They Said This Would Happen!

Hey! I got my first hatemail!

Okay, more like hate comment.

I've arrived!!

I'm strangely ecstatic about this. In fact, I'm so excited and I can't stop grinning.

Yes, I know it appears that we're being complete jerks about this stupid wedding, but it's mainly because there's a lot I haven't explained to my readership so here goes (take a deep breath):

We're not exactly happy to be attending this wedding because Peter has a very strained relationship with that part of the family. Basically, his sister and mother had a falling out over the purchase of a kitchen appliance.

Although Peter has purchased a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a sofa, a dining room table, three air conditioners, a microwave, and any other household appliance that needed purchasing in his parental home, when his eldest sister decided to purchase a new stove for his mother, her husband informed Peter that he would be chipping in for it. That was fine for him, in fact, he had wanted to buy his mother a stove just a few months previously for her birthday, but his mother insisted that she didn't need nor want a stove and she would actually prefer the cash, thank you very much.

I think that Peter's mother keeps quiet about all the things he does buy for her because she wants to play the martyr card in front of her other children. So this whole time there has been a lot of resentment amongst the other children (who only visit her once or twice a year) on how Peter had been fleecing her dry until he met me (the villainess) and then he moved out and abandoned her. I'm sure she never tells them that he paid off the large credit card debt she accrued buying Christmas presents for them. I'm pretty sure that all she does is complain about the stuff that Peter doesn't do for her instead of looking at all the things he does. Basically she's a glass-half-empty kind of person. If the glass is Peter and the empty air is all the unrealistic things she expects from her youngest son.

Okay, back to the original story: New York has this strange law that the stove store cannot hook up the stove. You need to unhook the old stove if you want to have the store carry it off and you need to hook up the new stove. I'm not sure why a Sears technician cannot do this, but he can't and don't even mention it to him because he will shrug his jumpsuited arms at you.

So when the new stove got delivered, Peter's mom insisted on not asking her landlord to unhook the old stove. I don't know why, but she was really against it. So for a few days there were two stoves in her kitchen. Then, there was a phone call from Peter's sister to Peter wherein he told her about this strange New York Stove Law.

In frustration, she called Sears and had them cart away the new stove and return it and she no longer wanted to buy the stove for her mother. In fact, she didn't speak to her or Peter for about four years.

You know how sometimes a stove isn't just a stove? I think that this stove represented a lot of things to Peter's sister and what happened was just the last straw. The fact of the matter is that Peter was born when his mother was in her forties and his elder siblings were already adults, so a lot of water got filled up under a lot of bridges even by the time he was born. There's a lot of crazy family dynamics that he doesn't even understand because they predate him. So this stove thing happened and his sister snapped.

During this time, Peter's father died. (That was a complete nightmare in and of itself without any support system for Peter or his mother during this terrible time.) Peter's eldest sister's entire family did not attend the wake, the funeral, or make any phone calls to the family.

There was a lot of resentment all around, and Peter's mother still has not forgiven them for not attending the funeral. I mean, I had to pick out the coffin and I was all, "The one with the big gold cross. No! The one with the roses. No! The one with the big gold cross. Wait. Uhm. I'm not sure. Can you show me all of them for the third time?" The funeral director was very patient and nice and I was so afraid of picking the wrong casket and the whole time I wished that someone older and wiser could help us out. (Ultimately, the funeral director assured me that yes, the one with the roses is completely appropriate and very Catholic-y)

It's true that for a long time Peter and I have judged this family very harshly for what they put his mother through and the embarrassment this caused her in front of all the other people who attended the funeral service. She doesn't like to feel that her family has completely fallen apart, but sometimes being confronted with it at the age of 84 is extremely difficult and she's not very good at dealing with feelings.

Peter has tried his best to reach out to his nephew. He had called him and not received any telephone calls back. He had asked his nephew to serve as a groomsman at our wedding, hoping that this would mend things a little, but his sister's family did not attend. In fact, their RSVP note was written in ALL CAPS to convey the fervency of their refusal, I suppose.

Because Peter's nephew did attend our wedding and he did stand up for us at our wedding, Peter feels obligated to attend his nephew's. Also, we understand firsthand what it's like when family does not attend a wedding since his sister did not attend ours. We didn't want to do that to anyone else. So we are attending the wedding, but we have reservations about everything. This will be the first time he will have seen his sister in about six years and he's not sure how that's going to be like. He doesn't really understand why his sister has removed herself from our lives, this was a sister that he had felt very connected to until six years ago. He feels that this relationship is completely damaged and irreparable.

The reason we're attending this wedding is that we were invited. And yes, it probably didn't matter which day of the year it was going to happen, but the fact that it was happening over the 4th of July weekend gave me an excuse to bitch and moan about it without really talking about the real issues.

But now that piece of hatemail has forced me to open up that can of worms, so THANK YOU HATEMAIL!

I am trying to be more positive and hopeful about this Friday and I guess that means I'm going to have to stop bitching and moaning. Which sucks because I LOVE bitching and moaning!

So okay, positive feelings from now on!