and married 7 years later?  What if we had been part of a video game group that we had let our guard down and accepted as family.  What about truly platonic friends that pick up romance after 30 years of friendship?  At what point would there be a moral difference between communal inbreeding  versus genetic?  Is there ever?

If there is no such thing as communal or intellectual inbreeding, then will identical twins be able to legally marry and be accepted by society once we can do genetic manipulation?  At the point we can do true genetic modification we can insure that no inbreeding at the genetic level will occur.  Sure it still will be considered incest, but what would the health reason or societal reason truly be to keep the people apart?  I’m sure eventually mankind will have to grapple and come up with the moral answer code going forward.  Not yet but someday.

This is not a piece to make you decide something one way or another.  It is more a piece to help you decide in the global communication world we live in that there will things that we need to decide on what is family.   Is family only truly a genetic trait?  Is it a lump of love and shared experiences?  If so at which point will be the truly defining line between where incest and inbreeding live and where societies acceptable norms lie.

Mutation exists through differentiation, mutation leads to evolution.   What needs to be done to insure evolution at all levels?  You answer that.

This was my bedroom wall back in high school – one day the summer before my senior year I started by painting my initials on the wall.  It grew over time.   Friends came over they signed the wall, I painted the names of my closest friends and girlfriends of different eras on the wall.  It was a work of art, and epic time of my life.   It was a living diary that shared information with those who entered and those who embraced it.

Every time someone came over something was added or removed from the wall.  It went so far that even some parents signed it.   It was a moment at time which I lived and breathed inside my mural, it was an extension of myself that I didn’t have for years.

When I moved out to go to college my brother inherited my room.   Out when the mural, lost under paint was the soul that previously breathed into that room.  After my brother, two of my sisters inherited that room.  None of them kept up the mural tradition.   Part of me had hoped my siblings would have taken up the torch, either taking their own wall or painting over the areas I had painted and made it their own.

Now it’s a plain painted wall and the pictures above are all that exists of the soul that lies beneath the current paint.

My blog now is my modern mural.  Granted my friends don’t participate here like they did back then, but the blog I think is more ethereal to them as the wall was all those years ago.   It doesn’t give them a chance to leave their mark the way the tangible wall allowed them to exist.   The picture was take a week or two before I left for college.    I lost myself after that.    Lost was my childhood and the friendships I left behind.  Moving on from the past and onto the next stage of my life.    I am myself and no other.    I have parts of myself that have been painted over and will never again emerge.   Still for those that know, part of myself will always shine through because they know what exists beneath paint.

My sister Branda is born.   She has been a boon and a pain to my life, just like my other siblings.  I can’t say at this point which is more so.  I love her just the same though.