Yesterday was a graphic example to me how the “radical submission” and “always smile, never complain” of soft or hard complementarianism just does not work on so many levels. We’ve tried it, and were both miserable for those years. It darn near ruined our marriage.
Good thing too, because I’m not sure how I would have survived or dealt with things if I was still submitting the way I tried thirty long years ago. For the last eight months I’ve been dealing with a mother who drinks copiously and now comes with the bonus of dementia. Add in the Aunt Heap of hysterical aunties and it’s been a challenging time for me, one in which I had to break down, leave my beach paradise home and fly back to Louisiana to assess the situation.
So what is the situation? Mother needs to be living in a facility, but the alcoholism just complicates everything. She has to do something wacky enough to be eligible for an eval and intake and we’re just not there yet. She’s beyond resistant to all efforts to help, or even have someone come in to help her. We’re in a crazy stalemate right now. I keep telling the aunts I’ve investigated our options and there just aren’t any good ones at this point.
Yesterday was the intersection between the problem with Mom, the problem with unexpected guests, and the problems when your spouse does not read your body cues and facial expressions. Admittedly I know I would have been a great candidate for Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole?”
I wake up, pour my first cup of that steamy, reviving, Costa Rican miracle that is hot coffee. I’d barely gotten a sip in when my phone rang and it was the Aunt Heap calling about my mother. My husband wasn’t home, I knew he’d gone to walk the lomitas of the hills behind a nearby village with new friends.
By the time he made it home I’d been on the phone about 90 minutes, an emotionally messy 90 minutes involving my mother’s latest antics, and the attempts to get her evaluated and medicated for the dementia aspect. When you’re dealing with someone as secretive as she is, HIPAA laws, mixed with her irrational nature you have to have the same level of planning as a strategic military strike.
Unfortunately my Aunt Heap brings all the additional drama as one of those trashy Bravo reality television shows, so while attempting to monitor my mother’s life from afar I have to deal with the dramaz. Buddy, are there dramas!
My husband opened the large front gate, the automatic piston arms slowly unfolding like an enormous metal flower. I see he’s not alone, so I’m sighing between my tears. He’s managed to bring his entire walking group home, to give them the eleven cent tour of our property, something I do not need at that moment, cringing realizing that I had half folded laundry strewn around the living room. I do laundry and fold on Saturdays, but something came up before I was done.
My aunt was in the middle of rehashing an ancient episode involving my father picking up a Volkswagon engine and attempting to throw it and crush my mother, myself and my aunt. I’m crying so hard I cannot speak. I’ve tried to keep the phone calls between my aunts and I rare and brief because of the tendency of my aunts to revisit the Grand Tour of my parents less than stellar moments. It’s all dirty, stinky water under the bridge now, and I prefer to remember each at their best, their most loving and kindest, not this way.
Bedroom door flings open, husband trots in, sees a weeping me clutching my coffee cup still wearing my nightgown and babbles out in a cheery voice, “Come out and meet our guests. Tell whoever that is you’ll call them back later!” I mumbled out I could not. He asked why and I yelled at him. Not caring if his new found friends heard. He huffed out I didn’t have to yell before rejoining our uninvited guests.
Another hour passes before I managed to get the information I needed from the aunt, laced with more stories of abuse and neglect from my childhood and her opinions on what I need to do when my mother dies. I am crushed anew. This is why I usually try only to text the Aunt Heap. It’s just safer and saner to not be treated to these conversations where it seems like they’re trying to wind up my emotions.
I go out to the swimming pool, still weeping, still drinking coffee and talk to my husband about everything. I guess he didn’t pick up on the seriousness of the conversation. I hate having others intruding on us like that too, especially before coffee because this was early, like omg this is asscrack of dawn too early.
No hard feelings, no one cheesed off and both of us understanding we’d run up upon the nature of the other. The husband is extremely social, whereas I am so not social on the best of days. That’s okay, it’s truly okay. He said he’ll try to be mindful of the earliness of the day, and if I am on the phone next time. I said I’d try not to shout like a fish monger if he intrudes during something that serious again. Least said quickly is the soonest mended. Don’t keep offense lists, and don’t dwell on things you cannot change.
During our time at our old patriarchal church I wouldn’t have yelled, but he and I both would have been smoldering with resentment for ages over this. I sure would not have been able to take the day off to hug myself and withdraw from the day entirely to put myself back together again. He would have been nervously attempting to make me pick up the reins of life immediately after that call. Jump to cook breakfast for his friend group mixed with orders to move the laundry.
I spent the day having a Jane Austen movie marathon while I worked on a quilt. My poor husband spent the majority of the day horizontal. The hike up the lomitas hadn’t gone well, he’s not nearly as fit as his friends. We even skipped Sunday night at the Volcano bar watching our friends play music. Sometimes you simply must take the day off and that’s perfectly fine.