Bittersweet

Warning – harsher language than I normally use to follow.

And this one looks like it’s going to be a long one.

Ever have one of those vacations visiting family where you’re grateful to come home and escape the chaos, only to have a heavy heart the next day because you miss the warm, good feelings and moments you had while you were there?

Even though the family you visit is tragically dysfunctional?  And yet that dysfunction is exactly what contributes to those feelings?  Because you were needed?  Because you became a rare source of love and comfort in a world full of confusion?

Welcome to Yes Dear’s family.

In fair defense, I believe that most of the family (with some notable exceptions) do have the best intentions at heart.  Unfortunately if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, there’s going to be quite a barbecue downstairs in the afterlife.  Because just below those good intentions is a lot of selfishness, poor decision making, and all around chaos.

And it’s the most vulnerable members, the little ones that can’t defend themselves and have no say in the matter, that get stepped on and hurt.  Or worse.

Major players – Yes Dear’s mom and dad, whose health is failing, but barely takes care of themselves and nobody else really can or wants to.  Because having them around for extended lengths of time becomes an exercise in Chinese water torture.  And it’s not like they can’t take care of themselves.  They just won’t.  Not that they’re really bad people to be around, or even unpleasant, just only in small measured doses.

- Yes Dear’s sister (my SIL), and her family.  Two adult daughters (only one of them demonstrating any responsibility), and a teen daughter (17) and teen son (16).  All with varying issues.

I’ll refer to the eldest daughter here as Pelosi.  Because I think she’s a worthless cunt, pardon my French,  for reasons you will shortly understand.  The second daughter, who was gracious enough along with her husband to let us stay with her, I’ll refer to as Stevie.  She’s one of the few in the family (along with Yes Dear) that sees the dysfunction for what it is and is determined to keep her immediate family above it.

And now the kids.

JJ, Pelosi’s eldest DNA product, who just turned eight Thursday and we just celebrated his birthday.  His grandma (SIL) and grandpa have complete custody of him.   More on him later.

Mark, another of Pelosi’s DNA contributions, who is five.  His dad had full custody, but brings him to family gatherings.  His life is a little more stable currently, but the bitch that thinks she’s a mom (yes, I’m talking about Pelosi) won’t quit fucking with it.

Damn, need to watch my language more.

Bea, Stevie’s daughter, five years old.  She’s in better hands than the rest of them.  Most importantly, she has a stepdad (Stevie’s hubby) who loves her and takes care of her as one of his own.  She’s your typical little drama queen, and uses it to her maximum advantage.  Example: after being chastised for not doing what she was told, she goes to her room wailing, “i’ll just go sleep with the DOG!! Waaahh!”

The twins, both boys, identical, 2 years old.  More DNA shavings that are currently in the full custody of a serously overextended SIL and her husband (their grandparents).  My take is they should’ve been adopted out to a more stable and loving family rather than expose them to so much dysfunction, especially Pelosi.  But if they did, then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of making them giggle with raspberries on the bottom of their feet.  (Don’t worry, they were clean at the time.)

L’il Buddha, the baby, the latest genetically related contribution by Pelosi and whatever loser she spread her legs for, one year old and currently being adopted by Stevie and her hubby.  Because Pelosi left him there for a while to “get her life back on track” and never came back, except to sign over her parental rights.  Now Stevie and her hubby are raising him as theirs.  Which is wonderful, because he may be one of the few that turns out normal.

Not present (thankfully) are Yes Dear’s two brothers, who aren’t worth the bandwidth to blog about beyond a brief sentence.  There, I’m done with them.

Hopefully I didn’t lose anybody yet, ‘cause that’s a lot to get your head around.  But now you know why we try to keep at least a three-state distance between us and them.

Oops, I forgot to introduce our traveling carnival.  Starting with yours truly and Yes Dear (of course), along with PBJ, youngest daughter (18), Panda Bear (eldest daughter, 21), and her baby, the Little Guy, our grandson.

