After Mother’s Day, for which Paul regressed to his pre-prefrontal-cortex early 20s and said “She’s not MY mother” and he and the children did literally nothing, many of us, including me, were wondering what I might do for Father’s Day. There were so many satisfying, vengeful options to consider.

Here is what I decided: That even if Paul shrugs off his parental duty to teach the children to celebrate Mother’s Day, I’m not going to retaliate by shrugging off my parental duty to teach the children to celebrate Father’s Day. That in fact, if one parent is going to model selfishness and thoughtlessness, the other parent needs to STEP IT UP on those topics, however unfair that seems, if there is any hope of avoiding raising selfish, thoughtless jerks. And that if by doing this, I could passive-aggressively point out to the children and Paul that Mother’s Day had been done very poorly indeed, and teach them to do better in the future, then that would be a bonus.

Five days before Father’s Day, I began. I mentioned to the children in an enthusiastic voice that Father’s Day was the upcoming Sunday. I asked if they had thought of what they wanted to do for it. I told them they should let me know in plenty of time if they needed help/money from me. I gave some suggestions, based on things they would know their dad likes/wants:

making him a card
offering to go out and get a box of doughnuts
vacuuming out his car
shaking out his car’s floor mats
taking his car through a car wash (I’d pay)
taking his car to fill with gasoline (I’d pay)
sweeping the living room without being asked
cleaning up the living room without being asked
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
vacuuming the stairs
doing any of the other little things Paul usually tells them to do, but without being asked

After I’d mentioned the importance of thinking about the person and what THEY might like, Rob said scoffingly, “Or instead, we could just ask him what he wants?” Well, I said. Parents spend EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR telling children what to do. So part of the gift is DOING THE THING YOU KNOW THE PARENT WANTS YOU TO DO but without the parent having to ask this time; part of the gift is THE BREAK FROM HAVING TO ASK. Part of the gift is THINKING ABOUT WHAT THE PARENT MIGHT WANT, rather than forcing them to tell you AS PER USUAL.

Rob played into my hands again. He said “We didn’t do anything for Mother’s Day, did we?”—with a tone of so-why-are-we-suddenly-doing-this. And I said no, we hadn’t, and I pretended to misinterpret the gist of his question. I said that although it was tempting to get revenge on Dad by doing the same for Father’s Day, since I blamed him to some extent for not organizing the children into action, that I didn’t think that would be right—and that it would sacrifice a valuable teaching opportunity for the children. Rob said he didn’t think it would be revenge, he thought it would just be a step (“in the right direction,” his tone added) toward letting these “minor holidays” go uncelebrated. I did not cry or scream, even though his continued use of Tone made it tempting. Well, I said, I didn’t think so; I said that it had been pretty sucky to spend Mother’s Day seeing pictures on Facebook of all my friends doing Mother’s Day things with their families. So I didn’t think doing less was the answer. There was a significant pause.

Rob tried to blame Paul but quickly petered out, like he could tell there was no leg to stand on there. He brought up that he had ASKED Paul about Mother’s Day. I said, yes. And that I’d heard him ask, and that I’d heard Paul say “She’s not MY mother,” and that that was wrong and sad and here’s why, and here’s how Paul could have presented the same concept in a very different and useful way (“Well, she’s your mother; what do YOU think we should do?”). But. That the essence of what Paul had been saying was: It’s YOUR job to figure this out. Because she’s YOUR mother. Pointed look.

Rob wrote something down in a notebook. “I’m making a note to do something next year,” he said.

Lest you celebrate his change of heart: after all this, he let Father’s Day go by without doing anything. He went to work mid-afternoon, having done nothing at all. Despite discussion. Despite follow-up questions/reminders. Despite a sad face and personal testimony and a significant pause.

Mid-morning (while Rob was still asleep—he’s working second shift) is when I reminded the other children. “Are you remembering it’s Father’s Day?,” I asked them. “Are you all set? Do you need anything from me?” Sometimes I made sure that we were having these whispered conversations near enough to Paul that he would be aware that they were going on.

Mid-afternoon is when a low simmering anger kicked in. “You ungrateful wretches,” I didn’t say. “You horrible, selfish, spoiled beasts,” I didn’t add. “Where have we gone so wrong in our parenting?,” I didn’t wonder aloud. “How many of your future partners will blame ME for this?,” I didn’t speculate aloud. I did not scream or cry, or get in the car and keep driving away from these terrible people who are apparently younger versions of their father.

“It’s mid-afternoon; what are you PLANNING?,” I did in fact ask. “Come on, you’re running out of time!,” I did add. When I got shrugs, when William said “I haven’t done anything for Father’s Day since 6th grade,” when some of the kids started seriously arguing to me that OTHERS of the kids hadn’t done anything, that’s when I gave the rage a little leash. “This is one of two days a year we ask you to think of someone other than your own self,” I said. “Thinking of what to do is PART OF THE GIFT,” I said. “YOU are supposed to be thinking about Dad and what he might like,” I added. “I gave you ideas, and I gave them to you FIVE DAYS AGO,” I hissed. “Do something, do ANYTHING, but DO NOT LET THIS DAY JUST SLIP AWAY UNCELEBRATED,” I said with my hair smoking gently, lit with resentment about Mother’s Day and now new fresh resentment about Father’s Day.

When even that failed to yield results, I considered not telling you about it. It makes things look better on me and on the children if I have eager, willing, generous, easily-led children, and if all Paul needed to do was nudge/help the poor confused dears instead of thwarting/stunting them. It looks badly on me and on the children if I cannot kindly and easily coax them into lifting a pinky finger for their father. I hope you are empathetic enough to realize that this does not mean I want other people to say critical things about my children. I assume you and I can exchange A Look about it, possibly a CONCERNED Look, and have that be enough.

Eventually, with increased incredulous effort and sustained hissing, I achieved grudging results. One child cleaned the bathroom sink/counter, even though Paul does not particularly value that chore—but at least the thought/effort was there, and it was the child’s own thought/idea. One child brought out a card he had made at school but had not previously mentioned for some inexplicable reason. I coerced the other two children to come outside with me and work on Paul’s car: we shook out the floor mats and vacuumed the floor and threw away trash.

