Friday, April 22, 2005

Some Resolution Regarding Pesach and Mom

As a resolution to the whole Pesach ordeal with my mother's husband, after my mom told me that I was no longer invited over for Shabbosim if I did not attend the seder, I told her to tell him to shove it... well, you can figure it out. (I said it nicely though, and I conveyed the message to my mom that I understood that she was in the middle and that my anger was not directed at her, but towards her husband.)

The end result was that after looking at the phone with her number on it for ten minutes before pressing "send", I called her on Friday to make peace and to explain to her that I really loved her and that I was sorry she had to deal with his issues. When she picked up, I found out that she had gone to Florida with him. While I was calmed that this rendered the issue moot, I was surprised that they left my brother home alone without a place to go for either seder. If they are so intent on keeping the family together and having a Jewish experience so that my brother can be brought closer to Judaism, how could they leave him home without a place to go for Passover? This only serves to prove to me that their intentions in causing all these problems were not for the benefit of the family, as they so eloquently communicated to me, but rather, to satisfy the temptations of their own sick egos.

The sad thing now is that even though I am backdating this blog to Friday, I am actually writing this entry on Tuesday, April 26th. Although I am not trying not to be belligerent about this whole thing, I am actually hurt that my mom would actually convey such a threat to me. I feel that both she and her husband owe me an apology even though I would never even think of asking her for one. What mother would threaten her son that he is no longer invited to her house if he doesn't give in to her husband's forceful demands that he attend or be banished from his home?

Anyway, I am excited that tonight (Tuesday night) I will be seeing David Copperfield, but I am sad that I will be seeing it alone. I couldn't even bring myself to call my mother or anyone else to come see it with me. I didn't want the rejection, not even from my friends tonight -- I couldn't take it. I got an e-mail tonight from my friend who bailed on me that night that I was throwing a birthday party for my friend who also was a no-show. He announced in his e-mail that "dinner at my dad's tonight" as if after all of his disinterest in our friendship, that I would jump at his beck and call to go see him. I am tired of being the good friend and the good son. Someone else be the fool for a change.

2 comments:

Daphnewood said...

wow that is a lot of anger and really not like you (from what I can tell from your blog so far). Parents mess up all the time but I would not harp on the apology issue. It is just another conflict if you really think about it. And you really don't know what their motivation was for taking off to Florida. It could be that they felt maybe such demand on you wasn't fair after all. I would just let it go but you know your family better than me :-)

Zoe Strickman said...

Funny -- if that was a lot of anger, than I have a volcano of emotions that people don't see. That message was VERY toned down because I know my mom knows the address to this blog and that she reads it from time to time if she has the interest.

It's Wednesday, April 27th and my mom has not called even to say hello. I am not harping on getting an apology (nor have I or will I ask for one), but I feel that I was the one that made the last move to reach out to them and now they are just being selfish by not calling me. I wrote my mom's husband an e-mail yesterday but so far I have gotten no response and I know he checks his e-mail daily due to his business connections.

Anyway, as Victoria from victoriaruraljapan.blogspot.com wrote in her comment to the original message, I think this is one of those occasions where even though I was not in the wrong, I will need to suck it up and I will reach out and say hello AGAIN because they probably think that I have wronged them by not attending the seder they in the end did not have. This is all so stupid. I don't want to call. I really don't. Family politicking like this makes me nauseas to my stomach. I actually want to cry and throw up just thinking about it.