Around Christmas time, there's a spike in articles about why it's not always a jolly time for everybody. At least half my friends shoot out reminders that you don't NEED to involve yourself in toxic family situations. Some of them create what they call 'orphan' events, so that people who don't have elsewhere to go can still feel community over the holidays.
I wish I didn't NEED to involve myself with family, but I haven't reached that breaking point yet where staying away would preserve my mental health more than damage Mikey's. Or maybe I have this year. We'll see.
I don't come from a Christian home. I never celebrated Christmas until my dating years, and then only intermittently until Mikey and I became an item. His family takes it very seriously. Not being Christian is only one of a long list of things his mother resents about me. She told me outright on one of my first visits that she doesn't hate non-Christians, she just firmly believes they'll all end up in hell.
I can't even post my unadulterated feelings about this woman. She's everything to Mikey, and even though neither of them have an account here, should this ever someday circulate to a place he might read it, he'd be heartbroken. They too have a turbulent relationship. Regardless, she'll always be his mother.
So I'll have to be satisfied by sharing this year's encounter.
She made a big show about loving this piece. She opened it up, and I lost count of how many times she said she loved it. Mikey had also made a frame for it, and tried to add a few words in edgewise about his contribution.
"I don't care." She said. "I just love the picture." Not 'Thank you, I love the frame too.' Not 'Yes, it really brings out the features, it's wonderful'. Nope. She doesn't care. To his face. He tried so hard to pretend that didn't cut him deeply, and then he couldn't sleep at all that night. We were driving down to Oakville to his uncle's annual Boxing Day gathering. It's a good three hours from Port Elgin. He didn't sleep.
I helped pack the car so that we could drop off the gifts at home on our way to the reunion. It was a long, foggy drive. I did my best to keep Mikey energetic while he was driving. I don't have a license, or I would have driven for him. We ended up getting there by four.
Over the course of our visit and dinner, Mikey had about four glasses of wine. He's a big guy, and we were there for about six hours, so normally I wouldn't worry, but the ride home was going to be as long as the ride in, and I wasn't coming all the way back to Port Elgin to keep him awake at the wheel. Since he'd had no sleep, I wanted him to take his time metabolizing the alcohol in his system.
His mother always decides when we leave, so she told him we needed to go. I asked him to drink a coffee, and to take his time. Not to rush it, because whether or not he had coffee, the wine still needed time to run itself out of his system. He left to go get a coffee just as cousin Matt, who'd gotten married this past summer came by for a hug goodbye, and to give us all thank-you cards from the wedding.
So I sat with his mother, and remembered the wedding. She said it was the most expensive wedding she'd been to, and she didn't enjoy herself at all. It took me a minute to realize she meant 'expensive for her'.
"Yes." She said. "Between the travel, the hotel, the $100 present, and the vet bill. I had a terrible time."
"Well, in any case, I'm glad Katie is doing much better right now."
Katie, the fluffy little Bijon in the painting above, came with us to the hotel. We'd lined the entire floor with puppy training pads because the medication she was on at the time was giving her uncontrollable diarrhea. Within a few hours of being at the hotel, she started passing blood, and we needed to take her to a vet in Hamilton nearby.
"Well, it was an infection." She said. "I think she picked it up at the groomer. I took her to this woman's house, and she refused to let me stay with her. She said that she wouldn't let owners stay while she did her work."
"That's standard. Animals act very differently when their owners are with them."
"No it's not. Anyway, when I came back, I looked in her house and I saw it was filthy. Dishes in the sink, the livingroom looked like it had never been vacuumed. I think she got sick from being in there."
"That's not what the vet said." I said. "She'd had a bad reaction to the medication she was already on. They said she probably developed an infection because of that."
"She wasn't on medication."
"Yes she was. A week before the wedding, you took her to a vet up there (in Port Elgin) for some bad coughing she'd been having, they diagnosed her with a substantial heart murmur, and gave you medication for it. That's what gave her diarrhea in the first place."
"I disagree."
"You disagree?" I was confused at this.
From there, my memory of the dialogue is a little less clear, but she proceeded to tell me that she couldn't get a word in edgewise with the vet in Hamilton, because I was talking to them. I told her that she was in the room, she could hear the answers he was giving me, and she was also free to ask him questions. She doesn't remember that she never tried to.
"NO!" She said, not exactly yelling, but certainly angry. "I COULDN'T hear his answers, because he was talking to YOU. I just saw you taking notes in your little notebook, and I thought, whose dog is she, anyway? She's MY dog. She's not your dog!"
She doesn't remember that I had a notebook to take down instructions on medication and side effects. That I'd had the medication she WAS on written down so that they could check it against her symptoms. All things I know for a fact Mikey's mother would not have asked, because she was too focused on repeating that she would have to put Katie down.
I repeated that she could have asked questions.
"No I couldn't!"
"Yes you could have." I got up to leave the room.
"NO. I COULDN'T!"
"Whatever." I left to go angrily wash my glass. I can't tell if these are the early stages of dementia, and she honestly can't remember that her dog was already on medication, or if her naturally revisionist memory has written in more reasons to resent me than I myself can provide.
She loved his ex. She loved his ex so much that she invited her to her wedding after they'd already broken up, so that Mikey, single at the time, would have to spend the evening watching his ex fiancee dance with his horny young cousins. Another one of my many crimes is that I'm not that person. That I try to keep him focused on his personal goals in film, which she does not respect. That I make art for a living, which she does not respect.
The drive back to our home to drop me off was mostly silent, as she stewed angrily in the back seat. When I got out of the car, she all but hissed at me. No goodbye, just an angry glare and a curt "Thanks for your help".
I hope I'm never this bitter. I've had my own fair shake of bad fortune, but I hope I never alienate or abuse people this way.
I don't have the liberty of refusing to go, though. Not without hurting someone else. If I'm not welcome back there again, I won't be unhappy, except that Mikey will be deeply unhappy to have to choose where to be. If this is the case, I'll insist he goes to see his mother. She won't live forever, but she'll always be his mother.