I gave Paul two presents, even though he is not my father. One was four pairs of Pair of Thieves socks from Target; they have this new line that costs EIGHT UNITED STATES DOLLARS PER PAIR for plain solid-colored socks, and because they changed colors the old colors were 70% off, so I got him four pairs to try. I’d also noticed recently that his favorite measuring-cup device had gotten badly chipped, so I replaced it with a new one.

Also, all day I kept up with dishes and getting them washed and/or into the dishwasher, because I know he doesn’t like having dirty dishes piling up on the counter. I washed a difficult dish he’d left to soak in the sink instead of leaving it for him to deal with. At the grocery store I made sure to get him the things he likes. I vacuumed the stairs because none of the kids did it and it really needed doing. I took care of several other things. It occurred to me that one reason he doesn’t think to do things like this to please me is that maybe he doesn’t notice/care when I do these things to please him. I tried not to think about that.

Sunday is one of the nights of the week when he cooks, so I thought about offering to take over that task for him, even though he claims to like cooking. But I could not quite work up the enthusiasm for that. I got him some presents, I worked with his terrible children, I was thoughtful about other things, and that is going to have to be enough for someone who did literally nothing for Mother’s Day.

The mother of Elizabeth’s friend Sarah asked Sarah to give Elizabeth a pamphlet for a religious summer camp. “My mom says to say it’s not REALLY about religion,” said Sarah. The pamphlet explains that the purpose of the camp is to have fun! and make friends! and eat s’mores! and deeply explore the Bible to learn how it relates to every aspect of our world and our lives! I looked up the organization and they are a group formed for the purpose of using children to evangelize to other children.

I am trying to react to this with semi-amused eye-rolling (“Just toss the pamphlet in the recycling and forget about it! She’s probably just thinking Elizabeth might like to go to the same camp as Sarah!”), but let me tell you confidentially that I am not succeeding. You may remember that I was brought up Christian, so I remember this kind of thing from the inside point of view, and I have been recognizing the symptoms in Sarah and her family for awhile now; this is not just a casual camp idea. I remember learning in Sunday School and youth group about looking for opportunities to witness to our friends. I remember telling friends that the picnic or youth group activity or vacation Bible school or summer camp wasn’t really about religion, it was just for having fun! and making friends! and eating s’mores! You don’t have to be religious, it’s for everyone!

I also know that back then, I would have felt very sorry for Elizabeth, whose parents Weren’t Saved and so weren’t teaching her The Good News. I would have been worried about this, and I would have had a strong mental image of their dark souls hungering for the light. I would have earnestly brought the situation up as a prayer request in Sunday School or youth group. It makes me feel queasy to think about this, and to think of this other family seeing our family this way. I don’t have to wonder if Sarah has reported Elizabeth’s unsaved status to her family, or if they might be thinking they can save Elizabeth, or if Sarah has been taught she should be on the lookout for moments she can Share Her Faith. “It’s not about RELIGION,” Sarah explains at the school lunch table. “It’s about the way the world WORKS.” I know this script. I have advised Elizabeth that there is no point in arguing, and that it is better to change the subject. Sarah is a good friend when she’s not trying to do her Evangelical Duty.

When I was on the inside of this kind of thing, it seemed compassionate: we’re trying to RESCUE people! we are battling for people’s ETERNAL SOULS! From the outside, it looks presumptuous and predatory. Adults should not be trying to convert other people’s children to their religion. Adults should not be using their own children as tools to convert other people’s children. Adults should know this through the easy one-step method of wondering if they would want other adults to work on converting THEIR children. I don’t think Sarah’s mother would think it was compassionate of me to try to save Sarah from her parents’ teachings. I think she would be outraged at any attempt, and would want me to stay away from her child, and would think it was really weird of me to try to get involved, and would see it as me trying to lead Sarah astray.

I am not, however, going to do anything about this, except explaining to my own children what this is and why I don’t like it and why this is a hot-button area of discussion for me. I’m not going to confront Sarah’s mother, someone I’ve met only once. I’m not going to send back a pamphlet about Skeptics Camp, telling Elizabeth to explain to Sarah that it’s not REALLY about skepticism. I’m not going to do anything except roll my eyes and recycle the stupid pamphlet and lie awake composing mental arguments about it.

I made the mistake of reading other books before reviewing these, so already they fade in my memory.

(image from Amazon.com)

My Ex-Life, by Stephen McCauley

The plot of this book is exactly my kind of thing: David, a gay man whose life is in a bit of upheaval, goes to stay with his ex-wife Julie and her daughter Mandy for a little while to help them with some stuff, and things go really nicely and companionably and appealingly. But the book was written in a style I don’t like: the author almost couldn’t write a sentence without making a snarky/clever/witty add-on:

David guessed him to be in his late thirties or early forties, but boyishness still clung to him, as it often does to men with good hair or unresolved relationships with their fathers. He was tidily dressed in short pants and a green polo shirt, and he wore around his neck a lanyard with a heavy set of keys attached, a little like a gym teacher or an obstreperous camp counselor.

I found it extremely tiring to read in fiction, because there is no way to get absorbed in the story if the author is constantly drawing your attention to the way he’s writing it. It was like getting constantly nudged.

Also, it was the kind of book that confirms your fears that everyone is thinking mean things about everyone else:

Carol had a high, girlish voice. She took superb care of herself–her skin appeared to be polished–but she had the hard face of someone who could stand to eat a cupcake once or twice a year. The bones were too prominent, and the muscles around her jaw flexed visibly when she spoke. As was to be expected, she was pretty. But it was the flat prettiness of a sorority sister who wears pastels, subscribes to Self magazine, and actually reads the articles. She punctuated her comments with a dry, nervous laugh that reminded David of the panting of a dog eager to be petted.

and:

If Carol was making an exhausting effort to please, Henry was aiming for a stern demeanor that gave away nothing. David had noted this deportment in strong-willed men overcompensating for the fact that their lives are controlled by their wives or girlfriends. He had a dark suntan, an attractive affectation, but one that these days looked somehow vintage, like a dial telephone or an electric carving knife.

