Ordinary Tragic Irony

Hey screenwriters. I have a story arc for you. You need a bank of ideas that you can pull from, right? Something familiar enough for people to identify with, but yet sad enough that they can think to themselves, "tragically ironic, what a pity." In order to present the irony properly, I have to give some back story. I will try to be concise, but there is a lot to wade through. This is a story about two people from the "silent generation." Just slightly older than the baby boomers, they were the one who gave birth to Gen X. My generation - the latch key kids, the slackers who created the internet, and decided to raise their kids in direct opposition to the methods of their parents.

My parents had a contentious divorce. They couldn't work out a custody arrangement, so at age 11,  I had to tearfully walk into a judge's chambers and tell a room full of strangers and my parents that I chose to live with my mom.  I mean, she was my mom, of course I would want to live with her. This is one of many defining moments of my childhood, but it was also a pivotal point for my parents. You see, my dad did not like to lose an argument. He did not take my betrayal lightly.

In the aftermath of my impulse to cling to the main female in my life, things got much worse. My mom was compulsively afraid of confrontation, and wanted to settle the divorce and get away as fast as she could. This meant that my dad was about to win a whole bunch of arguments. It was his most favorite pastime. Ex-wife gets the kids? He kept the house. This meant that on the day the divorce was finalized, My mom and my brother and I were homeless. Even though our home was right there in front of us, full of our childhood things, we didn't live there anymore.

One of my mom's friends arranged for her to get a minimum wage job at a print shop and let the three of us sleep on mattresses on the basement floor of her house. Her house was about a mile down the road and across a freeway from our childhood home. This would have meant a change in elementary schools. I was about to enter 6th grade, the pinnacle of elementary school, and I didn't want to be in a new school. On the first day of school, I grabbed my 7 year old brother by the hand and led him back to our old neighborhood. We had to be the first to arrive at the bus stop so that no one would know we didn't live in our house anymore. Within a few weeks, the stress of this situation took it's toll on me. I developed an upset stomach and had great trouble digesting food. I was tired all the time and lost hair and weight. However, I was about to switch schools anyway. By Christmas break, my mom secured government subsidized housing in the city of Columbus and we moved. These kind of places are kindly referred to as "the projects." I can share more about them another time in another story.

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One of the insults heaped on children by adults, is that adults think children won't understand what's going on. Children may not know why something is awry, but believe me, they have most of it figured out. At the time, I didn't know why I no longer lived in my own house with my possessions still inside of it. But I knew it was because my parents divorced, and I had not chosen the right parent. At least, this was the tactic my dad had chosen to deploy.

The custody arrangement meant that every other weekend would be spent at my dad's house. I didn't think of it as "my" house anymore. However, from weekend one, my dad let me know that if I would change my mind and live with him, I could come right back to living in my old bedroom full time. Why didn't I acquiesce? I don't know. Every time he said it, I bristled. What would happen to my mom if I left her? She would have nothing. I was being emotionally manipulated and while I may not have understood it, I knew it.

My dad stepped up his game. Knowing my mom's weaknesses, he decided that he would spend money on the kids when they were at his house, but he would not pay child support. In a perpetual process lasting all my youth, he and my mom fought and went to court, over and over, in a seesaw effort to get my dad to pay for the basic needs of his children. There are many other stories here too. The damage a dad can do to his children, by giving them the message that they aren't important? It is lasting. There was a second bout of homelessness and enduring poverty. My mom has never left it.

Unsurprisingly, as I was able to comprehend my situation, I had a decent amount of anger. My dad remarried, and now had two houses. That didn't sit well with me either. There were a number of years where I simply refused to go to my dad's house(s). My dad now lived in his new wife's house, while my childhood home sat empty and then was used as a rental property. But the offers from my dad never ceased. If I would come live with him, he would sell BOTH houses and buy a new one with enough bedrooms for a blended family. I stayed with my mom.

