alas, worthy of Lemony Snicket

Today is my sister, Mim's, birthday.  She would have been 72.  Throughout the day, have found my thoughts turning to what remains of my family - me, my two brothers, my sister-in-law, nieces & their husbands & daughters, a married nephew & one who's single.  

Still feel my heart wince, remembering that the only one who reached out - beyond a Facebook post - when Mim was hospitalized & died, after her memorial tribute, was my niece, Karen.  Not a card or a call from the others.   

People have a seriously hard time accepting that it's not personal.  None of them - even my parents  - gave any sign they considered me within the family circle.  Not that I realized it, myself.  Was pretty clueless for my first 50+ years.  I knew that my drawing breath at the same time bugged them, but took forever to realize how much.  There I was, acting as if I had a natural, legitimate place in the family, when the folks who mattered knew it wasn't so.   

From reading the growing cache of letters recently rediscovered in our houseclearing & cleaning Big Dig, no one seemed more exasperated by my presumptuous presence than my sister-in-law, Kerry.

That AH HA! came out reading the letters as a cohesive unit instead of piecemeal.  Their timeline revealed how the emotional explosion of early Summer 1997 was a cascade of KABOOM! reactions of long-buried issues, triggered by actions I innocently set in motion.

Suffice it to say, the situation involved money - never a good thing to mess around with & all too easy mess up.  It involved money & a series of unfortunate events worthy of Lemony Snicket.

An unfortunate series of events that I bungled.  It mattered not one whit that I had only the best intentions, that I truly truly truly wanted to do what seemed fair for everyone, including me & mine. Looking back, can see in crumpled hindsight that the situation was predestined to blow up in my face and set off a string of long concealed resentments & rancor none of us saw coming.     

Yes, I was a total doofus to not realize how much & how long I'd gotten under my sister-in-law's skin, how many grievances she had against me that she'd never brought out into the open, never discussed.  

 

Then, again - why would I?  For a quarter century, Kerry lectured & hectored Mike's family for avoiding conflict, lacking the guts to look them in the face & bring them up.  Call me a dork, but my blunt, outspoken sister-in-law was the last person I expected to not walk her talk.  Sheez, was I wrong!

It's been healing, reading over the recently rediscovered letters, seeing how many times she was irked or outraged by me - and never said a peep.  Time & time again, she brings up things I did that cut deep - and that she kept silent, buried in her heart.   

Our great falling out - and her later falling out with Mom over another stupefying situation - was inevitable.  It never dawned on me that what Kerry said about being being addressing sensitive issues could be so much a polar opposite to her deepest feelings.  

The collected letters are a blessing from the Universe that surfaced in my life at just the right time, when rethinking family was thrust upon me.  It feels like a mitzvah from Mim.  Her death could have brought her sibs together, started a healing.  Instead, the blessing was in giving me a space to reimagine family.    

 

Am sad that my life experience with Kerry was dogged with not one, but (clearly, from her letters) many unfortunate series of events.  Looking over the letters, what she says & how she says it, can see why we'd be at such total communications loggerheads.  Maybe someday we will be able to reimagine family in a way that can include the other.  Maybe someday she might experience me as less Lemony Snicket, more SARK. 

dear void #2

Oh my gosh - ya can't make this stuff up!  As part of another Big Dig in another part of the house, found another, smaller cache of family letters.  Amazing stuff.  February - April 1999 had some mighty interesting, wondrously revealing communications winging all over the place.  

Wishing I had a copy of a letter that Kerry references in her own April 2 e-mail to Mom.  Will let Kerry describe it:

"Then we received the letter to beat all.  Remember the one you photocopied and sent to the whole family a month or so ago, about how you only felt safe with Mike and John, addressed to everyone, me included this time.  

That letter hurt me more than I knew possible.  I never thought anywhere in my whole life that I'd made anyone feel unsafe.  

I know I've made people feel mad at me, sad, miserable, really angry, upset and hostile, but no one has ever said before that I have made them feel UNSAFE.  

"You probably never knew Kay, hospitality is one of my core values, that I have cherished since childhood.  To have you, Kay, my mother in law, tell me that I have made you feel unsafe in my company was a mind crippling blow.  A complete and utter blow."


Without realizing it, Kerry spelled out loud & clear precisely why she made Mom feel emotionally unsafe.   Mad, sad, miserable, really angry, upset & hostile - those are distressing feelings & Mom experienced distress as unsafe.   