It’s vivid, creative, descriptive writing, but I didn’t like it and it made me feel yucky to read it. Despite that, I read to the end because I wanted to know what would happen with the plot, which I liked very much. And because of charming passages like this one, where David and Mandy walk Mandy’s dog deliberately past a shop where the shopkeeper always comes out with a dog biscuit:

After a few minutes, a small man emerged holding something in his hands. “Please don’t pretend you’re not expecting a snack,” he said. “We’re beyond that charade.”

The author then interjects to say it wasn’t clear if he was speaking to Mandy or to the dog, but it is 100% endearing if he’s talking to the dog, and otherwise it is not, so I wish he had just let us assume it was addressed to the dog (which it absolutely was, and you cannot tell me otherwise).

It is hard to say if I recommend the book or not. I guess I do, especially since people have different tastes in writing styles and you might LOVE what I found tiring/depressing.

(image from Amazon.com)

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

I read this after reading Shelf Love’s review, which I highly recommend you read as well, because it explains it very well with the appropriate warnings. Even with the warnings, I spent the first 50 pages or so thinking the book might be too experimental/confusing for me to get through (and sighing at the body-part crudity and bathroom crudity). But sometime after that, I went from uncertain to enchanted, and spent the rest of the book thinking things such as “Why are there not MORE books like this??” and getting bowled over by new plot points. (And skimming some of the chapters full of quotes from Lincoln resources. They were good, and they contributed to the story, but there were TOO MANY BY HALF.) I really, really liked it, and added several more books by this author to my library list.

I had another morning of cursing my sleep conscience: I dreamed I turned down a dinner date with a really great guy (“I’m married,” I said; “I don’t mind married,” he said, charming as all heck; “I really CAN’T,” I said), and I dreamed I turned down a dozen different foods I really wanted to eat. Why. Why have I not mastered lucid dreaming. I turned down a chance to eat brownies and not-forsake-all-others and EAT BROWNIES.

I am applying for TSA Pre-Check, which is that thing that lets you get through airport security faster and more easily and without all the instructions that make me frazzled and anxious. I kept starting the application process and then stopping it, because it said that it was CRUCIAL that your name be EXACTLY THE SAME on all the documents you brought to the interview to prove your identity. But my driver’s license shows just my two middle initials, and my passport has my middle names spelled out. Those are not matching, but not something I can easily fix. And I couldn’t find anything about it in the FAQ; and to get to the interview portion I have to drive 45 minutes away to a city I hate driving in, so it wasn’t something I wanted to take a chance on, either.

BUT ALSO, I have found while researching it for the baby name blog that at least for Social Security purposes, the U.S. government doesn’t consider middle names part of your legal name. (Suffixes such as Jr., III, etc., are also not part of the legal name. The post where I said so gets regular comments from pissed-off men who want to explain to me JUST HOW MUCH those suffixes ARE part of their names, and want to prove it to me with multiple not-at-all-proving-it examples. YAWN.)

(screenshot from SSA.gov)

So my hope was that this would be the same situation for the TSA Pre-Check thing, since that’s the government too, and I finally just proceeded with the application. Mid-application, I got to this line:

(screenshot from TSA.gov)

HOPE CONFIRMED. In case you too have been fretting about this.

I am reading The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and I would like to say that this is just the kind of thing I used to like to read before the possibility of this exact kind of future (no contraceptives! clean water is too scarce for most people to afford! all education is private and too expensive for most people to afford! police/firefighters are private and have to be paid for directly by the citizen who summons them! women and children can’t go outside safely except in a group including armed men!) went from “oooh, kind of thrillingly creepy to think of the effects of that kind of unlikely societal collapse!” to “our political leaders are right this minute working on achieving those very goals.” I want to finish the book, but it’s setting my baseline level of panic way too high for daily life, so I think after this one book I’m done (it’s a series).

I’d like to veer into another topic, which is my new pillow. This story begins when I was doing my in-home eldercare job, and one of the houses I went to had the TV set to a station that played a pillow commercial again and again and again and again until I was about to lose my fool mind but also kind of wanted to try the pillow. Then I read some reviews, and the reviews said the pillow was nothing but one of those egg-carton memory foam things you put under a sleeping bag, but all ripped up into chunks and stuffed into a sack.

I was at Target earlier this week, and their whole pillow aisle was full of the new yellow clearance stickers (I HATE the new yellow clearance stickers). I found a pillow labeled “Shredded Foam Pillow: Shapeable memory foam designed to fit your ideal sleep position.” Definitely hinting at it being a knock-off of the one in the commercial, and I squeezed it and it felt like it was full of ripped-up chunks of memory foam, so I bought it.

This would be a much better story if I loved the pillow, but I don’t. It seems like it might be good for me: when I lie on my side using the pillow, I can just SEE the part of the commercial that shows the side-sleeper’s spine aligning correctly. But I am also a stomach-sleeper, and a half-stomach-half-side sleeper, and this pillow doesn’t CHANGE enough for that. It’s the firmest pillow I have ever used: there is almost no GIVE to it at all. I am accustomed to a down-filled pillow, which had too MUCH give (I had to keep plumping it up and squishing it into a half-pillow-sized lump in the pillow case), but this is too far the other way. When I squeeze the pillow with my hand, it feels as if it would squoosh down nicely, but my head is not heavy enough to make it do that, so I feel as if my head is resting on a stable little shelf. In the reviews for the pillow on TV, reviewers wrote that foam chunks could be removed from the pillow to make it more adjustable; I may see if I can do that.

Let’s see. I saw the movie Life of the Party, and I saw it with friends which is I think the best way to see it.

I will see pretty much anything Melissa McCarthy does. And I want YOU to, too, because I want Things Melissa McCarthy Does to be profitable and therefore abundant. This movie was as good as I expected, though not quite as good as I’d hoped. It is a nice fantasy movie, like Bad Moms.

I also watched the royal wedding, and I hope for that hugely publicized event we were all remembering that it adds nothing to the world to volunteer one’s own scornful lack of interest in something other people are happy and enthusiastic about. My interest levels were much lower than for the Will & Kate wedding, and I wasn’t even sure I was going to get up early to watch it—but I DID get up, and I was so glad I did, because it turned out to be a MUCH MORE INTERESTING wedding. There was this strong thread of “Oh, you don’t think the monarchy should be including a biracial American? Huh! LOOKIT WHAT WE’RE GOING RIGHT AHEAD AND DOING ANYWAY!”—with a sweet, sweet smile.

