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july 12, 2000. Wedding blues part 3:
in our last installment, my grandmother had reacted to the rejection of her proposal badly. If you'll recall, this proposal involved inviting my uncle's very ex-lover. words like "homophobe" were bandied about rather freely.
I was eating Cheerios this morning when my mom joined me at the table, looking rather the worse for wear. She told me she couldn't sleep the night before, because - get this - she just found out from Cousin A that Cousin B had been asked to bring the ex-lover as a favour to my grandmother. Despite telling her that the man isn't welcome several times in no uncertain terms, she was now scheming to bring him in by the back door.
My mom...has a few issues. One of those issues is that her mother seems to lavish a great deal of attention & care on her brothers while giving her a comparatively small share of this love. Objectively, I can state for the record that my mom does get a certain amount of attention; the difference is that she is in a stable, happy marriage. Unlike most of her brothers, she doesn't flush away relationships every 5 years and has never had to more back into the basement for nurturing. Be that as it may. My mom has nurturing issues, and she's really hurt by my grandmother's decision to champion this zero no matter how much my mother's feelings are hurt.
My grandparents visited the house today. As of breakfast, my mom was getting ready to thrash this out for good. If it meant that my grandparents would choose this zero over the wedding, then so be it. I didn't want to leave, but I had to go to stupid work and leave my mom alone to fret. I knew how serious this was getting; how painful for everyone. Someone had to back down. I just didn't know where the chips would fall. So I fretted - at work - and tried to blank my mind. There was nothing I could do except be ready to mop up the blood. (On the way home I stopped for personalized cheering up snacks, just in case such a thing became necessary. I felt very grown up.)
Fortunately, and much like the Cuban Missile Crisis, things had pretty much returned to normal by the time I got home. My grandmother reportedly denied all scheming, conceding that "she'd heard about all the rejections I was getting & wanted to fill the hall with good people." Hah. A graceful out, except that she called Cousin A a "lying bitch" which spoils it a bit. (In passing, I can't imagine anyone who deserves that title less than my mom's cousin. It's almost laughable, if it wasn't so fucked up.)
It could've been a lot worse. I'm glad that we got off so lightly. It just proves the wisdom of Gordan Korman: "Never worry about what you can't avoid."
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One thing about this evening is worth mentioning: we went to pick up one of the 2 spice racks that has been purchased on our behalf at the local Bay. Boy, was I ever shocked to find out that it was from Wilson & her boy...less than a week after I got the rejection (and consequently got all angry but that's a whole other [censored] story.) We took an extremely candid polaroid of the two of us playing with the jars to send along with the thank you note - so candid that I don't even want to scan it in. (Sometimes when I say candid, I mean homely. Make a note for later.)
I feel like a heel. I spent the whole week grousing about her to any one who'd listen and all the while a spice rack was waiting to give me a comeuppance. Crap.
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