Mom's Surprise Visit

I suppose it wasn't as bad as its potential.

She called from a nearby truck stop and asked for directions. My dear spouse, not knowing what else to do, gave her the directions.

In retrospect, the visit was simply to show off her new toy. This time a new vehicle. She wanted attention and affirmation. It's a long-standing pattern I've fathomed just now. It's a pervasive theme, in fact; I'm dumbstruck it's taken me this long to see what was in front of me all along.

In a perverse way, it's soothing to know that because I, as a person, don't exist to her she'll not likely be back until the next time she has some special toy. While it is possible that she'll seek attention for other things, I've learned how not to give encouraging attention.

She's found another dear, sweet family member on whom to attach herself. This lovely lady has physical and emotional abuse in her background, and I worry about her. She's a grown woman, though, and has a husband I highly respect, so hopefully she'll be able to navigate her way through.

I fear a family funeral is in the near future. Several family members aren't doing well. I've not done a lot of thinking about how I'll handle these sad events. I very much want to show appropriate respect and love for my loved ones who die. There is, of course, the great potential that she won't bother to tell me until well the event. If this happens, I'll deal with it as best I can.

"White Indians don't get any money."

It's what a young Cherokee girl told my young son when he told her that we have a Cherokee ancestor. He was appropriately puzzled by the response.

Undoubtedly my son looking more Swedish than Cherokee is at least part of the reason for her response. Our Cherokee ancestor is four generations back. His mother was Cherokee, his father, a white man. Born just after the turn of the last century, as a mixed-race child he was looked down upon. He was given to a white family to raise; he was not treated well, and left home as a boy to find "his people". He spent much of his youth looking for his family, white and Indian, to no avail.

The same desire for belonging the young boy sought more than a hundred years ago, his great, great, grandson still seeks. Thankfully, my son wasn't discouraged by the odd response to his attempt at friendliness and commonality with a potential friend.

Walking A Tightrope

Being an adult child of a narcissist (ACON) with children is a lot like walking a tightrope. Much of the experience I would draw up on how to parent, I have to seriously question and often throw out. So many seemingly simple things like how to hold a birthday party, or even more serious things like what is appropriate behaviour for a child in public.

It's even struggling with things like breakfast. When I was a child, breakfast was seen as a hassle. It was something done only for me and it was obvious it was a pain. Breakfast was either a chocolate poptart on a chocolate instant breakfast (made with premixed powder and milk). By the time I was 8 or 9, I was making my own breakfast usually after my parents left for work. This experience left me feeling that I should always make breakfast for my children, that to do anything else was selfish and wrong. It's taken a while for me to see that it's not terrible for my children to pour themselves a bowl of cereal once in a while, or for my child who enjoys cooking to be given the freedom to be the one to make breakfast.

The hardest of all, though, is the whole issue of boundaries. Being wary of selfishness, I have difficulty identifying when it's OK for me to say no. I don't want to expect their lives to fulfill my needs, at the same time, I don't want to spoil them into thinking the world is all about them either. It feels like I'm walking a tightrope.

Sometimes I wonder if it's as common for people with narcissistic behaviours to skip generations as it is to inherit them directly.

The Narcissistic Family

This book hit the nail on the head in so many ways. Much underlining was involved. Some things are just too uncanny to believe.

I *Can't* Relate To That

I was sitting in Sunday School today when a mother shared her concerns, and a prayer request, for her son in boot camp. The class's teacher, a man, did a good job of empathizing and then assuring her that her son would be OK. I wasn't ready for what happened next, although there really was no surprise. The teacher commented that being a mother, her concern for her son was understandable. The whole class verbally agreed.

It was then that I knew I was in a room full of people with whom I shared an entirely different experience of "family". It was a type of loneliness I've never felt before. In the same way their experience was so foreign to me, so mine would be to them. In "Birth of A Self in Adulthood", there is a chapter where McArthur describes reinitiating or maintaining a relationship with what she calls an "enmeshed parent". I've not researched McArthur's background, but I'd guess the parents she describes in the book are not like hers. She states it's natural for adult children of "enmeshed parents" to desire a relationship with the parent(s). Where I think McArthur misses the boat is the belief that such a relationship can exist with the enmeshed parent. Where a relationship is one-way and is based primarily on a shared dysfunctional history, learning techniques may allow these adult children to manage some sort of what McArthur herself describes as a superficial relationship. Every time I consider this, I can't escape coming back to the same question: why bother putting so much effort into pursuing a superficial relationship with a person simply because they were one's parent?