After our inner-city stint, we had another period of homelessness and a subsequent move to a kindly person's house while waiting for our name to move to number one on another "projects" application. We got into a development that was along side a set of railroad tracks, giving literal meaning to living on the wrong side of the tracks. The money situation was so bad that we were the poor people in the projects. The girls who lived near me used to make fun of my clothes - I only had two pairs of pants - and the fact that I had a blanket and newspapers taped to my windows to try to insulate my bedroom from the outside cold. Too poor to buy curtains. And maybe I need to say here that my mom was employed the whole time. So every time I hear Republicans deny the existence of the working poor, and explain how a person can make ends meet on minimum wage, I have to immediately leave, so I don't act on the urge to pull out their black heart from inside their still heaving chest.

Eventually in my later teen years I decided I wanted to have another try at a relationship with my dad. I went to him and suggested that we try to come together on more of a peer-level. I explained that I didn't need him to "father" me, because those years were past. He agreed, and we worked at finding a balance in this new relationship. Meanwhile my mom had entered into a new marriage of her own to a man who made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He moved into her apartment and I made sure my bedroom door was always locked. He was bad news, and shortly after their wedding I left home. (repeat the refrain - a story for another time...)

I worked my way through college, got married, and moved to Southern California, where I ended up having my first child. In the years that followed the birth of my daughter, my dad's behavior became increasingly erratic where she and I were concerned. He started treating me as if I were the ex-wife and my daughter was me. It was a do-over. He could lavish all of the time, money and attention on her that he never did with me. The problem was that this was a scenario he had constructed, and yet he was turning it into his reality.

The actual reality was that I was still me, and I did not appreciate what he was trying to do. I had moved as far away from Ohio as I physically could. I liked not living near the poisoned pool of my upbringing. My dad began to press me for permission to move near us. By the time I lived in Washington, he would schedule meetings with realtors to show him surrounding communities when he would come for a visit. I told him I liked our relationship the way it was - where we would see each other a few times a year with plenty of advance notice. That was my mental and emotional  comfort zone. He was free to have as many phone calls or video chats as he wanted with his grandchildren (now there were two.) He became ever more frustrated with this, stating that he needed to be near his grand-daughter on a regular basis. When he did visit, he began bribing my daughter with gifts or emotional tricks to elicit the behavior he wanted. Apparently she was born with the same bullshit detector that I had, and she began to balk when she had to interact with him. Thing were  getting kinda sticky.

Let's re-introduce my mom into this scenario. Her second husband deceased, she was living in a crumbling house in rural southwestern Ohio. She had a son with second husband, who was in his 20s and he was desperate to move out, but couldn't because my mom was dependent on him for living expenses. Through an ongoing dialog, she decided to apply for low-income senior housing here in Washington. The problem was, she was too poor to qualify. Her income level was too low to receive government housing. I didn't want her living with me, but what was there to do? She couldn't stay where she was, or she would soon be on the street. We agreed that we would co-sign for whatever housing she could get, and she moved out here with only what she could fit in her cousin's minivan, leaving everything else behind. She would stay with us while she was on the waiting list - whether that was months or years. This was the beginning of the end for my dad.

My mom moved here that June of 2007. When my dad found out she was coming, he became very upset. To his eyes, I had "chosen" my mom over him. Again. Just like in front of the judge when I was eleven. The notion that I had a choice either time, is a hilarity to me, as I view both as decisions of necessity. At any rate, this was the last time my dad voluntarily spoke to me. My mom applied to several places in the region, but the only housing agency who would even consider taking her with a co-signer ended up being a place right here in my community. Three months later a spot opened up and she moved in.

