but nothing else:
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
22 December, 2008
16 December, 2008
When Families Fall Apart...
It's the holiday season again, the second year that my family has gathered without the presence of my youngest brother, his wife and their two little girls. Truth be told, no one in the family except my dad has actually even seen the youngest of their two girls, who was born last December. As she is opening the presents on her first birthday and exploring this Christmas with a sense of awareness, our family will not be welcome. My brother has not spoken to any of us since last October. He did not even tell his own family that his wife was expecting another baby.
I try not to let it get under my skin, but my brothers and I went through a lot together as children, and I always considered myself to be very close to them. After we were adults, my youngest brother and I grew even closer. He spent a great deal of his time at our apartment after my husband and I got married. He came over to play games with us and have dinner. He brought his girlfriends around. We had a really great relationship. Then he met Tierney, the woman who would one day become his wife.
She and my sister are the same age, about five years younger than my brother. They were in the same grade at school together, and my sister hated her from the start. I, on the other hand, very rarely form an opinion about someone until I meet them myself. Because of her crappy relationship with my sister at school, my brother's wife was afraid to meet our family. She assumed that because my sister and she didn't get along at school that everyone would hate her. That was the first indication that she was a little insecure... So she and my brother dated for nearly a year before she finally found the bravery to come around. Oddly, my mother fell in love with her, but the feeling was never mutual. Tierney obviously harbored a lot of anxiety and insecurity from her relationship with my sister, even after she and my sister set their differences aside and became friends. Tierney always felt like my mom was interfering in her relationship and life, telling her how to live, think, etc... Who knows. Maybe my mom was doing that unconsciously. She's always had a habit of trying to provide solutions to everyone's life, and more often than not she offers that advice without being asked. So began the early tensions between the two of them.
Then while she was pregnant with my niece, my sister began dating Tierney's brother. The four of them became inseparable as far as couples go. After about two years on and off, my sister and her boyfriend broke up and she started seeing someone else. Tierney's brother wasn't ready to let go, so he came over to my parents' home on New Year's Day in 2007, drug my sister out of the basement apartment and basically kicked her down the driveway.
My mother called the police. Within minutes of the police showing up at Tierney's parents' home looking for her brother, they were on the phone to my mother telling her that if she pressed charges she would never see her granddaughter again. My brother told her she would never see him again either. Months later he would tell me that Tierney's brother was his family, and one didn't mess with family, but what about his baby sister? "She got what she deserved..."
I know that my mother and sister aren't perfect. No one is. My brother isn't perfect either. He's got one hell of a temper and a major superiority complex. He's proud and stubborn and will never admit that he is wrong. Two days after my mother apologized to him and tried to make things right, I ran into my brother at the grocery store and he told me that if she would just apologize, he'd let her see her granddaughter again... She had already apologized, but that wasn't good enough for him.
No one in our family talks to him anymore. My dad has sided with my mom, and rightly so. He has always been good when it came to respecting our mother, and he more or less feels like my brother is a lost cause. The thing is, my mother has become a different person since all of this happens. She and I used to talk at least twice a week, but now she will barely even talk for more than a minute if I call her on the phone. The only time she does want to talk to me is in the middle of the night after she's been drinking. Then all she does is cry about how unfair it is that she doesn't even know her own granddaughters.
Now it's coming up on the holidays again. We gather every year at Yule, but last Yule was incredibly depressing. Even though the only people missing were my brother and his wife, it felt so empty. I'm sure this year will be no different.
The worst part is, I miss my brother. He used to be such a good-hearted and loving person, and now any time I've run into him, he seems like someone else. Someone angry, bitter and full of rage. I've tried talking to him, but it always turns into a disagreement about our mother and she deserves.
I very rarely long to go back in time, but sometimes I wish I could go back to the time and place when my brother was still a good person and relive it just so I know I wasn't imagining that time. The worst part is, I used to like my sister-in-law, despite all of her insecurities and paranoid delusions. Now, whenever I think about her it just makes me feel like the Incredible Hulk.
I try not to let it get under my skin, but my brothers and I went through a lot together as children, and I always considered myself to be very close to them. After we were adults, my youngest brother and I grew even closer. He spent a great deal of his time at our apartment after my husband and I got married. He came over to play games with us and have dinner. He brought his girlfriends around. We had a really great relationship. Then he met Tierney, the woman who would one day become his wife.
She and my sister are the same age, about five years younger than my brother. They were in the same grade at school together, and my sister hated her from the start. I, on the other hand, very rarely form an opinion about someone until I meet them myself. Because of her crappy relationship with my sister at school, my brother's wife was afraid to meet our family. She assumed that because my sister and she didn't get along at school that everyone would hate her. That was the first indication that she was a little insecure... So she and my brother dated for nearly a year before she finally found the bravery to come around. Oddly, my mother fell in love with her, but the feeling was never mutual. Tierney obviously harbored a lot of anxiety and insecurity from her relationship with my sister, even after she and my sister set their differences aside and became friends. Tierney always felt like my mom was interfering in her relationship and life, telling her how to live, think, etc... Who knows. Maybe my mom was doing that unconsciously. She's always had a habit of trying to provide solutions to everyone's life, and more often than not she offers that advice without being asked. So began the early tensions between the two of them.
Then while she was pregnant with my niece, my sister began dating Tierney's brother. The four of them became inseparable as far as couples go. After about two years on and off, my sister and her boyfriend broke up and she started seeing someone else. Tierney's brother wasn't ready to let go, so he came over to my parents' home on New Year's Day in 2007, drug my sister out of the basement apartment and basically kicked her down the driveway.