Letters From Home

I have no idea who kept them or how they survived so long, but a few days ago I found letters that my mother sent to me while I was at summer camp. They were filed away in a folder labeled "Personal Papers". Oh, the irony.

It's only now that I have some inkling why my counselor and the other campers found them so weird. You see, they were typed: the addresses on the envelope, the letter itself, everything. On some even the "signature" was typewritten. Perhaps that wouldn't be so strange now, but these letters are from a time long before the advent of the personal computer. They weren't just typed, either, on the trusty old mechanical typewriter in the closet -- you know, the one with a tendency to drop an occasional 'e'? These letters were quite obviously typed on good quality, white typewriter paper on a professional electric typewriter and mailed in a standard #10 white envelope. Picture a legal document, block paragraphs, complete with the initials of the person who typed the document in lower case, followed by a colon, and then the initials of the author in upper case.

The letters themselves tersely detailed my parents' activities. There was the obligatory sentence about hoping I was enjoying myself. Thankfully, at the time, I didn't see at the time just how completely impersonal they were. They were definitely odd, and not in a cute way.

It's times like these that I still wonder about people who watched this bizarre family. I suppose it would be very difficult for anyone on the outside to know just how odd our lives really were. And, let's face it, weird letters from home while at summer camp don't a problem make.

It

When my grandmother would speak of one of her nieces, she always had to tell me that the parents would tell the girl how special she was because they chose her. It bothered my grandmother a lot. I don't know whether it was on grounds of principle or being competitive, but it obviously put a bee in her bonnet.

I was exactly the opposite of this girl. I was the surprise child that changes everything about my parents' lives, and not necessarily for the better. At times I've wondered if I was someone's idea of a plan to keep my father from being drafted and sent to Vietnam. At others, if I was a hook to cement a potential marriage. I've thrown those ideas out. It was the look in my mother's eyes when she told me she knew how to take care of "it". There was a pause and then she returned to the present. The next sentence was something to the effect of, "But, now I'm glad everything turned out the way it did." It wasn't convincing.

This is not meant as a discussion of abortion. I don't want to go there. For the record, I believe abortion is wrong. Still there are times I wonder if it wouldn't have been a better idea in my case. She didn't want a kid, wasn't prepared for a kid, and didn't have a good father-figure to help her nurture a kid. It feels weird knowing I truly was a problem from the first, knowledge of me was considered very bad news. I suppose it would be different had I been raised by a mother who soon discovered her own motherly side and cherished being a mom. That didn't happen.

One phone call that went particularly badly had her sniping at me that she had friends, and she would watch her friends' children and how she could see they enjoyed spending time with their parents and doing things together, and how she didn't have that. And, she doesn't. The thought of getting together with my mother and "doing something" brings anxiety and revulsion. There's simply no enjoyment there. How could there be? The woman's known me 40-some years and has no idea who I am.

Thankfully, I didn't think to ask her if possibly *I* had felt the same way when I was a child watching other mothers with their children. But my mother would never understand this. She saw that I was fed, clothed, and had lots of nice things. To her, these are the things of a Good Mother. She doesn't see that what was missing was the specialness, the knowledge that my parents wanted *me* in their lives. It goes beyond simply wanting a child, to wanting to discover who your child is.

I've heard of a theory that says we all have an emotional bank account. People's actions deposit or withdraw on that account. My mother added precious little to my account; my father practically nothing (unless I was doing what he wanted). They had very little to withdraw before they were overdrawn.

A Tale of Two Deaths

It's an odd thing, the difference between how I felt when my n father died and when my father-in-law died. Neither man professed any real interested in their Creator, although my father often cursed God. I was there when both died, both of cancers.

My father-in-law died, with all his children, his adult grandchildren, and the spouses there. Out of town family members had stayed in contact daily with local family and drove through the night to be with him before he died. It wasn't a conflict-free time, but we all made our way through it, still caring for one another.