Had I received such a group letter cold from Mom, instead of helping her write it (she ran it past me before sending, had me photocopy), would have asked her, "Mom, am stunned to hear you feel emotionally unsafe around me.  Can you share more information about what I do that leaves you feeling exposed, vulnerable?"  

Have read & reread Kerry's e-mail several times & am still as stunned as when I first printed it out for Mom.  How can she acknowledge she can make others feel miserable, really angry, upset & hostile, then turn around & feel crushed that anyone could experience her as emotionally unsafe? 

More to my here & now thinking, how does anyone communicate with such a defensive pov?  I can answer that - you're doomed.  Worth noting that while I'd thrown in the towel by April 1999, Mom never - to her dying days - gave up hope, never stopped trying.  

I don't really want an answer. 

I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. 

So good night, dear void.

 You've Got Mail

shared traits

In reading Kerry's letters & some from Mom, am struck with similar traits the two women shared that would have made it easy for them to read & respond to each other's communications, while making it tough going getting & replying to mine.

Neither seemed to show the slightest interest in developing an on-going, constructive discussion, with give & take, on substantive issues.  Consider one attempt by me to share key info with Mom, who was down with Mike & Kerry on an extended Australia visit.  I'd become frustrated that she apparently hadn't a clue who I was, that she was content with a false image of me.  Mom responded in a fury - How dare I say that she didn't know me?  She knew me better than anyone!  

She didn't ask, "What are you thinking of that I don't understand?"  ~or~  "I am stunned that you say that. What do you mean?"  Instead, Mom totally blew off what I'd written.  She was still too massively vulnerable at that point to have any interest in hearing more.  

There's a similar quality in Kerry's letters.  She is totally engaged in presenting her point of view, rather than hearing someone else's.  If something galls or wounds her, instead of asking for more info, she leaps immediately to her own defense.  

Praise be, my life was blessed by two beyond-my-control realities ~ I took after Dad, who was curious about the why & how of someone else's thinking -and- the right people came into my life at just right times.  

Dave, and then Candy, came into our lives on the very day Dad slipped from us.

Dorothy Rhodes moved in next door soon after, just as I was beginning to break away from Mim's orbit.

In time, being close to Dorothy connected me with Lach & Rob & Roger, three men who would forever change my life by taking the risk of asking if I knew that I shadow boxed, a new term for me - if someone disagreed with something I'd said, within a few moments I shifted my original statement to be in agreement with them.  

Perhaps more than any other AH HA! in my life, that one share from those three guys started a cascade of fresh insight moments.  

The strange thing wasn't that I shadow boxed in conversations, but that I'd assumed everyone did.  Tweaking your opinion to be in safe agreement with others wasn't the norm?  That was news to me! 

It's clear to me, looking over these ancient communications, why I'd drive both Kerry & Mom right up a wall.  Mom did her best not to see, not to ask for clarification, not to seek deeper awareness of a given situation.  Kerry was interested in...  actually, I don't know.  The only thing that seems clear from her letters is what feels to me like a disinterest in anyone else's opinion, take on things.

Part of me feels sorry for both Kerry & Mom, being saddled with such an irksome, challenging communicator as yours truly, always wanting to dig deeper, to root out the core cause of whatever was afoot.  Can understand why Kerry could feel that I was over-the-top rude & Mom could experience it as just plain scary, but felt okay with the other.  At least until Mom's final years, neither of them had to worry about the other looking into corners better left in shadow.  

In that, the two women shared very similar traits which put both on a communications collision course with their difficult daughter & irksome s-i-l, aka little ol' me.

 

good night, dear void

While I understand people having a tough time getting their heads around just how thoroughly I irk my sibs, there's nothing better than their own words to underscore my point.  

The following is a Feb 1999 e-mail exchange between Mike & Kerry and myself, starting off with me sharing delight that Kerry had mentioned she'd be touching base with Mom, who had scant regular contact with her kids.

Date:  Monday, February 8, 1999
Subject:  Will let Mom know you're getting in touch

It must be pretty monotonous having John & yours truly the only family members who are in any sort of consistent contact with her.  Weeks & weeks go by without a phone call, letter or e-mail from anyone else in the family.  Dullsville!

I know you appreciate Mom perhaps more than anyone else in the family, including me.  She is an awesome woman with a lot to share and learn from family & friends, something she is more open to and capable of now than ever before.  Bravo!

Date:  99-02-09
From: clanlock****** (Kerry Lockhart)

Dear Elsa.

