If you're new to aagblog.com you should subscribe to the RSS feed here or have new content delivered directly to your inbox here. Follow my Twitter updates here.
No doubt it was a mistake to have related this story to my parents but I fall again and again into the trap of believing that they are normal people — and the topics of weather and grain prices only take us so far. Once committed to writing1 my tales come out the same time after time2, so I can say with almost 100% certainty that what issued from my mouth that day deviated little from what faithful readers consumed two weeks ago.
“That’s terrible,” said my mother, “that he would say something so vile to the child!” I agreed, but as happens in a room full of children, someone’s lost Care Bear, extra-difficult math problem or gaping head wound derailed the conversation until the original topic was hopelessly lost.
Until the next day, when my mother called to ask the time for an upcoming event at my child’s school. “I gave you the paper,” I reminded her. “Remember? It was yellow.” She claimed no knowledge of said paper. I cast about, as I was far from home and unable to visualize the calendar on the fridge which held the correct time. “I emailed it to you,” I finally remembered. “Check your inbox and you’ll see.”
That also produced no result; she swore I’d neither handed over any letters nor sent any mail. “And I want to talk to you about something else,” she said, and proceeded to tell me how she’d stayed up all night stewing over the fact that my ex-husband had insulted our child by saying he wasn’t her “real” daddy.
While that man has many faults (no doubt he’d say the same of me), disparaging a child with hurtful comments about her parentage is something he’d never do. “Mom,” I said, with as much patience as I could muster. “Our neighbor said that. A little boy said that, not your ex-son-in-law.” And then the accusation that I’d never invited them to Thanksgiving dinner — despite my offers to pull up the pertinent emails — suddenly made so much more sense.
I have no doubt but that one piece of this puzzle is insanity. My own issues are evidence enough of the chaotic and destructive power of poorly-managed mental hygiene. But perhaps it’s time to accept that fast-encroaching senility also plays a role, a role which will grow more and more pronounced as the years tick by.
So we’re no closer to a solution than when we started, and all I can do is forgive and forgive and forgive, and hope that maybe, one day, we’ll all figure out a way to be kind to one another.
