What To Do About Family

Tonight was the Chanukah "party" at my mother's house. It's the whole Jewish side of the family - my mother's side. I don't believe I have the room in my consciousness to navigate through the labyrinth of dynamics that exist among us. Sitting quietly, enjoying the nice moments and overlooking the shitty ones isn't really doing it for me any more.

The struggle is mostly around my cousin Deborah. I realize I'm entering into something I can't take away just by writing this, never mind posting it on the interweb, where anyone can read it. It's a chance I'm taking and a choice I'm making...

She's ruining her kids. She's ruining their lives. I want to hit her in the face and tell her to shut up more often that not. I want to turn to her husband and ask him how he can allow her to behave the way she does. That spineless sack of wallpaper paste lets her get away with the aggression, the anxiety, the incessant acting out. My aunt, Deborah's mother... it's a familiar situation. She's their savior figure, and she's letting Deborah get away with it too, and I've thought on more than one occasion it's specifically and deliberately so that she can be the safe person to run to. She was that for me. She was that safe person. The eternally supportive fairy godmother, always there to say yes to counter my parents nos, and to smile supportively when I was wanting for an ally.

I can remember the specific moment my relationship with her changed. She had just been cruel to my mother (it involved the candlesticks of their dead mother), and so my mother was busy being her crazy self, lashing out in every direction. My aunt looked at me and crinkled up her face as if to say, what's her problem? For the first time, I wasn't able to return the look. I didn't go to her. I didn't meet her there. I stood firmly on the dividing line between her and my mother and took neither side, and by doing that, I sided with my mother, who had always been the enemy she defended me from and so... so that was that.

Of course, we were still close in a way after that but never the same. And once her grandkids were born, forget it. I was in the middle of a sentence tonight when she fled to retrieve a cup of milk the boy-child was asking for. There were roughly 5 other people in the immediate vicinity who could have fetched it. She told me three times how happy she is about my promotion, but she never once asked what it means, or what my day is like, or if I even like my job.

And of course, there was never a follow-up to the emails we exchanged around my writer's cottage and thanksgiving. The ball was in her court, she wrote me to say she'd write me, and she never did. The dialog was weeks ago. I don't just forget nonsense like that. I don't just sweep it aside and carry on. There has to be some acknowledgment, and there has been none from her.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I shouldn't be surprised that she doesn't know how to do this. She's the sort of woman, that when you ask her how she is, she talks about her husband's cholesterol and her daughter's weight loss and her grandkids' most recent motor/sensory development. She never says how she is. I suppose she doesn't much think about it. I've never heard her say she's especially tired or in pain. She gest colds and the flu with terrible severity, but she doesn't really complain about it. It follows then that concepts of contentment, happiness or dissatisfaction with the state of one's life is probably as foreign to her as ignoring a hurtful exchange is to me.

I gave Shana an ant farm for Chanukah. It's a high-tech kind of thing with blue glowing lights that shine up through blue gel. It's not sand that they tunnel in, it's gel, so you can see them better. Shana hated it from the minute she opened it. Aunt Carol and Deborah immediately ran to find her another present to open so she wouldn't be sad. They found her something with frills. Something pink and soft and princessy. Something exactly like what I was avoiding getting for her. All they had to do was show the slightest bit of interest and encourage her to watch the ants, and read the book I gave her to go with it.

An hour later Deborah, that cunt, sat in the living room saying to no one, or everyone, that Shana would never go to sleep with "that thing" in her bedroom, and that she'd give the ant farm away later to Zach's teacher, and they could keep it as a classroom thing. Typically one waits till they're out of earshot of the gift giver before talking about getting rid of the item. Typically. But Deborah isn't typical. She's without a doubt the most toxic person I know, and I can't continue to be in rooms with her quietly allowing the poison to spill out of her without responding our countering in some way.

People choose friends, and people get close to their friends, and then often that relationship becomes outmoded and the people move on. With family, though, you're just expected to endure it till the end of days because DNA is shared. I don't... I don't think I want to.