I find your sense of responsibility in this email for your siblings contact with Mom is irksome.  I really don't think Mum needs this kind of championing her cause.  We received your letter today (snail mail) concerning your insight into the way you have related to Mum in the past.  I admired (that) letter's no frills writing style, without all the flowery prose.  It sounded sincere.

Mum does demonstrate the characteristic of second guessing people and trying to avoid conflict etc etc.  It must be a genetic thing because (others in the family) share the same trait.  Elsa, rather than apologise to Mike & co. do use this insight to the best advantage for you and Mum.

Love Kerry

 

Those two brief e-mails capture my experience with all my sibs to a T.  There I was, trying to broaden the contact Mom was having with her other children, which in Feb 1999 was basically zip; there was Kerry, first chastising me for needlessly championing Mom's cause, only to turn around in the next paragraph & confirm her experience of Mom trying to avoid conflict.  

Spot on - I wrote & shared the lack of connection with kids she adored because Mom never ever would have, not in a million years.  At least not in 1999, a year away from her first Mindwalker1910 e-mail.  

I had no intention of apologizing to my sibs for asking them to step up to the plate.  Didn't have a clue back then about the referenced insight, still don't.  

In 1999, Mom needed regular contact with her children.  I think of friends who get together every Saturday morning with their mother, the daughter who has her to after-church lunch every Sunday, the boys who split taking her out to dinner that night.  I think of a friend who lives hundreds of miles away who calls her father every Thursday, at the same time.  

That's the sort of thing I was looking for, not only for Mom but for me, too.  It would have lightened Mom's days, as well as our load.  

I am not sharing ancient e-mails as a way to get closure, but to get enlightenment.  It helps, looking at them through a lens that's gained a different perspective over the ensuing 17 years, seeking clarity rather than some iffy resolution.  

All my life - well into my 50s - was spent immersed & infused with funky family messages that often seemed contradictory, like Kerry rapping my knuckles for  championing Mom's cause then admitting in the next paragraph she'd never do that herself.  It helps seeing some of them written out.  Kerry  apparently found what I wrote in the e-mail to be sunny side up bull shit, while the letter - in which I was down on myself about my failures to interact effectively with Mom - was credible.

Maybe others reading them will see them totally differently, maybe they'll experience what Kerry wrote as making sense, that I was the one off base.  That would be valuable to hear, too.

What I can say, with complete certainty, is that it feels wondrously liberating, releasing them into cyberspace.  To steal a line from You've Got Mail - I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.

nothing more, nothing less

For all of my life, was part of a family that really & truly gave every appearance - in word & deed - that the rest did NOT consider me in any, shape or form actually part of their family.  It is a reality that makes others bristle & yield to protests of, "Surely, that wasn't so!  Your mother adored you. Look at all the things Mim did with you.  How can you say anything so...  unexpected?"

What is way harder than going through what I experienced with my parents & sibs was considerably easier than what comes at me from well-meaning but just-don't-get-it friends.  

One of my very closest friends wrote to me that she thought, "Maybe Mim is moving Peter from beyond to connect with Deev." And that thought gave her chills up her spine, which she took as a sign of spirit, perhaps Mim.

Sigh....  Of course Peter is connecting with me - there's no one left.  It's not Mim moving from the Great Beyond - Peter is in regular touch with us because John & I opened that possibility in December 2014.   There was an earlier, failed attempt at connection.  From spring 2011 through fall 2012, I did my best to get us on the same page - every other month, I sent Peter & Mim books I thought would pique their interest, each inscribed, "One book, one family" with the month & date.  Eighteen months, eight books, no word from either of them.  Finally, after sending the last book - #9 - got a card with "Thanks for the book" from Mim - we built our post office relationship, which suited us both, from that beginning.  Never did hear from Peter.  

The other day, I mentioned the term,  “The game isn’t worth the candle” & the happy reality of having gotten to the point where the outcome of having a point of contact, however shallow, with Peter is totally worth the energies needed to make it so.  And I can muster up the emotional fortitude to do that because of never pulling the wool over my own eyes.  

Do I, for a moment, believe that Peter, in his heart of hearts, considers me family in the way he did Mim?  Not for a second.  

And it’s not personal.  It just isn’t.

As clearly as I am visible right now, tomorrow could be a whole new reality.  I can work with that, put please – don’t make it what it’s not. 

I can have a relationship with Peter by accepting it is what it is.  Nothing more, nothing less.  But when people - from the most heartfelt of motives - make what that is into something more... It makes me feel hollowed out.