I read Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, The Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

(image from Amazon.com)

There was a lengthy middle section I found a little sloggy to get through (something about cells, and it seemed important but it also seemed like it went on forever and at a much lower entertainment-value level than the rest of the book), but I liked the first part and the last part. Do you remember awhile back, when a lot of people were writing really interesting articles about how Fitness/Food has become something much more like Religion for a lot of people: rituals, superstitions, purity/sin values, righteousness rankings, warding off fears of death? This book is along those lines.

I read American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, at Paul’s suggestion.

(image from Amazon.com)

I read something somewhere about why did some website/store have a Women’s Fiction category but not a Men’s Fiction category, so I will make a point of saying that this is Men’s Fiction: more talk about pissing and penises than I would think anyone in the world could possibly be interested in. TONS of fighting. A fair amount of grossness. Plenty of unlikely fantasy sex. But a really good book anyway, I thought, with interesting themes and ideas. I felt like about 90% of the particulars about gods/goddesses was going right past my limited knowledge, but the book was entirely readable without that knowledge: the author helps the reader get the gist of what they need to know.

Breaking Cat News is a huge hit at my house:

(image from gocomics.com)

We are all reading it. Also, Henry is getting the book for his birthday. There will be jealousy.

I find it difficult to maintain high levels of pique for long. After writing yesterday’s update, I found that even just the writing-it-out of the whole thing brought me down another level or two, and the rest of the day I was feeling markedly better: forgetting about it, feeling like it didn’t matter so much, feeling sheepishly like I’d built a mountain out of a molehill, feeling things slipping back into normal. It was hard to tell which feelings/thoughts were the Right Ones: the earlier ones, when I was thinking this incident (and others like it) could be THE BEGINNING OF THE END? Or the later ones, when I was thinking this incident (and others like it) were the routine disappointments of sharing life with others, and just meant I needed to tweak things a bit in the future? Or maybe some of each? It is so hard to tell.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure how to approach it with Paul, but then there was a sort of perfect set-up of quiet children and the right sort of moods and me Feeling Able, and I pounced on the chance. And even just in the first few minutes, seeing his open uncomprehending face, I could see what this was going to be: more work than I wanted to do. I finished expressing how sad I’d been; I told him what it was like seeing my Facebook feed ALL DAY full of other families doing things to celebrate; I told him that the whole thing had been so inexplicable, I’d considered explanations such as him having brain tumor, or him wanting a divorce, or the children thinking I was a crummy mother.

And he was just so baffled by it all. He couldn’t even respond except with a sort of soothing patting. He was listening, he was paying attention, he wasn’t defensive or making excuses—but I could see that it was going to take SO MUCH WORK to get him from seeing things his way to understanding my point of view. I would need metaphors and similes and relevant examples from the world of computers. I would need to work HARD, and it would be EXHAUSTING, and it would involve frustration and fighting and tears—and at the end of it he would briefly understand, and that understanding would last for about a day, and then without endless shoring up it would drop away again and I’d have to start at the very beginning next time. And after more than 20 years of this, I am tired of it. I don’t think I want to do any more of it. I don’t think I can change this about him. I am Sisyphus deciding to leave the rock at the bottom of the hill this time and maybe put that energy into country line-dancing or my friendships or something.

The thing I realized last night as I was deciding NOT to take on that workload is that he really does not care. I don’t think he can help it. I think with huge effort on his part and mine he can get to the point where he understands what it would be LIKE to care or why OTHER PEOPLE care, but it doesn’t make HIM care. He cares about my feelings only to the extent that they affect him: if I’m sad or angry, he wants to fix that because it’s uncomfortable for him if I’m sad or angry. But he’s not thinking, like, “I wish I could KNOW HER MIND better! I want to UNDERSTAND her! I wish I knew what she was feeling!” At all. And he’s not going to. He is willing to sit and listen to me try to explain it to him, but it’s similar to the way I am willing to let him explain the computer problem he’s trying to solve at work: I don’t care about it at all, and I don’t really understand it either, but I don’t mind if he wants to tell me about it.

I realized I do a lot of routine system checks to see how I’m doing as a person/mother/wife: things like, this isn’t working, what can I think of to fix it or improve it? Or: this is a temperament flaw of mine; can I fix the flaw, or do I need to find a way to work with it, or do I need to find a way to keep it from harming others? What are some relatively easy ways I could make the kids’ lives happier? What are some things I could do to keep myself from getting frustrated or yelling at them? What are some things I could do to make Paul feel happier at home? What are the things that seem to make him feel more content, and are there any of those I could improve on? Are there things I could do (sock-pairing, bed-making) that would be small and easy for me but make him feel a lot happier? Things like that are routine things for me to be thinking about.

What has occurred to me is that Paul does not do this at all, and that is part of what is hurting my feelings and confusing me. He is not evaluating his own behavior, wondering what he could do to be a better father or husband and then working on those things. He is not wondering what he could do to to make our marriage better. Because of the way language works, it sounds harsh to say he “doesn’t care” about those things, or that those things are “not priorities,” though I think both statements are accurate. It would be fairer to say something more along the lines of those issues not being on his radar, or not being part of his own systems-scan, or not being included in his pre-sets, or whatever. It’s not that he thinks “Be a better husband? Who cares about THAT?,” it’s that he never analyzes himself in that way or wonders about things like that. He cares about being a better programmer, and he cares about acquiring more knowledge about things, and he cares about being a better gardener. (I would have to use all of this in a conversation trying to make him care about caring about being a better husband, and then I would have to draw careful parallels, and we’d still only just be getting started on a long, long road.)

I don’t want to treat him like a child or like someone who is just soooooooo rational he needs irrational woman-things explained to him carefully, and I don’t want to buy into the idea that he needs me to tell him what to do because he can’t figure this stuff out—but it seems like what is needed here is a way to cope with this gap for the duration of our relationship, considering the gap IS THERE. Like, am I willing, in exchange for a happier, more peaceful life, to say things to him such as, “This upcoming event is important to me. It will make me sad if you do x or y. It will make me happy if you do anything within the category z, with z defined as ‘thoughtful things that show appreciation/caring’. Some candy and/or a non-browning supermarket bouquet would also be pleasing, but not necessary. I like tulips, btw, or mixed bouquets.”