We are finally going to get to some irony. Hang in there. That November, after not speaking to me for months, my dad and his wife flew from Ohio to Seattle. At Thanksgiving. Unannounced. He let me know he was at a hotel just down the road from my house by leaving a message on my answering machine the eve before Thanksgiving. While I understand his motivation, I consider this to be emotionally unstable. My husband and I had to go to his hotel room and break this...  this escalating pattern of unsustainable behavior. It was very unpleasant. At the end of it, we suggested that if my dad wanted a relationship with is grand kids, he needed to let go of his issues with his ex-wife and chill-the-fuck-out. Or we would end things right here and now. Take a night and sleep on it.

The next day was the most uncomfortable family Thanksgiving dinner ever in the history of these United States of America. I find it best to read things in the voice of David Sedaris.

I think my dad had a mental break about that night. In the six years since that visit, he has quit his relationship with both me and his grand kids. The only time we have spoken is when I have asked him to reconsider his position, and not lose his grand children, but to no avail. My mom even took it upon herself to talk to him about it. No good. I flew to Ohio for Christmas two years ago, and asked him in person - please come out for a visit. Nope. Apparently he has told his family - my relatives - that I have turned against him. I feel great sadness that he gets more comfort from telling himself that I am a bad person, than he does by being a grandpa. My daughter is about to graduate from high school, and he has missed out on her life since she was 11. The same fucking age I was when I had to make my terrible choice. There's one instance of irony for you. My son? He doesn't even know his grandpa. He was only six when the relationship stopped.

But wait, there's more. If only my dad had stuck around, he'd have relished something. In the years that my mom has lived near me, I have come to appreciate what drove my dad nuts about her. I know that sounds harsh, but yeah, I see it now. Thank god they divorced and didn't procreate more than twice. That is half a joke, and totally true. My mom lives in a world of her own. She isn't bothered by her lack of money. She finds ways to make a dollar stretch that could give her a show on TLC. I have likened her life to that of water. Always following the path of least resistance. Always taking the shape of the container that holds it. Motherhood is not a natural state for her - if the kid is breathing - that's good enough. They will find their way. Or not. Either way, it's their life. She has other things to think about. She also happens to be one of those people who talk so much, that the person on the other end of a phone conversations sounds like they have developed a speech impediment. All they can get out are partial sentences, or the same word over and over, as they try to be a participant in the conversation. Same way when communicating in person. It wears me out. I tried to tell my dad that two years ago, but it didn't register with him.

At any rate, we come to the most recent set of events that prompted me to write this whole shitty story.

My mom has a boyfriend. Do you still use that word in your seventies? I don't see why not. The feelings are the same, right? She met him four months ago and is living with him. I met him the other day. Seems nice enough. She is ending her lease at her apartment and has moved out of my community to one that is nearby.

She has left me in a bit of a tight spot. My husband and I both need to be out of town at the same time and I need someone to stay with my son for a few school days. For the last six years I have relied on her to house sit and help me out here and there with kids and pets. Now she tells me that she will only help me out if I allow her boyfriend to sleep in our house while we are gone. I am uncomfortable with this because I don't want strange men in the house with my son while I am gone. Just a rule I have. Seems like a prudent one. I ask her - can she just spare five nights away from the new boyfriend? He can come over during the day while my son is at school. Not good enough, she said. So now she is upset that I don't trust her judgment in men. I had to bid her the best of luck in her new adventures, and turn to my contact list to try and find a house sitter. I know, these things happen. Time and season for everything. And the time and season of help from my mom is done, unless the boyfriend comes with her.

The last few days have brought a fair amount of sadness that creeps up when my mind isn't occupied. The only way to move it out of my system is to spend the last several hours typing out my rambling thoughts. I have a dad who has forgone a relationship with me and my kids out of jealousy over my mom, and a mom who has issued an ultimatum and chosen a boyfriend over me. I am feeling very unlovable at the moment. I know every family has their own brand of dysfunction, but I am wading through some dysfunctional bullshit. What gives? Are they as incredibly selfish as I think? Is it me? Choice is a weapon, the weapon of choice. I need to go meditate and a then grab a stiff drink.