While sitting at the foot of my father-in-laws bed, listening to him struggle to breathe, I felt an amazing *need* to pray. It's not something I can easily describe. It was a deep, urgent, feeling that I must pray. So I did. I prayed in a way that day, pleading and praising like I never had before, or since. I could feel an amazing spiritual battle happening around me, but I had no idea how or why. It was only months later that I was told a family member there, who was taking a lead role in caring for my father-in-law, had been studying and practicing shamanic rituals. She'd been working with my father-in-law with special stones and other objects. I believe this was the reason my spirit felt so burdened to pray.

When he died, I was sitting next to his bed, holding his and my mother-in-law's hands, listening to her share loving family memories.

When my father died, my mother and I were there: she asleep after exhausting herself attempting to meet the demands of my n father, I by his bedside. I advocated for him, for pain management and other comfort issues. I watched and listened to him die.

The scene was so different from that of my father-in-law. There was no spirit of family, no shared comfort in a time of distress. It was just me, a sleeping mother and a dying father. And the machines.

I tried to talk to God, but there was nothing there, only a stagnancy that defies description. I was not without God presence, but there was no call to pray, no spiritual battle. My father's impregnable fortress of narcissism had held strong. I couldn't even muster a struggle to find sadness. He had made his choice.

My mother awoke just before his end came. As he struggled for breath, panic-stricken she urged him to keep breathing. Before long the time came that I needed to urge her to let him go. He died with his anxious wife and stoic daughter at his bedside.

Now, years later, after typing all this, I see that both deaths are a perfect summation of the lives that preceded them. My father-in-law knew he was far from perfect, but he had done his best to be a loving husband and father. He died surrounded by his imperfect family, doing its best to make it through a difficult time. My father was perfect in his own mind. He'd done all he could to make the world around him serve him. In his death he was surrounded by the anxiety and cold distance he had so well cultivated. The world provided its service to him one last time and then it was finished.

Stolen Childhood

That sounds harsh. It is. Yet more and more, as I reflect on my childhood, I see a big hole that normally would be filled with parental love.

As I think of what a stolen childhood is, my first thoughts go to children in impoverished areas. Their lives are plagued by not enough of life's necessities, perhaps not even enough to sustain life itself. Their childhoods are spent working to get food, or clean water, or shelter, or to survive without them. When I think of a stolen childhood in these terms, I had more than enough.

But...

Years ago when I was moving into my first house, I spent a day papering the kitchen cupboards with a good friend and my mother. Having company wasn't my idea, but that's the way it turned out. It also turned out that my good friend, M, didn't know that my mother was going to be there. M's mother had died two years earlier. Later, M she told me she was uncomfortable with my mother being there. It reminded her that she didn't have a mother anymore.

M's perspective surprised me. M had been very close to her mother. There was obviously a very special bond there. M might not physically have a mother any longer, but she carried her mother's love in her heart. I physically still had a mother, but love was a missing element of the relationship. To me, there was precious little value in having a mother. M had had a Mom; I had a biological parent. I'd gladly trade the latter for the former.

Well-worn as it is: "it is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all" rings so true here.

OK, so what?

For human beings, life's necessities are more than simply the food, water and shelter that animals require. Humans need love. One morning at a Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) meeting one of the discussion questions was: Did your parents give you unconditional love? Everyone, except me, answered in the affirmative. The follow-up question assumed unconditional love as a given.

In fact, I'm not sure there is such a thing as conditional love, but that's another entry.

Approval was the substitute for love in my FOO. Approval was doled out, sometimes lavishly, when I (meaning my behaviour) was good and removed when I was bad. I was perceived in terms of my behaviour. My childhood was spent working to gain my parents' love, to be "good enough", to give my parents enough of what they demanded. My childhood was spent trying to fill a bottomless pit.

No wonder when I see children, I feel sad for them. Maybe childhood doesn't have to be such a hard thing.

The Perfect Family

I was raised to believe we had The Perfect Family. My parents were proud to think of themselves as ahead of their time. Smaller foreign car, only one child, both parents employed full-time, latch-key kid -- all these were unusual things in the 1970's. Oh, and the parents didn't let the needs of their child get in the way of what they wanted. I was quite adept at spending hours sitting in a pub/bar or a fine restaurant, reading, whilst my parents enjoyed their grown-up pleasures.