This all just SMACKS of being his personal puppeteer. It’s not that I don’t think I could do this; it’s that it’s hard to see the results being satisfying: if I’m going to program him through the actions, why not save myself the time/effort and do it myself? How is “he” doing it if I’m the one writing the script and the stage directions? Why, in this relationship of two adults, am I in charge of how both of us behave? And I suppose the answer is “Because I care about that” and/or “Because his behavior affects me, and he evidently can’t/won’t handle his own.” Honestly, who DID think marriage was a good idea? Two people who can’t figure each other out or get what they need from each other, living together for decades until one of them LITERALLY DIES AND THEIR LIFE IS OVER? What a great plan!

Well. Despite getting a little ranty just now, this morning I am feeling even less pique than yesterday. I feel like I can talk to the children about what happened and make them feel the right amount of bad without there being any weeping or overdoing it on my part. I feel like I can continue living with Paul and allow things to go back to normal (with tweaks and preventative tweaks as things go along), and I am no longer thinking things like “Let’s see, what makes most sense is if I stay in the house with the kids and we get him a condo in the same neighborhood…,” and I will be alert for signs of mental deterioration, hearing loss, mental issues, mid-life crisis, etc., that could be having their own effects. I liked a LOT of the things you guys said that I hadn’t even thought of, like life changes and stressors and so forth. On one hand it’s hard to see those things having an affect on how he treats me on Mother’s Day; on the other hand, thinking back to my OWN times of stress and/or despair, I know there were things where I would think “I just can’t deal with that right now”—and they often were things unrelated to the source of stress. Like, I’d be stressed about something happening with politics, and it would give me that panicky “I just CAN’T” feeling about sending in stuff for a bake sale. That’s not a good comparison because no one person is personally neglected by me if I don’t contribute to the bake sale, but I’m having trouble thinking of a better one. BECAUSE I WOULD NOT HAVE DROPPED SOMETHING THAT WOULD MAKE ANOTHER PERSON FEEL PERSONALLY NEGLECTED BY ME, I WOULD HAVE DROPPED SOMETHING ELSE.

You guys were unbelievable on the whole Mother’s Day situation. Comments and tweets have been pouring in for days. It is hard to know how to adequately thank for something like that. But: thank you. It was balm to the wound.

I emailed some non-online friends, friends who have been even more in the loop over the years on Paul Stuff good and bad (I don’t like to overdo it on the blog), and they feel the same as you do. One question they asked, as some of you asked, was whether Paul might be mad about something. Another question they asked, as some of you might have wanted to ask but didn’t feel you could, was whether Paul might, perhaps subconsciously, want out of the marriage, and be pulling crap like this to make it happen. It’s a possibility I’ve been forced to add to the list along with brain tumor and early-onset dementia. As one friend put it, Paul has done his share of Jerk Moves over the years, as ANY human does, but she says in the last few years there has been a shift in the kind of things he’s been doing—as if he has actually changed as a person, in a concerning way that seems to require SOME sort of explanation.

It’s very hard to know how much of this to discuss here, as you can probably well imagine. My parents raised me in a sort of “What happens in the marriage stays in the marriage” environment, but I found that really backfired when my first marriage ended: no one could believe it had been bad, because I hadn’t talked about how bad it was; and because I continued not to talk about it as things were wrapping up, everyone assumed that meant it must have been my fault, and/or that I was a flighty person who would ditch a marriage at the very first non-blissful moment. And because my soon-to-be-ex husband had no trouble talking about it, he soon had the ear and sympathy of everyone involved. If things DO go badly this time, I’d prefer it not to go that way.

On the other hand, there are solid reasons for the “What happens in the marriage stays in the marriage” concept. As Judith Viorst says in Love & Guilt & The Meaning of Life, Etc., “One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him, or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you maybe fall in again.” Marriages go through bleak times, and if you come OUT of the bleak time, then it’s nice not to have everyone knowing your business and casting side-eyes at your spouse (or at you, if it’s your spouse who’s been talking); also, it’s easy to overstate things when upset, and harder to walk them back when things are okay again. But…then if there comes an insurmountable bleak time and you finally decide it’s time to put everyone out of their misery, you have people saying you’re ditching the marriage at the very first sign of bleakness, and that any stories you tell of the earlier bad times are just you rewriting history to justify your bailing. Plus, who wants to act as if their marriage is perfect all the time? But of course you also don’t want to tell Every Single Little Bad Thing That Ever Happens, as if creating a record for the court. So it’s a pickle.

It’s even more of a pickle with online things. I can email my friends and vent freely about Paul, because we have long-established relationships with each other and know that a vent does not mean anything is seriously wrong. My friend M can tell me how her husband has recently been an idiot, and I answer back that husbands are idiots, and if possible I add a reassuringly similar husband-was-an-idiot story of my own, and we go on with our lives, feeling better and more able to cope and less panicky that maybe we married the wrong people. Neither of us think that husbands in general or either of our husbands in particular are literally, actually idiots, or that there is any real need for concern, and we both feel better for the interaction, both of us thinking this kind of stuff just falls into that not-really-serious category where EVERYONE is sometimes an idiot.

Online, that whole thing is less clear. You have probably seen it before: someone will vent about something that’s clearly being told at least 75% for the amusing entertainment value of the story, by someone who is clearly in love with the idiot they’re ranting about, and yet there will be commenters either going Full Concern and suggesting marriage counseling “to deal with your anger issues” or whatever, or else saying, “You should be grateful he’s not DEAD” or “You should just be glad he’s not CHEATING ON YOU” or whatever. It can be difficult online, speaking to an extraordinarily mixed group (from strangers on their first visit to the blog all the way up to people you’ve been friends with for years), to get across that tone of “just venting about an otherwise normal and satisfactory marriage.” It’s even more complicated when it’s NOT just that.

