Family Hell

After heeding the call to help out a fellow mom, I went to Urban Mommy’s blog and read about the stress she is dealing with due to an upcoming visit from her parents.

While many new parents welcome the visit from their own parents, I can understand her hesitation and stress. I, too, had to deal with a mostly unwelcome parent when I gave birth to Cordelia.

Before Cordy was born, my father and I were not speaking to each other. We had not spoken to each other since January 2003, when my father called and spent over an hour telling me what an ungrateful and evil person I was. What could have caused this venom? Well, I decided that my mother was going to walk me down the aisle, tradition be damned. (And we weren’t having a Catholic wedding, but that’s another issue entirely.)

My parents divorced when I was a year old, and my father was a very small presence in my life. As in, the Christmas-Easter-birthday only type of presence. When I did see him, we didn’t get along at all. He was strict and talked down to me as a child, and I resented him for that. He also tried to tell me that my mom and her family were evil people, and had brainwashed me against him, when in truth my mom never said a bad thing about him until I was much older.

As a teen, I couldn’t stand his elitist, racist and misogynist attitudes. (He and his family are well-off, while I grew up not-so-well-off.) When I graduated from college, he sent me a letter telling me that I failed at college because I didn’t find a husband, and I needed to stop focusing on school and start losing some weight and working on finding a man. So it should come as no surprise that I wanted my mother to walk me down the aisle at my wedding, since she was the person who raised me and loved me and made me who I am.

My father not only boycotted my wedding, but also tried to convince other members of that family to do so as well. Luckily, the other family members saw through it, and so my uncles, aunts, and grandmother were all in attendance.

Fast forward a year and a half to September 2004. I’m now pregnant, ready to burst, and my father still isn’t talking to me. My aunt sends me an e-mail, saying that he wants to mend things and be a grandparent, but I have to be the one to make first contact. No way, I reply. He’s welcome to come crawling back and say he’s sorry, but I have nothing to apologize for. A few weeks later, we decide on a c-section because Cordy is still breech, and the date of the birth is known to all.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when my father and stepmother showed up out of the blue only hours after the c-section. While I was trying to get to know this new person, they were there with gifts, asking to hold the baby and acting as if nothing had ever happened between us. I was far too tired and sore to start a fight, and so I let them get their fill of the baby. I was glad when they left an hour later. I hoped that would be the end of my dealings with them.

However, they appeared again the next day, and again the following day. Each visit was accompanied by more baby gifts that we really didn’t need. I tried to stay polite, but I admit I was baffled by their actions. Weren’t we not speaking? Wasn’t it working well for all parties involved?

A year and a half later, we’re still speaking with them. We generally see my father once or twice a month, where we discuss safe topics like Cordy’s growth and her favorite toys. I bite my lip and endure constant comments about how much she looks and acts like my father did as a child. (Um, I look like him, so therefore she looks like ME!) I also nod my head and smile when he gives us bad parenting advice, never planning to actually use said advice.

I also continue to find new and interesting excuses why we don’t need their help as babysitters. The truth is, I don’t trust my father alone around Cordelia. Many years ago, I was “kidnapped” by my father when my mom told him she wanted a divorce. It lasted a short time, and ended when she promised him anything to get him to bring me back. Even though it’s irrational, I still have this fear that, if left alone with her, he will take Cordelia away from me to punish me and my mother. I could never risk losing her.

Why do I keep putting myself through this hell? Why do I not just tell him once and for all to fuck off and be done with it? I don’t know. I guess I’m just the better person. While I have not and will probably never forgive him for past transgressions (this post really is only a small sampling of the stories I could tell), I feel like he does have some right to know his grandchild, and she should know him too. There’s little to no chance I’ll ever trust him fully, but if I don’t at least give him some chance then I’m no better than him.

Besides, while it’s stressful to deal with this, it would be even more of a pain to deal with the alternative. He knows where we live, he knows our phone number. If I did tell him off, I would live always wondering when he was going to call or show up next to make our lives miserable. Better to just meet him halfway so that everybody can sleep well at night.