This had the potential of being a stressful trip, due to a few issues between the wife & I, and the presence of Panda Bear, who we still have a few unresolved issues with from the past.  The only reason she came was because we wanted Yes Dear’s mom & dad to see the baby (their great-grandson).  But thankfully once we got underway, there were remarkably few problems between us.  Other than a little travel fatigue-induced grumpiness towards the end, everybody got along quite well with each other.

Along with Stevie’s kids (Bea & L’il Buddha), we also had JJ and Stevie’s teen brother (who is JJ’s self-appointed Older Male Figure and protector) over for most of the visit.  We took them all swimming, lounged around the house, went to the park, played computer games, and had a good time with them.  We had a post-4th of July fireworks display over at the SIL’s place, who lives out in the country and had ample room to set off our supply of legal and some borderline legal fireworks.

And then there was JJ’s baptism.  Pardon me for going Mormon on you for a moment, but this is a sacred and momentous occasion for eight-year olds of our faith.  And the more that JJ can be fellowshipped and included in church activities, the better for him.  Because his grandparents are barely active and don’t make a lot of time for him.  And he desperately needs some extracurricular activities outside the family, along with love and stability in his life.  And Pelosi-wannabe-mom  needs to stay the fuck away from him.

But, back to the baptism.  Normally, as per doctrine, a worthy member of the Church that holds the priesthood performs the baptism, under the guidance of the ward bishop.  With kids, often this falls to the father, provided he meets the worthiness requirements.  But JJ’s was not a normal case.  Customarily, this would’ve been performed by his grandfather, because he did the other kids.  But apparently there were some issues there.

Because I was asked to do the baptism.

And, despite my fear of stepping on toes, despite my own confidence issues, despite my feeling that this was a special ordinance that should have been done by someone else or at least a closer family member, I did meet the requirements.  So I accepted.  Even though I’d never done one before.

And so, despite the arrangements pretty much being thrust upon Stevie, Yes Dear, & I, we were able to execute what was a very memorable event.  And after the baptism was done,  JJ’s reaction?  “That was AWESOME!!”

That kid would hardly leave my side the rest of the trip.  I actually had to take my laptop into the bathroom a couple of times and lock the door just so I could check my email and skim my FB and a few blogs.

So I think now is a good time to get into the main point of this post.  The fact that there’s a group of kids here who are being seriously affected by the chaos and dysfunction of the family and are starving for love and attention.
Essentially, most of these kids wanted to come home with us.  They were constantly coming to us for attention, for love, for tickles, for hugs and kisses, and for structure.    They didn’t want us to leave.  PBJ even threatened (jokingly) to kidnap L’il Buddha and take him home with us.

I’m going to focus here briefly on a few key people, and some things I noticed.  And maybe you’ll understand why coming back home and sitting at the comfort of my desk and computer, listening to Pandora, without being disturbed by anybody, suddenly feels so empty.

The teen son (Stevie’s little brother) has had to deal with a lot of issues growing up.  He is at the same age where things started to go disastrously wrong with my stepson, but he seems to be keeping his perspective and is making it a goal to get away and do something with himself when he turns eighteen.  He also tries to lookout for the younger ones as much as he can. A lot of responsibility to take on for a sixteen year old who’d rather hang out with friends and girlfriends, but he sees the situation for what it is and knows it won’t improve.

And, unexpected for a strapping teen that is proud of the fact he finally got taller than me (not hard to achieve), he has no problem with a warm hug from his aunt and uncle.  In fact, he seeks them out.

Plus, he gives pretty good back massages.  Which, after driving ten hours, Yes Dear & I greatly appreciated.

Now a few words about Mark.  This kid is one of those dark haired, blue eyed five year olds that can break your heart with one look.  I only met him very briefly during last year’s trip, and when he came by this trip he just plopped down in my lap and wanted me to read Spongebob to him.  He seemed pretty comfortable with me, but kind of skittish about certain things.  He also seemed intelligent, but developmentally behind in certain areas, particularly speech (more baby talk than I’d expect out of a five year old).  I initially chalked it up to the fact that Pelosi (who really shouldn’t even be in his life, but nobody will stop her) won’t keep her slimy tentacles out of his head.  But I found out later that, before the dad and his parents stepped in and took him, Pelosi had abandoned him a few years before with some loser “friends” that abused him.  Some of the stories I heard makes you wish murder were legal.

