Comments | philosophymom: New Year's Meme 2013

philosophymom

New Year's Meme 2013

Dec 31, 2013 12:45

It's back! That's right, my annual year-in-review, using a meme I've been filling out for years (at the old blog). Let's see if this one'll turn out any more interesting than usual. (Hint: probably not.)

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new years, memes

Comments 6

wellinghall December 31 2013, 18:38:57 UTC

A Happy New Year to you, philosophymom!

philosophymom December 31 2013, 20:15:32 UTC

And to you, too!

old_black January 1 2014, 00:44:58 UTC

Hmmm...that's an interesting post. Taking it at face value, I like the honesty of your self assessment.

I was particularly interested to read that you still have a lot of interaction with The Man, and that you most miss your (ex)mother-in-law. "In-law" relationships are complex things, aren't they? They do have a life of their own, and yet they must also be inextricably linked back to the relationship you have with the person who connected you in the first place, i.e. The Man. I wonder if he had died instead of just departed, would your relationship with the m-i-l be still continuing? In what ways might that relationship be different?

philosophymom January 1 2014, 07:26:01 UTC

Well, as he and I are still raising a 12-year-old, I probably couldn't avoid a ton of interaction with the Man even if I wanted to. The question is, do I really want to, deep down? Or, on some level, have I decided that frequent, painful interaction is better than none? Hmmm... Even I don't know the answer to that.

The mother-in-law part is hopelessly sad. She is a truly lovely person, but all of this is more than beyond her. And there is no question in my mind that, had the Man died, she would still be immediate family to me, instead of whatever it is that we are now. One of the biggest things we had in common, after all, was how much we both loved and admired him.

old_black January 2 2014, 03:10:06 UTC

This 12-year-old must be really something special if he keeps you sane (although I do note that "God" and "spite" are also in this category). I don't envy you have to deal with the complexity of that three-way relationship.

On the other hand, I would have thought that his mother "should" be able to relate to you in an independent relationship regardless of the role of the Man in relation to either of you . . . or I wonder if the Man is deliberately (or even unconsciously) making it hard for her. [My own mother is having to deal with my brother's separation and divorce from a woman who is a long time friend of the family, but she is aided by the onset of dementia which makes her forget their original relationships so she has to just deal with them as they are now! Maybe your mother-in-law will get dementia too and you'll be able to re-establish a relationship of sorts]

philosophymom January 2 2014, 12:30:23 UTC

Which 3-way relationship -- me, spite, and God? :-D My kid *is* awesome, but what actually keeps me sane is knowing that I have to be there for him. It's an *obligation* to be sane, if you will, and I'm pretty sure that if I didn't feel it, I wouldn't have made it this far.

The Man's mom is a gentle soul who was tested to *her* point of endurance just over 25 years ago when her caddish husband, Man Sr., capped years of indiscretions by leaving her (only after she caught him) for a decades-younger associate. Her sons' chivalry, plus a measure of independence courtesy of an inheritance -- not to mention five local grandchildren -- have seen her through the years and brought her to a good place; however, it hasn't seemed fair to me to tax her spiritually and emotionally by asking for a kind of support I can get from other sources ( ... )