“There is a black sheep in every flock”
I was such a disappointment to my parents: just a whirlwind of energy and stubbornness and opinions and questions. They never expected that kind of daughter… I actually think I shocked them with my behavior, my way of thinking, my outlook on things. As if girls like me don’t really exist. Or if they do, they belong in other families. Families you whisper about in the neighborhood or schoolyard because one their kids are always in trouble.
Years later, comparing notes with friends, I realized just how tame I was. I can’t imagine my parents dealing with some of the debauchery I’ve heard about my peers getting away with.
I had a dream about my mom the other night. We were just talking about normal stuff. I haven’t talked to my mom in a long time. And I don’t think we’ve ever had an actual woman to woman conversation. She hardly ever calls me. I wasn’t the daughter she intended to raise. I turned out all wrong.
When I used to talk to her, she expressed concern about my son and his Crohn’s disease, but she never calls him either. He’s eighteen now. It’s not like he can’t talk. The family had a big drama about 12 years ago when he got a nasty rug burn courtesy of my 23 year-old brother. So I told my family that I would bring Dylan for his visits.
Throughout the following summer, I received several hateful letters from Mom and my brother’s wife. And other than the hate mail campaign, no one made any effort to contact me. No one asked to see my son. Suddenly he wasn’t a person, he wasn’t part of the family, he was a point of contention. He was the black sheep’s son, and to get to him, well, you had to go through the black sheep.
My father, while not a genius, is a cruel man. And instead of calling me like a normal person, he waited for Alabama’s Legislature to pass a Grandparents Visitation Law, which usually concerns only custody issues. For my dad, the ultimate control freak, this was the answer. He could just buy his way around me with a lawyer and sue me… for visitation with my 7-year old son.
I’ll never forget the day I pulled that letter out of the mailbox. I read it three times before I comprehended what it meant. I have never been as angry as I was at that moment. To make a long story short, I consulted an attorney and settled it by letting my son make the decision. He started to have weekend visits, sometimes spending the night. I would be depressed the entire time he was gone. Everything he would tell me after the visits with my parents only reinforced my theories that they are completely nuts. W
hen he was 8, he complained that they treated him like he was a baby. He hated that. I guess they were trying to re-live a time they missed. He got tired of them quickly and the more time passed, the less he wanted to visit. And because my son had the final say, not some judge, he didn’t have to see them if he didn’t want to. And he didn’t want to.
During a Christmas visit with my cousin a couple of years ago, she made a comment on how much my father controls my mother, and how my aunts would comment on it. I started to wonder about my mother, who was always a quiet woman, without many opinions of her own. Unless she was afraid to express them. To question my father was an invitation to argue. Now, I am starting to see that she may be a victim of my father, only in a different way than my brother and I were. No wonder I get the feeling she is sneaking around if she does call me.
I have conflicting feelings now, with this realization: sympathy for my mother, anger that she sat quietly by and did nothing, and confusion… because there were times when she was verbally abusive herself. Was she just passing on the pain? Was she so young and unprepared that she didn’t know how to handle motherhood? Probably. She had me at age 20, after two years of marriage. I am pretty sure I was a surprise, and not a welcome one.
The Grandparents Visitation Law eventually died, like many other ill-conceived ideas. My parents have absolutely no contact with their grandson. If they have to talk to me, the black sheep, I guess they’d rather grow old alone. As strange as it is, that is their choice. And also their loss. I sometimes wonder if my mom misses me… and all the years we didn’t even talk. I wonder if she looks at my dad and hates him. Or if she just came to accept it. And if I ever know the answer, would it make any difference?
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