My mother called the police. Within minutes of the police showing up at Tierney's parents' home looking for her brother, they were on the phone to my mother telling her that if she pressed charges she would never see her granddaughter again. My brother told her she would never see him again either. Months later he would tell me that Tierney's brother was his family, and one didn't mess with family, but what about his baby sister? "She got what she deserved..."
I know that my mother and sister aren't perfect. No one is. My brother isn't perfect either. He's got one hell of a temper and a major superiority complex. He's proud and stubborn and will never admit that he is wrong. Two days after my mother apologized to him and tried to make things right, I ran into my brother at the grocery store and he told me that if she would just apologize, he'd let her see her granddaughter again... She had already apologized, but that wasn't good enough for him.
No one in our family talks to him anymore. My dad has sided with my mom, and rightly so. He has always been good when it came to respecting our mother, and he more or less feels like my brother is a lost cause. The thing is, my mother has become a different person since all of this happens. She and I used to talk at least twice a week, but now she will barely even talk for more than a minute if I call her on the phone. The only time she does want to talk to me is in the middle of the night after she's been drinking. Then all she does is cry about how unfair it is that she doesn't even know her own granddaughters.
Now it's coming up on the holidays again. We gather every year at Yule, but last Yule was incredibly depressing. Even though the only people missing were my brother and his wife, it felt so empty. I'm sure this year will be no different.
The worst part is, I miss my brother. He used to be such a good-hearted and loving person, and now any time I've run into him, he seems like someone else. Someone angry, bitter and full of rage. I've tried talking to him, but it always turns into a disagreement about our mother and she deserves.
I very rarely long to go back in time, but sometimes I wish I could go back to the time and place when my brother was still a good person and relive it just so I know I wasn't imagining that time. The worst part is, I used to like my sister-in-law, despite all of her insecurities and paranoid delusions. Now, whenever I think about her it just makes me feel like the Incredible Hulk.
04 December, 2008
Santa Claus is Watching You...
If you don't believe me, ask Ray Stevens. He made an entire video about it back in the day.
Though I have very little to show for it, I am in the holiday mood. I am hoping to have my tree and decorations up this weekend and I've already started baking even though I'm not going to be eating a lot of those nummy cookies this year. There are just sixteen days until Solstice, and twenty until Christmas day. The next two weeks for me and just about everyone else on the planet are going to be incredibly busy!
As many of you know, I am one of the luckiest employed people in the world due to the fact that for the past couple of months I have worked almost exclusively on holiday terms for Mahalo. I was on here digging up crazy costumes and foraging for homemade tombstone how tos before Halloween. Then in the weeks building up to Thanksgiving, I was neck deep in delectable recipes and other turkey-day activities. I am now swimming merrily through the winter holiday season playing dreidel and winning all the Hanukkah gelt. When I'm not prepping for Hanukkah, I'm building snowmen and flipping through the never ending collection of phenomenal holiday baking recipes on Mahalo. I even spent some time learning about Kwanzaa the other day.
I've had the pleasure of creating and updating some pretty phenomenal pages, so I wanted to take a moment to share some of them with you.
For the environmentally conscious, here is a phenomenal page I updated yesterday on having a Green Christmas. If you check the links at the bottom of the left-hand guide note, there are even more fun Green pages.
For the gamer in everyone, here is a page I built today that contains some of the best online Christmas games on the net: Online Christmas Games.
This is only a short stub of a page, but it is by far my favorite page of the week. The Christmas dialer is an online site that you can plug the phone number of your favorite kid into so they can get a free telephone call from Santa Claus before the holidays. I will tell you, I tested this out personally and never have I seen a more excited three year old than I did when my three year old niece was over on Monday and gushing about her personal call from the big guy in the red suit.
After you're done hooking up with Santa, be sure to check out some of the phenomenal bloggers in my sidebar, like Just Nikki, Jae's Rants, Salt and Lemonade, and of course, everyone wants to know what Neil Gaiman and Holly Black are up to, so check out their blogs too.
Though I have very little to show for it, I am in the holiday mood. I am hoping to have my tree and decorations up this weekend and I've already started baking even though I'm not going to be eating a lot of those nummy cookies this year. There are just sixteen days until Solstice, and twenty until Christmas day. The next two weeks for me and just about everyone else on the planet are going to be incredibly busy!
As many of you know, I am one of the luckiest employed people in the world due to the fact that for the past couple of months I have worked almost exclusively on holiday terms for Mahalo. I was on here digging up crazy costumes and foraging for homemade tombstone how tos before Halloween. Then in the weeks building up to Thanksgiving, I was neck deep in delectable recipes and other turkey-day activities. I am now swimming merrily through the winter holiday season playing dreidel and winning all the Hanukkah gelt. When I'm not prepping for Hanukkah, I'm building snowmen and flipping through the never ending collection of phenomenal holiday baking recipes on Mahalo. I even spent some time learning about Kwanzaa the other day.
I've had the pleasure of creating and updating some pretty phenomenal pages, so I wanted to take a moment to share some of them with you.
For the environmentally conscious, here is a phenomenal page I updated yesterday on having a Green Christmas. If you check the links at the bottom of the left-hand guide note, there are even more fun Green pages.
For the gamer in everyone, here is a page I built today that contains some of the best online Christmas games on the net: Online Christmas Games.
This is only a short stub of a page, but it is by far my favorite page of the week. The Christmas dialer is an online site that you can plug the phone number of your favorite kid into so they can get a free telephone call from Santa Claus before the holidays. I will tell you, I tested this out personally and never have I seen a more excited three year old than I did when my three year old niece was over on Monday and gushing about her personal call from the big guy in the red suit.
After you're done hooking up with Santa, be sure to check out some of the phenomenal bloggers in my sidebar, like Just Nikki, Jae's Rants, Salt and Lemonade, and of course, everyone wants to know what Neil Gaiman and Holly Black are up to, so check out their blogs too.
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