A long time ago there was a blogger whose blog I didn’t usually read, but I was aware of her and would sometimes go read a post if someone else linked to it. One reason I didn’t like to routinely read her blog was that she so often wrote things about how she and her husband were more in love every day, or how she fell more in love with him every year, or how she never knew how much their previously large amount of love could have gotten so much LARGER. That’s not how I feel about things in my own relationship, and so reading things like that made me understandably nervous: did I marry the wrong person or what? I mean, there are all those studies that say the fluttery-lovey feeling lasts, what, two years, and then it’s more a matter of shared experiences and mutual goals and growing trust/dependence and so forth. But then you see people talking about how the flutter-love has gotten EVEN MORE FLUTTERY and it can make you wonder. Look: you can tell it makes me nervous because I switched into second-person.

Anyway, when this blogger whose love for her husband was more intense with every passing day announced that she and her husband were divorcing, and that all her earlier words on the topic of love were because she was hoping that saying those things would make them true, it was hard to know what to feel. Relief, because maybe my earlier nervousness was unfounded (at least in this case) and most marriages DON’T keep reaching for higher and higher levels of ecstatic, heart-pounding love? Anger, because she had lied with reckless disregard for how those lies might make others feel about their own relationships, and because I am probably not the only reader who thought, “Uh oh…” as a result? Sympathy, because this stuff is hard and no one knows what they’re doing and it’s easy to make a mistake you think will reflect only on yourself but in fact has much further-reaching effects?

In my own case, with my own situation, I am not sure which way to go with this, and I think it’s quite possible to choose one direction and then decide later that that was wrong. But I am able to edit and/or delete posts, and you have shown yourselves to be unfussed by previous mistakes. Also, we are all in this life thing together, and it doesn’t help any of us to read a lot of posts about how blissful someone else’s life is, but it can help TREMENDOUSLY to read about someone else’s struggles. One of the best parts of a blogging network is that “I’m not the only one!!!” feeling. There is nothing as lonely as thinking you’re the only one who manages to be depressed even when you have this beautiful perfect new baby and everything went fine and nothing is wrong, or that you’re the only one who sometimes has to resist the temptation to get in your car and keep driving, or that you’re the only one whose marriage is having troubles that don’t make funny stories, or that you’re the only one whose kids are having worrisome issues, or that you’re the only one who isn’t finding at-home motherhood particularly #blessed #MomLife #HappyMama, or that you’re the only one finding it hard to make friends, or that you’re the only one who regrets some of your life choices, or that you’re the only one who doesn’t know what to do about a situation, or WHATEVER.

All this is to say that I plan to continue discussing what’s going on, at least for now, at least in general, though of course not alllll the details. And I will try to keep in mind the goal of representing things with reasonable fairness—or in a way that shows you clearly that I am feeling too mad at that moment to be fair, so you know to take it with a grain of salt, and so I know I can walk it back later when I’ve calmed down.

I am still thinking about how I want to handle things with Paul/kids; it takes me a long time to think such things out. Right now my loose plan is to address it with the kids as part of the Father’s Day preparations. I don’t want a do-over of Mother’s Day; I thought that was a really good idea, but I find I don’t WANT it. I will use the frame of Father’s Day preparations to explain how I felt when there were no Mother’s Day preparations. Then next Mother’s Day I may do a little refresher course ahead of time, or I may make my OWN Mother’s Day plans; we’ll see.

Paul and I have had one brief talk: it made me think he might be reading my blog even though he has agreed not to, because he seemed totally fine all weekend and Monday evening, and then Monday night came to me acting very sad and saying he had felt very sad for the past few days over the Mother’s Day thing, but that on Mother’s Day he just hadn’t known what to do. I’m not sure I can explain what a baffling thing this was to hear. It would have made SOME sense from a new father on his first failed Mother’s Day; it makes zero sense from a man on his 20th Mother’s Day, when the previous 19 went fine, and when he knows from extensive experience that I am not sitting there waiting to be WOWED by something BIG and IMPRESSIVE. Also: he felt sad? HE felt sad??? I didn’t know what to do with that. He seemed to want ME to comfort and reassure HIM, for something that HE had done to ME. Which. Again, this is something I would have expected from him 20 years ago, when he was young; it is absolutely not something I was expecting to start from scratch on at this stage of our relationship, when we have already covered this amply in the past. I seriously don’t understand what is going on. This is why I am not kidding when I say I have considered options such as brain tumor and early-onset dementia. It’s not that these behaviors are out of character, it’s that they’re back full-strength as if it’s 20 years ago and we’ve never done any work on them. Why are they back? Why are they back with no seeming recollection of having been dealt with before? Where did the work go? Where did the progress go?

Furthermore, he seemed to think that interaction, in which he said he felt sad and I said yeah that day really sucked, was the end of it. He has been cheery, and seems to think it’s all over now and everything is fine. So clearly there needs to be more talking, which I am dreading, especially because I am wondering which OTHER behaviors/attitudes from the distant past are going to show up. Will it even be possible to have a reasonable discussion, or is this going to immediately dissolve into more baffling events?

There’s one more thing I think you and I should discuss, if I’m going to give occasional updates on this topic. I think that if you try to keep giving sympathetic and supportive feedback, you are going to get quite tired of doing so, and also I will start to feel as if I shouldn’t tell you anything else because I’ll worry it’ll seem like I’m begging for another fix of sweet, sweet commiseration. If this goes on long enough, you may start feeling that I expect you to keep propping me up emotionally, and I may start feeling like I need to explain that actually I am ALSO really hard to live with. Let’s see if we can avoid all that. It is of course always, always, ALWAYS fine not to comment on ANY post of ANY kind, OBVIOUSLY, but I want to explicitly state that it is fine to take all future updates on this subject as the sort of thing where you read it and nod and go on your way: you have ALREADY expressed sympathy and/or outrage and/or support on this topic, and you should not feel you need to keep feeding me that. And of course this is not to say you MAY NOT keep discussing it with me if you WANT to.