He’s definitely one that Yes Dear & I wished we could spend more time with.  Next time we’ll try to get more time with him.  Which may not be too difficult, since most of the family is willing to offload kids on others because they’re too busy or overstressed to deal with them.

And now, back to JJ.

This kid may be only eight, but easily has the thought processes and comprehension of a twelve year old.  Technically, he is well taken care of.  Meaning, he has clothes, food, shelter, and adult authority figures who exercise just enough parenting skills to keep him out of real trouble.  So far.

What he doesn’t have is a stable mom or dad relationship  (Pelosi don’t count).  He has a grandmother (SIL) who I honestly believe has the best intentions, but her execution sucks.  The grandfather provides discipline and keeps him in line, but the love doesn’t seem to be there.  He often tries to manipulate people to get his way.  Which he gave up on me when he realized that all he had to do was ask.

And he is starved for positive attention.

I started to nod off on the sofa the other night, when he came up to me, clutching his favorite stuffed animal, said his head hurt and asked if he could sit with me.  I allowed him up with me and we watched some TV, where shortly after he nodded off in my arms.  And I might have stayed there with him on the sofa except my daughter and her baby were sleeping there, so I moved him over to the love seat.  Plus I could hardly stand after losing most of the circulation on my left leg that he had most of his weight against.  Afterwards  I went to bed to join an already sleeping Yes Dear.  And when we got up the next morning, we found that Bea had crawled in with us (it was her bed after all) and was sleeping soundly between us.

Good thing both of us were so tired we didn’t roll over in the middle of the night.  That could’ve ended badly.

But the final kill came on our last night.  JJ wanted to stay with us over at his aunt Stevie’s house one more night because we were leaving the next morning, but his grandparents nixed that.  I doubt anyone else would’ve objected, but we didn’t push the issue because there was a lot of family stress going on.  Mainly the fact that the whole family came over and left the whole house looking like an F5 tornado had made a bullseye on the place, and they didn’t offer to help clean up.

So eventually the goodbyes started, and an obviously dejected JJ made his rounds.  Then he came up to me and put his arms around me.

And completely broke down crying.  Right there in my arms.

That tinkling glass sound you heard?  Yep, you guessed it.  My heart broke along with his.

(sorry guys, if any are out there.  I hereby turn in my membership to the uber-macho club.)

I held him for as long as I could.  Long enough so he’d quit crying enough so he wouldn’t get in trouble.  Yes, that’s the kind of family he lives with.

When it was finally time for him to leave, I thought we were going to have send for demolition charges to pry him away from me.

Once he was gone, I excused myself to the bedroom.  I passed by Stevie, who asked if I was okay because my eyes were red.  I mumbled something about “damn allergies” and kept on going.  So I closed the door and went ahead and dealt with my “allergies”.

Indeed.  Haven’t had that problem in quite a while.

Y’know, I think that’ll make a great code word to deal with unmanly moments.  So if in the future, you hear me complain about “damn allergies”, you’ll know the truth.

So that’s how our vacation went.  I was particularly happy with daughter Panda Bear, because she’s been having marital issues of her own lately and I think she really needed to get away for a while where she could be herself and others would help look after the baby.  Funny enough, the two sisters started fooling around during the drive like only siblings can do, to the point I actually said, “DON’T MAKE ME STOP THIS CAR”.  We haven’t had good family times like that in a while.

Yes Dear & I talked so much about how we wished we could take those kids with us, you thought we were the Duggars or something.  But as loved and as needed as we were, we forgot about our own problems and worked together for the kids’ good.  And saw sides of each other we haven’t seen in a while.  The kind of sides that made us fall in love in the first place.

So I’m happy, because I had an opportunity to exercise a better part of myself that I don’t get to often anymore.

But I’m sad, because I miss having those moments.  I miss being needed.

Especially by one nephew in particular.

~ by The Real Dave on July 11, 2009.