From the outside, We Looked Great. Whether people saw us only occasionally or all the time, the image we portrayed was that of an ideal family. All the world's a stage, eh? It was for us. It's a common thing in families with n parents, but I'm still amazed just how our phony façade fooled so many people. We deserve Lifetime Achievement Oscars!

Sometimes I wonder, though. A few people dared to fly under the radar after getting a glimpse at reality. I can't help but be thankful to the school teacher neighbor who learned that I hadn't been scheduled in AP classes and took it upon himself to get my class schedule changed. It was wonderful to be reminded that someone did see me. What was it that allowed some people to see beyond the façade?

Yet even today, nearly six years after my father died, I hear stories of our Perfect Family. Some legends just never die.

Narcissist at the Movies

My kids and I watched Fiddler on the Roof yesterday. It's one of my favourites. I'll be humming and singing selections from it for days.

I don't remember when I first watched Fiddler on the Roof, but I do remember the first time I watched other movies. Like my first James Bond flick in a theatre. I was 7. Much of it frightened me. It wasn't until later Bond movies that other parts made me intensely uncomfortable.

It shouldn't be surprising that my n father would have no idea that it was inappropriate. Just like he had no idea that it was inappropriate to pose his then 5 year-old daughter nude with a Playboy magazine.

What about The Other Parent?

I'm not trying to rake anyone over coals, but how does the other parent stand by and put up with this sort of stuff? I know just how nasty the narcissist is, and just how extreme their rage and manipulation can be, but.....isn't there a line somewhere? Or is the ability of the narcissist to pour on the charm, or skillfully apply the invalidation just too much? Interacting with a narcissist can definitely be crazy-making.

What is it that allows the narcissist to get away with it?

All In The Family

OK. I admit it. I am obsessed with this whole Mother's Day thing. It's the lack of understanding. Call it a cultural thing. Or, maybe a God thing.

Over and above the whole Mother's-Day-Thing, there are the news reports.

A woman is attacked by a pelican while swimming -- traveling to be out of town on Mother's Day because being in church on a day dedicated to honoring mothers, so close after her own mother's death would be too hard.

On the evening news, an interview with a man from Picher, Oklahoma describes how he, his wife, daughter and two grandbabies huddled in a closet of their house while a tornado moved the same house 70 feet. From his description, it's clear the value he places on his family, especially the little ones.

I must be from Mars.

Real Parenting

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

Genesis 3:21

It's one of my favourite verses. Even leaving aside the deep theological issues, this is a picture of real parenting at work. Adam and his wife blew it. Big time. (And, just in case you think I'm casting stones, I have no doubt that in the same situation I would have done no better.) They deserved the severest of consequences. Yet God, a loving God, clothed his children even as he sent then from the garden. By all rights, God could have taken an attitude of "you made your bed, now lie in it", but He didn't. God provided for His people.

With amazement I watch as God provides for His people still today. As I strive to learn and heal from the bumps and bruises of life, God brings exactly what I need into my life. It's comforting to receive some real parenting.

I still don't understand the whole principle of Mother's Day. But as I contemplate the goodness of God and the loving kindless He's shown me, maybe I can get closer to understaning the celebration of a real parent.

On Being Invisible

I was just sitting here contemplating if and how it feels having my in-laws around compared to being around my narcissistic parents. I found myself wondering if I feel invisible.

I don't have an answer. It occurs to me that there may be degrees of invisibility. For some reason, the thought of that makes me uneasy. I don't suppose it should be a surprise that such things likely occur on a continuum. I guess I chalk it up to experiencing such complete invisibility when it came to my family, that the thought of being at all invisible is so unpleasant.

One of the topics of discussion these past few days has been how my fun/tacky theme for the gathering would have been the impetus for my (now deceased) mother-in-law to give me all sorts of similarly themed gifts for birthdays and Christmas. That would have been just like her. Invisibility was never an issue with her. It's something that I liked, but also something that at times made me uncomfortable. There was no blending into the background, no just sitting and watching. She was good at making sure that everyone was always involved.

So, I'm the hostess for this get-together. I'd like to think I could do half as good a job as my mother-in-law at making sure everyone is included.