Paul and the kids did literally nothing for Mother’s Day, and I’m mad/upset/disappointed about that, while also not being able to figure out how to say anything about it without seeming whiny/demanding/self-pitying. I don’t want it to seem as if I need presents, and lots of money spent on me, and breakfast in bed or a big meal out or whatever. But, like, what I wanted was some sort of feeling that it was in any way a special day. When it’s Father’s Day, for example, I’m extra-careful to load the dishes into the dishwasher promptly so there’s no way Paul would feel as if he were expected to do it or even be given the chance to do it on auto-pilot; I pick up beer at the grocery store so there’ll be some in the fridge if he wants it; I ask what he wants to have for dinner. When it’s one of the kids’ birthdays, they don’t have to unload the dishwasher even if it’s their turn; they get to sit in the front seat even if it’s not their turn; I’ll make their school lunch for them even though I normally won’t. So on Mother’s Day, it would have been nice if someone else had, say, loaded the dishwasher; but I let dishes build up on the counter all morning and half the afternoon (and seven people generate quite a few dishes), and people just kept adding dishes to the pile, and no one loaded them, so finally I did it—and felt pretty martyrish about it too, I’ll tell you.

And quite possibly the answer to this whole issue, at least according to some of you, will be that I should have SAID something, in the moment. And maybe I should have! But I didn’t want it to go down like that: I didn’t want it to be me saying, “It’s Mother’s Day, so do these chores for me, I shouldn’t have to do any work!” I didn’t want to spend Mother’s Day nagging other people to do things: that is how I spend my REGULAR days. I wanted it to be like them thinking, “It’s Mother’s Day, so let’s make sure Mom doesn’t have to do the dishes.” I wanted there to be that slight Special Day feeling in the air that makes people think of things like that themselves.

I would have liked it very much if someone had asked if they could bring me a cup of coffee, something like that—a feeling that they are trying to think of little unnecessary and indulgent things they wouldn’t do on a regular day, because it isn’t a regular day. I would have liked it very much if someone had put dandelions from the yard in a jar. I would have liked it very much if someone had said, “Wait, Mom should choose what we’re watching on TV!” I would have liked it very much if someone had colored me a card. I would have liked it very much if someone had asked if I wanted them to go pick up a box of doughnuts for breakfast or if I wanted to go out for lunch, even if I’d ended up saying no. It would have been nice to think that ANY OF THEM were thinking about me AT ALL and wondering AT ALL how I might like to spend the day, even fleetingly.

Also, I hesitate to put this part in because it makes me so angry and fills me with so much despair, but I overheard Rob asking Paul on Saturday night if they were doing anything for Mother’s Day, and Paul said, “I don’t know—she’s not MY mother.” [Edited to add: I need to clarify here that he said it in a good-natured way, and more as if he were suggesting to Rob that it was time for Rob to start figuring this sort of thing out for himself. Which is true. Nevertheless, it’s not a good concept for him to be introducing to the children for them to later say to people-who-are-not-their-mothers, and his own actions then ended up completely in line with everything I hate about the statement. He also missed a teaching moment with Rob: instead of being dismissive, he could have taken the opportunity to guide. Instead, Rob seemed to feel smacked-down, and dropped it entirely.] I think that’s one of the stupidest attitudes/excuses of all time, and also it makes no sense. Thoughtfulness and consideration for others are skills for children to learn, and holidays are a wonderful time to learn/practice them, and on Mother’s/Father’s Day the other parent needs to do the teaching/coaching/reminding/helping. Just for starters, kids usually don’t have the right level of funds to pay for things such as flowers/meals, and the parent wouldn’t even WANT them using their own small allowances for something like that; but also, many kids start out as selfish little jerks who need specific instruction on how to think about others, how to choose a gift the other person would like (as opposed to buying Mom a new Lego set the child wants), and how to think of little tasks that show others you’re thinking of them. And I am not Paul’s mother but I am the mother of his children and so I am presumably a special mother in his life, and Mother’s Day is for celebrating ALL mothers, not only one’s OWN mother—and pretending to think otherwise is disingenuous to the point of stupidity. I got a nice Happy Mother’s Day text from MY SISTER-IN-LAW’S BROTHER, for heaven’s sake! Because he knows it’s Mother’s Day and that his sister and I are both mothers, so he’s wishing his sister and me a happy day! He didn’t think sending each of us that text would make it seem as if he thought his sister and I were HIS mothers!

But also, and this is why I’m not just angry but also filled with despair, Paul and I have talked about THIS VERY THING before. We have discussed that “She’s/He’s not MY mother/father!” is a stupid attitude/excuse, and exactly WHY it is a stupid attitude/excuse, and WHY the other parent needs to be involved in the whole Mother’s/Father’s Day thing while the kids are in the Training Stage of life, and we have agreed on that. (If their dad were not in the picture, it would be different and I would train them myself on how to approach Mother’s Day.) So how, years later, are those words leaving his mouth? It is baffling, and concerning. It doesn’t leave any wiggle-room for this not to reflect badly on Paul. Like, early on, I could have thought (and did think), “Well, his parents didn’t teach him about this, and his dad was exceptionally self-centered and that certainly had an effect, and he hasn’t thought it all the way through because he’s new to this, so we just need to talk it through and then he’ll understand because he’s a smart guy and these are not difficult concepts.” But…it HAS been covered. He has agreed that the “She’s/He’s not MY mother/father!” attitude/excuse is wrong and can’t be applied to Mother’s/Father’s Day. He has understood my feelings on the topic, and knows that I expect him to assist/train the children on Mother’s Day, just as I will do for Father’s Day. It’s as if he’s had a brain-wipe and I have to start all over again with Idiot New Dad Whose Pre-Frontal Cortex Has Only Recently Finished Developing And Whose Parents May Have Done Well In Many Other Areas But Really Dropped The Ball In Terms of Thoughtfulness Training. I actually, seriously wondered if this could be an early sign of his mind going, because I can easily imagine anyone forgetting certain things (partner’s favorite flower, partner’s clothing size, what partner reminded you to pick up at the store, etc.) just as a matter of being a normal human, but it’s hard to imagine going through the entire mental process of why “She’s not MY mother!” makes no sense AND THEN SAYING IT EVER AGAIN, SERIOUSLY EVER AGAIN, without it being alarming evidence of a worrisome malfunction.

And now it’s hard to know what to do for Father’s Day. I have semi-joked in the past that it is nice Mother’s Day comes first, so I can base the level of the Father’s Day celebration on that—but I don’t want to do literally nothing for Father’s Day. I don’t think doing literally nothing is RIGHT, not for me and not for how I should be bringing up the kids. But it is very hard at this point to imagine taking a day like yesterday, tucking it aside, and turning with joyful heart to the considerate celebration of Father’s Day.

I think what will probably happen is that I will do Father’s Day at the child-training level: encouraging them to think about what he might like, etc., but with no enthusiasm of my own. I won’t, for example, stop at the specialty beer store and ask the clerk to help me choose a really expensive Special-Occasion Beer, as I did last year. Then NEXT year I will start talking about Mother’s Day during the week ahead, and discussing some things they might want to consider on a day like that—the same way I helped them with Father’s Day. I will train the kids the way I would if their dad were not in the picture. And/or I will go out to see a movie on Mother’s Day by myself, and stop for a treat on the way home.

I am having the kind of week where each evening before bed I have to write out a careful schedule for the next day so I don’t forget to send in something or pick up someone or go somewhere. And meanwhile I am cooking for six using a toaster oven and a two-burner hotplate. I would like to tell you that story, and also inform you that “liquor store” is on today’s to-do list.

1. I authorized Paul to make a decision and order a new stove, since he did so well with that last time. [Last time = A very risky move on his part that, luckily for him, worked out: long ago, when I was still covered in babies and toddlers, he got tired of waiting for me to research which stove I wanted to replace our failing one, so he just picked one and ordered it without consulting or telling me. If that stove hadn’t happened to be Exactly Right, things could have ended…very differently. One does not make major-appliance decisions without consulting the primary user of such appliances.] I thought he was remembering the bare essentials of what I consider to be The Right Stove, because we have discussed them repeatedly over the years when admiring the stove he chose; those essentials are: (1) white, (2) coils, (3) no flat tops. That’s what I like, don’t @ me. [Edited to add: For me saying “don’t @ me,” there has been a lot of @ing me on this. Would it help if I said “This is what I like, but for the purposes of this story it doesn’t matter what I like, only that what we got was something completely different?” Like, just imagine what YOU prefer in a stove, and then imagine getting something OPPOSITE TO THAT, and then it doesn’t matter what you do prefer or why you prefer it: the problem is the DIFFERENCE, not what the reasons are for the preference.]

2. Paul ordered the new stove. The happy day arrived. The delivery window was verified by automated phone call at TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING so at first I thought someone was hospitalized/dead, but whatever, new stove! The stove was delivered. The old stove was taken away.

3. Paul read the manual and discovered that the stove he had ordered, which was black/stainless with a flat top and no coils, was an induction stove that also required SPECIAL POTS AND PANS. None of our pans would work with it, except his grody cast-iron skillets which I will never use or eat out of, at least not until several layers of gunk, oh sorry “seasoning,” are removed from them; also, while you can USE a cast-iron pan on this kind of stove, you can’t MOVE it on the stove or it will scratch it. We would need to get all new pans. This all happened one week ago today.

4. (Yes, I absolutely do already know that “seasoning” is an actual thing with cast-iron skillets. This is not seasoning. This is Gross Crust.)

5. I spent a queasy, spiraling afternoon estimating that we would actually come out ahead financially if we donated the new induction stove to charity, purchased a $400 white coil stove, and did not have to buy all new special pans including all the extra-large pans that don’t come in standard sets but are needed when cooking for 6-7 people. I mourned my old pans and planned to store them in the basement. I panicked on Twitter.

6. Twitter said, “OH GOD RETURN THAT THING AT ANY COST!!” Actually, that’s what Twitter-I-listened-to said. Twitter-I-didn’t-listen-to said, “Oh, that kind of stove is great! We love ours!” MY PANS THO

7. I told Paul very gently and carefully that either the stove was leaving OR he and the stove were leaving, but that either way I and the pans were staying. (Is it necessary to clarify that I did not say anything of the sort? What I actually said was something like “I know this would be a terrible hassle and might not even be possible, and if it IS possible it might cost significant money and also mean we’d be without a stove for awhile and have to figure THAT out, and maybe we don’t even want to do this because maybe this stove is great and I just need to get used to it and maybe we should be switching to stainless steel pans anyway. But is there a possibility that we should consider finding out if it’s possible to…return the stove?”)

8. Paul called and arranged to return the stove, with us agreeing ahead of time that we did not really care if we had to pay for return shipping, re-stocking, whatever. So far there does not seem to have been a cost, but we are still ready for it if it happens. The customer service representative was awesome: she wanted the reason for the return, and Paul told her about the pans, and she said, “That is just CRAZY!!”—and put the return right through. (Or rather, that’s what he said that he said. He might very well have instead said “My wife is scaring me.”) She said they could come get it Tuesday. The replacement stove (white, coils) would come Friday. For one solid week we would have no oven and no stovetop. I am on a diet that saps the fun and excitement from eating out, and anyway it gets HELLA EXPENSIVE for six people to eat out every night.

9. I drove to the store and bought a two-burner hotplate. We draped the new oven in towels to protect it from cats, children, etc., but I continued to be intensely anxious about something happening to it. Meanwhile, the two-burner hotplate has been possible to cook on, but not with any of our big pans; also, it is verrrrrrry slow: I started with hot tap water and it still took over 20 minutes for a saucepan of water to boil. I have been making dinners in batches, using the hotplate, the toaster oven, and an attitude that it doesn’t really matter if we have to eat in shifts.

10. On Tuesday the guys came and picked up the induction stove. I was very worried they would refuse to take it because Paul had removed all the wrappers and crinkled them up and put them deep in the trash can and then put raw-meat wrappers and cream droplets all over them. But there was no issue, other than that the guys were supposed to come between 3:00 and 6:00, and instead they arrived at 2:45, in the 15 minutes between the time I had to leave with William to have his x-ray done (his knee is bothering him) and the time Paul arrived home early from work to be sure to be home by 3:00, and Elizabeth was home alone and she had to handle it. Which she did, by calling me so that I had to answer my cell phone during registration at the x-ray place, under several signs prohibiting the use of cell phones. Anyway. The delivery guys waited out in the driveway, Paul arrived shortly afterward, and the Bad New Stove was removed without incident.

11. Today Good New Stove arrives! At least, we hope. We were supposed to get a delivery-window-confirmation call (we hoped not at 2:00 in the morning), but did not. This worries me.

[Update!:

It works with MY PANS]