I Learned A LOT From My In-Laws

I credit my in-laws for opening my eyes to the oddities of my parents. My in-laws were entirely different from what I knew parents to be. They were actually interested in the lives of their children. That's not said with sarcasm, just awe. It was amazing, odd, strange and entirely unfamiliar to sit at their kitchen table and listen to my mother-in-law ask about my spouse's childhood friends. She knew their names, their parents' names, where they lived, their interests, even their personalities. And she cared. It blew me away. It was like I'd been transported to an alternate reality.

My spouse would call my in-laws when something special happened. Job changes, promotions, a new project or a new car -- they cared about these things. They'd smile and listen. They'd take pictures. Things going on in my spouse's life was important to them. All this was so foreign.

My in-laws even cared about me. They always gave me thoughtful birthday presents. They treated me like a member of the family even before we were engaged. It took my mother nearly two years after we married to remember my spouse's name. We dated for four years before marrying. After nearly twenty years, she still can't remember when my spouse's birthday is. She doesn't have it written down anywhere. She doesn't know her two grandchildren's birthdays either.

I'm sad that I only recently gained the knowledge to understand the precious gift they gave me in showing me what loving parents are like. I wish I had understood earlier so I could have thanked them.

Family Visit: Two Days and Counting

Yes, that's right, a family visit, more precisely in-laws visiting. Eight of them. My mother-in-law kept the family together and now that she's dead, I'm impressed that we all haven't gone our separate ways and completely lost track of one another.

When it comes to *my* family...well, I don't exactly keep track, or even in touch, with them. I like it that way. Family, my family, brings to mind demands of obligation and responsibility. It means sacrificing whatever I have and/or want and do whatever is demanded of me. It means accepting that I don't matter. Given that I have challenges feeling like I matter, family gatherings have a big impact on me.

Family visits with my in-laws aren't like that. Like most people, each of them has their quirks, and we'd drive each other crazy if we spent a lot of time together. I do need time-off during the visit, but everyone seems to be OK with my quirk.

As a kid, I wished to live closer to our extended families. I idealized what it would be like to have big family gatherings around birthdays and holidays. When I've talked to my cousins about it, they say they enjoyed. Yet, when I think of family gatherings, there was a certain tension there. I don't have any idea what it's all about, but it was certainly there. It's interesting to note that my family rarely gets together anymore, even on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Do I Know You?

A dear friend said this to me years ago. Apparently I'd "disappeared". Rather than disappearing, I saw it as leaving her alone or letting her get on with her life. Keeping in touch is a foreign thing.

Recently I moved close to grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I did let them know I was nearby and that my address was temporary. I just never let them know when I moved into my permanent address. It's partly intentional and partly not.

Announcing that I'd moved nearby felt strange enough, I can't imagine writing or calling and saying I was coming for a visit. It seems like such an imposition.

Come to think of it, the whole idea of keeping in touch seems like an imposition. Phoning people seems like an intrusion. In truth, people phoning me can feel very much like an intrusion. I expect to be asked to do something without the option of saying no without much emotional pain and guilt trips. This brings me back up to keeping in touch being a foreign thing. Keeping in touch means obligation and loss of personal choice.

Loss of personal choice is a rat's nest, a tangled mess that I've yet to completely unravel. Personal choice implies there's a person involved. I'm still learning to be a person and all that that means.

My Momma Only Raised One Dummy...

...and, he still lives with her -- or so the irreverent saying goes. The "he" is my dad. He died nearly six years ago. I have yet to miss him.

Those may sound like the words of a monster, an unappreciative child who doesn't realize how good s/he had it. There are times I think that's me. Other times, I'm not so sure.

In no way am I qualified to say for certain, but judging by research I've done, my dad was a narcissist. He was controlling, grandiose, insecure, rage-filled, demanding, vengeful, a perfectionist and a liar. That's not to say he didn't have good qualities or that he was a monster. He was who he was and none of the rest of us existed except insomuch as how we effected him. I have no idea how he grew into what he did.

My journey to understand how being raised by a narcissistic father shaped who I am started six months ago. I've discovered a lot about myself in this short period. The discoveries have helped immensely, even while they've been painful. I am who I am, but that doesn't mean I must remain stuck here.